Actor · 1885–1955

Rudolf Klein-Rogge

3: briefs
13:00: average
39 min: in total

On film.briefs3

The Testament of Dr. Mabuse

Fritz Lang · 1933

Fritz Lang’s 1933 crime-thriller, made weeks before Hitler’s rise and banned by Goebbels on release, follows Inspector Lohmann as he traces a wave of violence back to the asylum-bound Dr. Mabuse — whose written plans are carried out by others who don’t know they’re obeying. Shot in German and French simultaneously, with stark lighting, deliberate pacing and Hans Erdmann’s sparse score, it treats criminal conspiracy as ideological contagion. Though weakened by a dispensable romance and a rushed finale, its formal control and political prescience make it essential viewing — not as escapism, but as diagnosis.

13:00

Metropolis

Fritz Lang · 1927

Fritz Lang’s 1927 silent science-fiction film Metropolis stages class division as vertical geography — elites above, workers below — using expressionist design, pioneering special effects, and gruelling physical production. Its moral is stated plainly: 'The Mediator Between the Head and the Hands Must Be the Heart.' Though criticised then and since for schematic politics and narrative naivety, its formal authority, spatial imagination, and material intensity make it foundational. The 2010 restoration recovers nearly all of Lang’s original cut.

13:00

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Robert Wiene · 1920

A 1920 German silent film directed by Robert Wiene, written by Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer, and designed by Hermann Warm, Walter Reimann and Walter Röhrig. It tells of a hypnotist and his somnambulist through a fractured frame story, using radically distorted sets, high-contrast lighting and stylised performance to argue against irrational authority. Made at Babelsberg Studio, it remains foundational to expressionist cinema, horror and arthouse film.