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New terrors for new technologies, the double-edged sword of surveillance holds sway in Fritz Lang's Möbius strip. "Strange events" in the tremendous opening montage (safecracker's gloved hand at work, low-angled view of grinning getaway biker, moving-car assassination, messenger silenced by bullet), a masterclass in compression, a kaleidoscope of alarm, and an introduction of the kingpin—Haghi the banker (Rudolf Klein-Rogge), surrounded by cables like plugged-in tendrils. Business is a front for a bustling spy ring, control extending from the top of the broadcast tower to the cyanide capsule in the operator's mouth. By contrast, the government's secret service is mocked in newspapers and bugged with miniature recorders, its trump card is Number 326 (Willy Fritsch), the hobo-agent who cleans up nicely. Rival networks on an abstract grid, through it floats the ladylike vamp (Gerda Maurus) no longer mollified with jewelry: "Whose blood am I to wear around my neck?" Lang's bravura system is a fearsome advance upon Metropolis, the world between wars is a world where war never ends and relationships are distilled to conspiracy and infiltration. (If Fleming is born here, so are le Carré and Pynchon.) Coconuts explode, ink vanishes, a smoky boxing ring turns into a ritzy ballroom. People traffic in multiple lives and multiple deaths, phantoms demand retribution when the courtly Japanese diplomat (Lupu Pick) is undone by a viper-nymph (Lien Deyers). The train wreck is studied by Hitchcock and Frankenheimer, Beckett's "superfine chaos" in the building search goes into M. Amid double-crosses and narrow escapes, the lingering image of lovers' hands under a spotlight (cf. Resnais' Coeurs). "You are hardly the first to fall in the trap." The malevolent artist's line between puppet-master and clown is drawn in the excoriating finale, skewering the sensation-hungry Weimar zeitgeist in a corrosive coup de théâtre that leaves a pierced cranium and thunderous applause. Cinematography by Fritz Arno Wagner. With Louis Ralph, Craighall Sherry, and Fritz Rasp. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |