Review - Dr. Mabuse The Gambler (1922)

January 11, 2025
 
Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler – Germany, 1922
 

If I didn’t know better, I’d swear that Fritz Lang’s 1922 film Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler started out as a one of those twelve-part serials that were shown before the main attraction in years gone by. However, knowing Lang’s habit of making episodic films that often stretched to the 180-minute mark and given that the film is presented in two parts, The Great Gambler: A Picture of the Time and Inferno: A Game for the People of Our Age, I’m inclined to believe that the film as it currently stands is the way Lang always intended it to be, which is both a blessing and a curse. More on that later. Also evident is the influence of Louis Feuilade, many of whose own works, such as Le Vampires and Fantomas, dealt with criminal masterminds and the law’s attempts to apprehend them.
 
Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler takes place in Berlin in the aftermath of World War I. Perhaps there is no other place or time for the film to take place, for 1920s Berlin was the ideal setting for a man like Dr. Mabuse to ascend. It was a time when great poverty coincided with great wealth, when, in the ruins and despair of the post-war period, powerful men could manipulate conditions to their great benefit and many people could be lulled into following a charlatan. In Dr. Mabuse, we have an amalgamation of all the great gothic German, cinematic villains of the time: the man of many disguises, the head of the criminal enterprise, the mysterious Rasputin-like hypnotist, and the madman becoming less sane by the minute. That Dr. Mabuse inspires cult-like worship from his followers only adds to his mystic.
 
Early on in the film, Mabuse (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) arranges for the murder of an ambassador to Sweden and the theft of some important trade documents he is carrying. In doing so, Mabuse helps spark a rumor of imminent retaliation, which leads to panic selling on the stock market. In a brilliant moment, we watch as Mabuse surveys his destruction while standing expressionless over the frantic sellers, their mouths agape as their once valued stock tumbles off a cliff. And then just as coolly, Mabuse proclaims himself a buyer, swooping up all of the stock before word of the documents’ recovery can reach the floor of the stock market. The stock ascends as rapidly as it fell, at which point Mabuse declares himself a seller.
 
With such a set-up, one would expect for Mabuse’s ultimate aim to be wealth, yet this does not seem to be the case, for Mabuse, in addition to all of his other pursuits, is in the business of printing counterfeit money. In fact, he has a secret room where five aging blind men sit for hours flipping through stacks of freshly-printed bills. (Just what they eat and how they relieve themselves in anyone’s guess, but I digress.) No, Mabuse, like Bane 90 years later, seems intent on watching the forest burn, on treating the wealthy as if they were his personal pawns to be shifted or removed at will. He’s a man who wants to be the kingmaker and perhaps to even wear the crown himself.
 
Of course, all super-villains need a protagonist, and Mabuse’s comes in the form of a prosecutor named Norbert von Wenk (Bernhard Goetzke), who is tasked with discovering just who is behind a series of mysterious gambling incidents. Assisting him is a well-to-do young man named Edgar Hull (Paul Richter) who is also one of the victims of Mabuse’s schemes and dating Cara Carozza (Aud Egede-Nissen), one of Mabuse’s henchman. We also meet a wealthy countess with the odd last name Told. The countess is unusual, for as much as she seems fascinated by gambling, she never partakes in it. She and the prosecutor strike up a platonic relationship which may have become more if Lang had ever made a direct sequel.
 
Much of the fun of the film comes in observing their game of cat-and-mouse, with Mabuse always a few steps ahead. Of course, we know who the mysterious gambler is, but that knowledge does not diminish the intrigue. Part of this is due to the fact that we know so little about Mabuse and each scene seems to draw us closer to achieving a complete picture of him. And if getting that knowledge means accepting Wenk’s ludicrous jack-of-all-trades persona, then so be it. After all, who’s to say that a prosecutor wouldn’t have the power to call in the military at a moment’s notice? I also found myself playing a variation of Where’s Waldo every time new characters were introduced, for he could easily be the bad doctor in disguise.
 
Like all of Lang’s films, Dr. Mabuse is a visual masterpiece, from its varying interiors to its grungy, shadowy exteriors. At one point, Lang shows one character playing cards with multiple transparent versions of himself; in another, a caravan of nomads walks off a screen and into the real world only to disappear with the snap of Mabuse’s fingers. Toward the end of the film, we watch as the objects hanging on the walls of an almost barren room suddenly become living, breathing creatures intent on toying with Mabuse’s already fragile mind. It’s impressive stuff. Lang also gets an amazing performance out of Kleine-Rogge, who adopts altogether different personas for each of his many incarnations.
 
My problem with the film – and it is not a minor one - is its interminable length, for its 270 minutes are hard to justify. Lang, who wrote the screen play with his writing partner, Thea von Harbou, includes multiple instances of Mabuse’s hypnotic skills at the card table when only two of them could really be deemed vital to the plot. Perhaps an even bigger problem is that the film does not use its length effectively. The movie seems so set on convincing viewers of Mabuse’s skills that it neglects to flesh out many of the other characters. There are no scenes in which we see what would make Cara so devoted to Mabuse, and so little time is devoted to building Wenk’s relationship with Countess Told that their sudden closeness never feels justified. Also, in giving Mabuse so many masks, the character begins to test even the most accepting viewer’s credulity. It’s one thing to accept him as a corrupt doctor and a thief, but then viewers are asked to accept that he’s a master at hypnotism and that his secret weapon, at times at least, is an unusual pair of glasses. We’re then asked to believe that a man who could hypnotize a massive audience simply by looking in their direction has no other way to ward off the police than guns blazing.
 
Much of this criticism applies to the first half of the film, for Lang indeed picks up the pace in the second. However, it does make you wonder how much more compact the story would be if the first half ran sixty minutes instead of one-hundred and fifty or if there had been any follow up to Mabuse powerful line, “Now the world will know who I am!” In truth, they never really do, for just as it seems he’s about to wreak even more havoc on the world, he announces that he’s grown tired of Berlin and intends to pack his things and leave, providing of course that the woman he’s kidnapped and proclaims as his goes with him. Once guess how that turns out. (on DVD and Blu-ray from Kino Classics)
 
3 stars
 
*Dr. Mabuse The Gambler is a silent film.