Fritz Lang was an Austrian-born filmmaker who made over 50 films. He directed the 1927 classic Metropolis, which is considered to be one of the greatest movies ever made. Lang also directed M and Fury, two other classics that have since become cult hits.

Lang was born in Vienna in 1898. His father was a conservative politician who led a vehement anti-Semitic movement in Austria. As a result, Lang grew up with anti-Semitic views himself.

Who Is Fritz Lang?

In 1921, Lang moved to Hollywood where he began working as an assistant director at Warner Bros Studios. There he met Darryl F. Zanuck and became friends with him and his wife Olive Borden (who would later work with him on his films).

Lang quickly became known for his talent and innovation when it came to film technology.

For example, Lang used anamorphic lenses for the first time in Metropolis, which was one of his most famous films featuring futuristic cities and robots that look like humans but are actually mechanical beings designed to destroy humanity.

Best Fritz Lang Films        

When it comes to the best Fritz Lang films, we think you’ll agree that Metropolis is a must-watch. The 1927 sci-fi epic was the first film produced by Lang, who went on to create classics like The New York Story, M and Fearless.

Metropolis is based on a German sci-fi novel by Thea von Harbou, which was adapted into a play by Lang in 1926.

It tells the story of Freder (Peter Nestler), who works as an underground worker at the city of Metropolis a futuristic city where robots and humans work together for the good of everyone else.

When Freder meets Maria (Thea Von Harbou), he falls in love with her but soon learns she’s part of a group called The Sons Of The Mind and they want to overthrow their masters, the gods.

As chaos erupts around them, Freder tries to save Maria from being killed by one of her own kind.

Characteristics of Fritz Lang Films         

In Fritz Lang’s films, he used the camera in a very unique way. He was able to make his films more stylistic by using angles and lighting. He also used this technique to create suspense and shock.

Many of his films involve themes such as crime, corruption and corruption. In most of his films, there is a clear villain that is depicted as evil or bad.

In most of his films, there are three main characters who play different roles throughout the film. The first character is usually the hero/heroine who has to fight against the bad guys or monsters.

The second character could be an ally or friend to the hero/heroine who helps them on their quest or journey. The third character could be an enemy who tries to stop what is happening in the story or movie from happening again. Another characteristic about Fritz Lang’s films is their use of violence;

however, there are some movies that have no violence at all such as “Metropolis”.

Another characteristic about Fritz Lang’s films is their use of psychology; however, there are some movies that have no psychology at all such as “M” (1931) which starred Peter Lorre as an insane serial killer with telekinetic powers.”

1. Metropolis (1927)

Fritz Lang’s 1927 science fiction epic Metropolis is one of the most important films in the history of cinema. It’s also one of the most significant films ever made, as it helped usher in a new era in film, with its use of special effects and groundbreaking editing techniques.

The film is set in a futuristic dystopia where wealthy elites live underground while workers toil above ground. A young woman named Maria (Alfred Abel), who works as a typist, falls into a relationship with Freder (Bruno Ve Sota),

a worker who dreams of revolution against the city’s elite. However, Freder becomes consumed by his obsession with finding out what lies beneath Metropolis’ surface — which leads him on a dangerous journey into the bowels of the city itself.

The film is often compared to Dickens’ A Tale Of Two Cities for its themes about class struggle and political corruption. However, Metropolis has also been called “the first science fiction film,”

because it was concerned with issues such as how technology affects society; how man interacts with technology; and how people respond when their beliefs are challenged by new ideas or discoveries. The story also features several striking images that

2. The Big Heat (1953)

Directed by Fritz Lang. With Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, John Huston and Gloria Grahame. A wannabe crime lord forms an alliance with a female cop to catch the mobsters who killed his brother-in-law.

In The Big Heat, Fritz Lang adapts the novel of the same name by Donald Westlake, which was first published in 1955. The book is set in San Francisco during the 1950s and concerns a police beat officer named Virgil Mallory (John Huston).

He’s not made for cops; he’s more like a private eye, although he does have some experience as a policeman in Minneapolis before coming to California to work as a policeman there. His wife (Gloria Grahame), who is much more serious about being married than he is,

suspects that something is wrong with him – maybe even something wrong with her marriage – and she starts to investigate while they’re on a vacation together down South.

She finds out that he was once involved with a woman named Barbara Mallory who has committed suicide after being framed for murder by corrupt cops. Virgil gets involved in trying to clear Barbara’s

3. M (1931)

M is a 1931 German thriller film directed by Fritz Lang. The screenplay was written by Lang and Carl Lamac, based on the short story “The Man Who Laughs” by Robert W. Chambers.

M is considered one of the first science fiction films ever made and was also the first German sound film to use synchronized dialogue for its English-language version.

The film stars Peter Lorre as an evil industrialist who plots to rule the world with his secret weapon, a machine that can create life from nothing. In order to achieve this goal, he must be killed in such a way that it appears he has been killed by someone else; thus making it look like he died a natural death.

He employs his own son (Hans Albers), who has been given a new face, and another man (Jürgen Drews). To achieve his plan, Lorre kills off all those around him until only he and his son are left alive.

After being shot down in an airplane crash, Lorre’s son assumes control of the world with him as its ruler

4. Scarlet Street (1945) 

 Fritz Lang’s Scarlet Street (1945) is a rich, complex and layered mystery film. It is based on the novel by Edna Ferber, who also wrote Show Boat (1929) and Cimarron (1931).

The film follows the story of a middle-class family where the mother devotes all her attention to her sickly daughter Julia. She lives in an apartment building with her sister Minnie who works as a nurse at home. The family is supported by their wealthy father Arthur and his wife Alice who lives in a mansion.

Julia falls in love with Harry Farnham, a man she meets on the street one day. He seems like an ordinary man but later turns out to be a serial killer who kidnaps women and kills them slowly before he buries them underground.

The rest of the movie follows how Julia manages to escape from Harry and how she tries to find out what really happened to her family members after they disappeared one after another.

5. Destiny (1921)             

 Destiny (also known as A Reckoning), is a 1921 American silent drama film directed by Fritz Lang and starring Paul Wegener. It was the third of Lang’s German Expressionist films, and the first to be released in America.

The plot concerns a man who, after an accident, loses his memory and becomes obsessed with his past. He seeks out his wife, whom he believes he has killed, but she is alive and living with another man.

The film was based on the play Destiny by Berthold Viertel, which had been adapted into a play by Viertel and Arthur Schnitzler in 1920.

Destiny was released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1921; although it has been lost, MGM still owns the rights to it today.[1][2] It was shot over eight weeks at sets built for other movies at MGM’s studios in Culver City, Los Angeles.[3] The film features an early appearance by Rudolph Valentino.[4]

6. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933)

“The Testament of Dr. Mabuse” is a film that was made in Germany during the early 1930s and which was released in 1933. It is considered one of the greatest films ever made, and it has been called “the first American film to be shot in Germany since World War I.”

It was directed by Fritz Lang and stars Peter Lorre as a criminal who sets out to destroy his former employers, the people who have brought him up from childhood to become a criminal. He does this by killing them and then framing their deaths on each other.

The movie follows an elaborate plot that involves many characters and locations, but it does not follow any particular storyline. It is instead composed of separate scenes that are linked together by a series of coincidences that make sense only when viewed as part of an overall plot.

This makes it difficult to describe what happens in each scene without giving away some key element of the plot or revealing too much information about how things work out for various characters at different points in the story line.

7. Fury (1936)   

Fury is the story of Max Teasdale, a young car mechanic who loves his wife, Helen, and their son, Sean. When Helen’s father dies, Sean’s mother takes Sean to live in a mental hospital.

The doctor who runs the institution tells Max that Helen has been admitted because she has a nervous breakdown and must be isolated from society. Soon after Helen begins treatment at the hospital,

they discover that she is pregnant with another man’s child. Her husband grows increasingly angry over her infidelity and her refusal to help him find out who fathered their child. When Helen gives birth to a baby boy whom they name Michael,

Max is convinced that he has been replaced as the family’s father; he decides to leave town and never return again. He leaves his tools behind on purpose so that others will assume he has abandoned his business for good. However, when someone tries to steal his car one night,

it ends up being wrecked in an accident; Max manages to save himself but cannot save anyone else from being killed. He then heads back home where he finds out from Sean that his wife has been released from the hospital and apparently gone into hiding with another man named

8. Spies (1928)  

 Spies is a 1928 German silent film directed by Fritz Lang and starring Emil Jannings, Werner Krauss, Olga Tschechowa, Heinrich George and Ernst Kubelka. It was based on the novel The Spies by Curt Oertel.

The film begins with the 1919 Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I and the German Revolution that followed. The Treaty imposed reparations on Germany and banned it from having an army. Berlin becomes a city divided into Allied zones controlled by the British and French.

A young man named Paul Kornfeld (Emil Jannings) is a spy for Germany who enters France with his friend Walter (Heinrich George). They meet Marie (Olga Tschechowa),

who works in an office for the Germans but has been taken prisoner as part of their plan to win back territory from France. Kornfeld falls in love with her but does not tell her about his work for Germany,

thinking she will be ashamed of him if she discovers it. She later tells him that she loves him and wants to marry him, but he refuses because he believes she would be ashamed of him if they were found out together. Later they bump into Marie’s friend Anna (Werner Kra

9. Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (1924)        

 The Nibelungen is a series of four films by German filmmaker Fritz Lang, released between 1924 and 1927.

The films are an adaptation of the German epic poem Nibelungenlied (The Song of the Nibelungs) by the poet-philosopher Friedrich von Schiller.

The first film in the series was director Lang’s own interpretation of Siegfried as a young man who, like Fafner, battles against evil. The second film,

in 1926, was a sequel to this film called Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods), and then another sequel, Siegfried II (1930), followed in 1931.

The films have been widely considered among Lang’s best; they are frequently cited as having influenced the Hollywood sword and sorcery genre.[4] They have also been praised for their cinematography (especially for its use of shadows) and for their performances (particularly that of Max Schreck as Fafner).

Lang attempted to make a fourth film about Sigurd Fafner but it did not materialize until 1968 when Universal Pictures made Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (The New Adventures of Siegfried).[5]

10. Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler (1922)      

Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler is the original film noir classic of German Expressionism. It’s one of those films that we all have to watch at some point, but it is also one of those films that you can’t really watch too often.

The plot is a bit convoluted and complicated  it’s about a criminal mastermind named Dr. Mabuse and his quest for world domination but the characters are so well-drawn and engaging that you want to keep watching them even if they don’t necessarily make sense. And while this film was made in 1922,

it feels like something that could have been made today. It’s not just the fact that there are cars on screen; it’s how they’re used and how they look.

It still looks like a crime thriller today because it plays with shadows and angles in such an effective way. It’s also worth noting that Dr. Mabuse was based on an actual person who lived in Germany during World War I who claimed credit for various crimes including bombings throughout Europe;

he was eventually captured by police and executed for his crimes (although he committed suicide before being executed).

11. The Woman in the Window (1944)  

 I haven’t read this book, but I found it interesting that the main character, Agatha (Agatha in my notes) is a woman who has lived her whole life with her parents and her husband. She’s been married to a man who is not only physically abusive but also emotionally abusive. He beats her when he gets angry.

Agatha has become so used to being abused and controlled that she doesn’t feel real emotions other than anger and hatred towards him.

She’s also told by everyone around her that she’s crazy for thinking that her husband could ever be capable of murder — after all, he was just doing his job by finding out what happened to the people who got murdered.

Her neighbors seem to care more about gossiping about Agatha than they do about helping her find the killer of their neighbors’ children. When the police come over to talk with them (hearing their story),

one of them asks if anyone else saw anything unusual at the time of the murders. “I saw something,” says Mrs. Van Schuyler, “but I didn’t let you know because it made me embarrassed.”

12. Ministry of Fear (1944)          

 The film is a suspense thriller that explores the theme of paranoia and the lengths people will go to in order to survive. It’s also a political thriller, with a twist.

The movie stars Edward G. Robinson as Dr. Richard Kimble, a former army surgeon who is released from prison after 15 years for a crime he didn’t commit. He returns home to find his wife has divorced him and moved on with her life without him.

To make matters worse, his daughter has been kidnapped by gangsters who want $70,000 ransom money stolen from an armored car convoy being protected by Kimble’s old army unit.

Kimble tries to keep it together but begins to unravel as the kidnappers grow more desperate for their money and another innocent victim is murdered during their search for Kimble’s daughter.

As more bodies pile up, Kimble becomes convinced that someone in his own family is helping the kidnappers kill anyone who gets in their way — and that someone could be him!

13. Die Nibelungen: Kriemhild’s Revenge (1924)              

 The Nibelungs are a group of characters that have been associated with Germanic legend. They were the subjects of several medieval works of German poetry, including the epic poem Nibelungenlied. In the twelfth century,

the poem was translated into Middle English by an unknown author, and became one of the most influential works in Old English literature.

The story centers on two brothers named Kriemhild and Alberich (or Atli), whose father was killed by Siegfried after he had rejected Kriemhild’s marriage proposal. Kriemhild then married Etzel or Attila, king of Huns,

who was also known as Dietrich von Bern. After her death, her brother Siegfried found out about this marriage and took revenge on Dietrich by murdering him and imprisoning Kriemhild in a tower guarded by dragons.

Kriemhild’s Revenge is a 1924 German silent film directed by Fritz Lang based on Gottfried Keller’s 1874 novella Die Nibelungen: Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Saga of the Nibelungs). The film follows events set out in Keller’s novella but omits some details

14. Human Desire (1954)

Fritz Lang is a German filmmaker who was born in Germany. He was an early film director who made many great science fiction movies during his career. He made the movie “Human Desire” in the 1950s.

The movie starts off with a group of scientists who are conducting experiments on human beings. The scientists take people and inject them with different chemicals that they hope will help them live longer and be healthier.

The scientists have big hopes for these chemicals so they can use them on humans in real life, not just as test subjects or guinea pigs. In some cases, the scientists even give their test subjects drugs that they know will kill them but they still do it because they believe they will gain knowledge from the experiment.

One day, Dr. Marschner receives a package containing photos of his wife and daughter taken by one of his assistants before he died in an accident at work years earlier.

He tries to find out what happened to his family but all he does is leave notes for his assistant, who has gone missing along with another scientist named Ludwig Vanderspool who had been assisting him on this project

15. Clash by Night (1952)

The movie Clash by Night, released in 1952, is a crime drama directed by Fritz Lang. The film stars Paul Henreid, Gloria Grahame and Tyrone Power.

The storyline revolves around two men who are both wanted for murder and are forced to team up with each other in order to get away from the police. They find themselves being hunted down by two corrupt cops who are determined to make them pay for their crimes.

The murder mystery element of Clash by Night makes it one of the more interesting movies of its genre. While it is not necessarily a great movie, it does have some good elements that make it worth watching again at least once during your lifetime.

The first thing that you will notice about this movie is that there is no real plot or story line whatsoever. The characters just kind of show up one day at another place doing what they do best – getting into trouble!

There is no reason why these guys were called detectives or why they were sent out on this particular case other than because someone else needed them to do something for them at some point during the movie

16. You Only Live Once (1937)   

You Only Live Once is a 1937 American drama film directed by Fritz Lang and starring George Raft, Jean Harlow and Edward Arnold. The screenplay was written by David Boehm from the novel Danger,

Incorporated by Robert M. Armstrong and James M. Cain, who also wrote Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice for Lang. The film was reworked into an opera in 1943 by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, based on two of Cain’s short stories “The Postman Always Rings Twice” and “A Double Life”.

The film’s original title was The Perils of Pauline; however, the censor objected to any reference to the name of Pauline Ronin in connection with crime or vice.

The story follows Pauline (Jean Harlow), a young woman who manages to escape from prison after being sentenced as an accessory to murder. She eventually finds herself working at a brothel owned by her friend Pearl (George Raft).

Unbeknownst to Pauline, her father (Edward Arnold) has been hiding out in the brothel for years after being accused of murder; he eventually goes back into hiding because he fears his wife (M