DESTINY

Set around 1830, Fritz Lang’s first major international success features a young woman (Lil Dagover) trying to convince Death (Bernhard Goetzke) not to take away the man she loves (Walter Janssen). She is given the chance, but only if she manages to save three lives, symbolised by three candle butts about to go out, in three different eras, the Baghdad of the ‘Thousand and One Nights’, Renaissance Venice and a magical, ancient China. Also known, from its French title, as The Three Lights, Der Mude Tod (‘The Tired Death’) sees Lang’s collaboration with Thea von Harbou and precedes The Doctor Mabuse. Between references to painting (Durer, Rembrandt…) and theatrical references (Max Reinhardt), the German director made a film of pure expressionism, able to compete abroad with the almost contemporary ‘Caligari’ in terms of popularity, using tricks that were soon picked up by Hollywood, for example by Douglas Fairbanks in The Thief of Baghdad, and which recalls the fulcrum of Lang’s cinema, the struggle of men against destiny, but also, for the themes treated and the way the figure of Death is portrayed, Griffith’s Intolerance and Dreyer’s Pages from Satan’s Book…