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“The enigma is that my body simultaneously sees and is seen. That which looks at all things can also look at itself and recognize, in what it sees, the ‘other side’ of its power of looking. It sees itself seeing; it touches itself touching; it is visible and sensible for itself… It is a self… that is caught up in things, that has a front and a back, a past and a future…”—Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Eye and Mind”Jane Schoenbrun’s We’re All Going to the World’s Fair opens with a teenage girl (Anna Cobb) sitting at her bedroom desk, snacking absentmindedly on a packet of string cheese. Eventually she sits up, looks straight into the camera, and says, “Hey guys, Casey here. Today I’m gonna be taking the World’s Fair Challenge.” We later hear this described as the “internet’s scariest online horror game,” but for now...

It’s the most impressive ‘new’ movie we’ve seen this year: Robert Siodmak’s 1957 political thriller fictionalizes a true mass murder case in 1943 Berlin — one that a high-ranking Nazi wants to justify the extermination of ‘undesirables’ for the furtherance of Aryan white supremacy. The snapshot of home-front Berlin is fascinating, and also the depiction of a complacent public, going along with official lies nobody fully believes. Produced on a big scale, the unjustly obscure show stars Claus Holm, Mario Adorf, Hannes Messemer, Peter Carsten, Karl Lange, Werner Peters and Annemarie Düringer. The illuminating audio commentary is by Imogen Sara Smith.

The Devil Strikes at Night

Blu-ray

Kino Classics

1957 / B&w / 1:66 widescreen / 97 min. / Nachts wenn der Teufel kam / Street Date , 2022 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Claus Holm, Mario Adorf, Hannes Messemer, Peter Carsten, Karl Lange, Werner Peters, Annemarie Düringer, Monika John, Rose Schäfer, Ernst Fritz Fürbringer, Walter Janssen.

Cinematography:...

Fritz Lang’s first American picture is a searing social statement out of message-averse Hollywood. It’s also a cinematic landmark, packed with innovative visual concepts. Sylvia Sidney and Spencer Tracy have great appeal as lovers torn apart by vigilante violence, and Tracy’s very Langian hero pulls off a ‘return from the dead’ to serve as an avenging angel. It’s one of the talkies’ earliest direct attacks on America’s plague of lynching, a liberal assault that even the Production Code couldn’t stop — the show took the ‘social issue drama’ to new heights, even as Fritz Lang didn’t find favor with the Hollywood studio system. Also starring Walter Abel, Bruce Cabot and Walter Brennan. CineSavant presents the evidence of MGM tampering at the conclusion, that changes the film’s message and meaning.

Fury

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1936 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 92 min. / Available at Amazon.com / Street Date November 9, 2021 / 21.99

Starring Sylvia Sidney,...

Fritz Lang’s final feature brings his career full circle to the core thriller concepts he pioneered back in 1922: superstitious human nature and sinister technological advances combine to make the 20th century an Age of Terror. Lang reboots his highly cinematic Weimar-era narrative tricks for a film that heralds the beginning of a brave new world where total surveillance and mind control are at the service of paranoid conspiracies. I could talk for hours about the directing/editing in this show — it’s so sophisticated, and yet so simple.

The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse

Region B Blu-ray

Eureka Entertainment/Masters of Cinema

1960 / B&w / 1:66 widescreen / 103 min. / Die 1000 Augen des Dr. Mabuse / Street Date May 11, 2020 / £ 15.99

Starring: Dawn Addams, Peter van Eyck, Gert Fröbe, Wolfgang Preiss, Lupo Prezzo, Werner Peters, Andrea Checchi, Marielouise Nagel, Reinhard Kolldehoff, Howard Vernon, Nico Pepe, Jean-Jacques Delbo, Christiane Maybach.

Cinematography: Karl Löb

Film Editors: Walter Wischniewsky,...

Fritz Lang’s final feature is a mind-blowing culmination of the core thriller concepts he pioneered back in 1922: superstitious human nature and sinister technological advances combine to make the 20th century an Age of Terror. Lang reboots his highly cinematic Weimar-era narrative tricks for a film that heralds the beginning of a brave new world where total surveillance and mind control are at the service of paranoid conspiracies. I could talk for hours about the directing/editing in this show — it’s so sophisticated, and yet so simple.

The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse

Region B Blu-ray

Eureka Entertainment/Masters of Cinema

1960 / B&w / 1:66 widescreen / 103 min. / Die 1000 Augen des Dr. Mabuse / Street Date May 11, 2020 / £ 15.99

Starring: Dawn Addams, Peter van Eyck, Gert Fröbe, Wolfgang Preiss, Lupo Prezzo, Werner Peters, Andrea Checchi, Marielouise Nagel, Reinhard Kolldehoff, Howard Vernon, Nico Pepe, Jean-Jacques Delbo, Christiane Maybach.

Cinematography: Karl Löb

Film Editors: Walter Wischniewsky,...

At the end of his career, Fritz Lang returned to Germany and a producer who gave him a big budget to remake a silent classic in color, with an international cast and locations in remote India, including a palace never seen in a movie before. The two-movie, 200-minute epic was chopped in half for America and dubbed in English. Seen in its full Eastmancolor glory, The Tiger of Eschnapur and The Indian Tomb form an old-fashioned storybook tale, with its special charm lying in our knowledge of Fritz Lang’s fixation on fatalism and intricate patterns of betrayal and intrigue. Plus the films contain the erotic highlight of the decade, the spectacle of star Debra Paget’s scorching ‘temple dances’ before an all-male audience of admirers.

Fritz Lang’s Indian Epic

The Tiger of Eschnapur

and The Indian Tomb

Blu-ray

Film Movement Classics

1959 / Color / 1:33 flat full frame / 203 min. / Street...

With nearly two years of worthy Blu ray releases under their belt, ranging from traditional favorites like To Sir With Love to rare essentials like Jack Clayton’s The Pumpkin Eater, it can be said that UK’s Indicator has finally shed their rookie status. Their newest effort is Hammer Volume Two: Criminal Intent, a well-programmed package of that studio’s little seen crime films featuring two minor classics and a couple of honorable misfires, all in glorious black and white.

The Snorkel

1958 – 74 Minutes

Written by Peter Myers and Jimmy Sangster

Produced by Michael Carreras

Directed by Guy Green

Featuring the sloppiest killer this side of the Coen Brothers and the least curious investigator since Chief Wiggum, 1961’s The Snorkel, with its urbane villain and Riviera scenery, is positively Hitchcockian in its intent but definitely not in its execution.

Shadow of a Doubt dogs this story of a young teen...

I started writing this piece a little over two years ago when, wondering if this was a debate whose terms I wanted to propagate, I thought twice. After the recent Godard retro in New York, however, thinking thrice, I've decided not to think about it again. With very special thanks to Sam Engel, Matthew Flanagan, Danny Kasman, Andy Rector, Gina Telaroli, who provided so much of the source code for this piece. There's no greater fount of wisdom in the world for a guy to plagiarize.

And so:

***

“Pauvres choses! Elles n’ont que le nom qu’on leur impose.”

“Poor things! They have nothing but the name imposed upon them.” — Film Socialisme

“You can stick your little pins in that voodoo doll.

Very sorry baby, doesn’t look like me at all.” — Leonard Cohen, “Tower of Song”

"Three Jewish characters, it's a lot for a single film. The fourth...

The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present this two-part adventure epic directed by the legendary Fritz Lang (Metropolis, M, etc) in the UK for the first time on home video. Widely regarded as one of the most beautiful colour films in the history of cinema, Der Tiger von Eschnapur / Das indische Grabmal (Fritz Lang’s Indian Epic) is released on DVD on 18 April 2011.

See synopsis and disc details below:

Synopsis:

Fritz Lang returned to Germany on the eve of the 1960s to direct this enchanted penultimate work, a redraft of the diptych form pioneered in such silent Lang classics as Die Spinnen; Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler.; and Die Nibelungen. Although no encapsulating title was lent at the time of release to what is, effectively, a single 3-hour-plus film split in two, the work that has come to be referred to in modern times as “the Indian epic” (consisting...

Fans of Fritz Lang’s 1927 silent masterpiece Metropolis will be delighted to hear that a new cut of the film will premiere tomorrow, February 12, at the Brandenburg Gate in Germany. Streaming video will be shown here at 11:40 am Pst today.

The new cut includes nearly 30 minutes of restored, never-before-seen footage discovered in 2008 in Buenos Aires. Not long after the discovery, the BBC reported that representatives of the Fw Murnau Foundation, rights holders to the film, confirmed that the recovered footage was indeed part of the original film, which was extensively cut for distribution following its premiere.

The excised scenes purportedly explore several characters in greater depth as well as introduce additional plot elements. In an interview last year with Deustche Welle, film restorer Anke Wilkening mentioned that the missing half-hour will “completely change the film as we know it.” Nevertheless several minutes are still missing.

Premiering in 1927, Metropolis was...

Maybe you see further than I can see,

or maybe things just look differently.

Maybe I'm nothing but a shadow on the wall.

Maybe love's a tomb where you dance at night.

Maybe sanctuary is an electric light -

I get so tired it's like I'm another man.

And everything I see seems so underhanded.

I don't see anything that I want.

And I don't see anything that I want.

*—Pere Ubu, "Heart of Darkness," 1975

Countess: Ich fürchte, es gibt überhaupt nichts auf der Welt, wofür ich mich auf die Dauer interessieren könnte…Alles, was fich vom Auto, von der Loge, vom Fenster aus beobachten lässt, ist teils widerwärtig, teils uninteressant…Mindestens is test lang; weilig!

Mabuse: Sie haben recht, Gräfin—nichts auf der Welt ist auf die Dauer interessant—ausser einem…

—From Dr. Mabuse, Der Spieler, I: Der Grosse Spieler, screenplay by Thea von Harbou from the novel by Norbert Jacques,...