The Testament of Dr. Mabuse

The Testament of Dr. Mabuse was Fritz Lang's last film in Germany before he exited due to being Jewish. As such, the anti-Nazi subtext of the film adds quite a punch to what is, in Lang's typical fashion, an expressionistic masterpiece. And it has some extremely effective set pieces, like the escape from the locked room and the ending car chase. He just knows how to film something. And the use of a master criminal, who is never seen by his associates, but is heard in a ranting tone of voice, ordering them to commit anti-social crimes almost entirely to bring down society, fits quite well with Hitler, but it isn't so much about that, as it is about the ability of people who would otherwise be somewhat, if not entirely, normal to commit heinous crimes because they are ordered to. Which, of course, has not just relevance to the Nazis and the German public in general at the time, but also to today and our inability to actually do anything about, say, the government and its desire to lead us into an unjust and illegal war. That the general public are sheep is not particularly ingenious in its revelation, but that the film itself works so well allows that nice message to work far better than if it were another shrill documentary that can be attacked for its partisanship. It's a blatantly partisan film, with good reason, but it's far harder to condemn a fiction film as that without having to explain the point of it, thus bringing those ideas into the public eye far easier than a Robert Greenwald documentary. Plus, of course, it's not worth even pointing out vast gap in the relative artistic merits of Fritz Lang, one of the greatest directors ever to work during the silent and early sound era, and Robert Greenwald, someone who can't really put together a 78 minute long documentary of how unfair and unbalanced Faux News is without causing the audience to become bored in half an hour. The talent behind the camera allows for far more effective political commentary than if you just put a hack there. It's like a Paul Verhoeven film: you can argue whether his points are valid (e.g. whether the future really is all about communal showers), but his talent allows you to focus on that rather than on shoddy construction (e.g. Robocop 2 & 3, although 3 was far worse than 2). Yes, I did happen to rewatch Robocop this past week. Seriously, TCM is the greatest channel currently on TV. The original AMC was also quite good, before they decided commercials were fine and that Any Which Way You Can was an American Movie Classic, rather than an excuse for more monkey hijinks. Heh, monkeys. I know they renamed the channel just AMC, but that day sucked when they switched.