The film [programme note by Kristin Thompson] Der Golem is a classic film – doubly so. First, it has long nestled comfortably within the list of titles that make up the German Expressionist movement of the 1920s. Teachers of survey history courses are more likely to show Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, but a serious enthusiast will make a point of seeing Der Golem as well. From the start, reviewers recognized Der Golem as Expressionist. In 1921 the New York Times’ critic wrote, “Resembl...

 Wednesday, September 26---------Fritz Lang is perhaps best known for his pioneering work in the silent cinema of German Expressionism, with such films as DR. MABUSE and METROPOLIS often appearing on the Top Ten list of greatest films ever made. However, when he was forced to flee Nazi Germany because of his libertarian politics, Lang had a long, if bumpy, career in Hollywood, mostly making genre "b pictures". These films were regarded as the equivalent of "pulp fiction".......

FRITZ LANG’S “SPIONE”, 1929, RESTOREDA major event of the current London Film Festival was a showing of a listening, newly restored print of Fritz Lang’s 1929 “SPIONE” (Spies). Appearing on the cusp of the sound era this was one of the final monuments of the silent cinema. The film is, to some degree, a reworking of Lang’s earlier “Dr. Mabuse", and is an extremely fanciful espionage story, apparently set in a mythological Czechoslovakia, with Japanese, German and British agents f...