If I ever get bored enough to write a piece about the ten best 1920s silent movies for people who think that they hate 1920s silent movies, this dizzingly creative fantasy directed by Fritz Lang would definitely make the cut. It would sit pretty right next to the transcendent likes of Alfred Hitchock’s The Lodger and Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jr.
The story is simple. A sweet and harmless traveling young couple about to be married stop for the night in a German village where everyone’s buzzing about a stranger in town who hangs around the cemetery dressed all in black. Next thing you know, the future husband is deader than a doornail. Turns out that the black-clad stranger is Death with a capital D, a supernatural being who merely obeys God’s orders to snatch up souls from Earth when their time is up. Through mystical means, hastily depicted in that silent movie way, the heartbroken woman appeals directly to Death to save her man.
Death isn’t sure if he can help her, but he might be able to swing it IF she can save three other people who are scheduled for an untimely demise that day. So, she’s magically transported to different parts of the world. The infidel-slaying Islamic Middle East. A carnival in Venice, Italy. And behind the palace walls of a Chinese dictatorship. Each episode is wilder than the next, with more harsh situations and more dreamy special effects. Lil Dagover (as the wife) and Walter Janssen (as her future husband) are reborn as different people in each vignette, but the scenario is always the same. He’s doomed and she needs to save him.
I don’t want to spoil anything, but let’s just say that the Germans in the 1920s weren’t afraid to roll a dark cloud or two over your head. Also, this film is strange and beautiful and the work of a confident young cinema stylist with a bright future ahead of him.