Nearly four-hour epic about kingpin criminal, Dr. Mabuse (Rudolf Klein-Rogge). He’s a genius conman, an ace hypnotist, a master of disguise, and Germany’s best thief—a real super-villain type. He’s the terror of the big city underground gambling scene where rich assholes throw around fortunes in card games. Personally, I don’t have a problem with Mabuse showing up to these gatherings in disguise, cheating people out of their gold by hypnotizing the other players into making losing moves, and then running off into the night, but State Attorney Norbert Von Wenk sure does and he makes it his mission to catch him. The heat only gets hotter when Mabuse gets into murder and kidnapping.
That sounds pretty exciting, doesn’t it? And it’s directed by the great Fritz Lang in the prime of the German Expressionist era.
So it’s with trepidation that I report that the film itself is slo-o-o-o-ow and mostly bo-o-o-o-oring. It took me A WEEK to watch the whole thing as I kept nodding off during it. It’s divided into two parts, a two-hour first chapter that mostly depicts Mabuse at his wily ways and a 110-minute second chapter in which the lawmen get more active. The fast-moving second half is better than the first.
Based on the pulp novels of Norbert Jacques. Lang would make a sequel about ten years later.