Introduction
  Benjamin, Walter
  Bismarck, Otto v.
  Brecht, Bertolt
  Celan, Paul
  Döblin, Alfred
  Fontane, Theodor
  Grosz, George
  Grünbein, Durs
  Heartfield, John
  Honigmann, Barbara
  Isherwood, Christopher
  Johnson, Uwe
  Kleist, Heinrich v.
  Kollwitz, Käthe
  Kracauer, Siegfried
  Lang, Fritz
  Lasker-Schüler, Else
  Liebermann, Max
  Liebknecht, Karl
  Luxemburg, Rosa
  Marc, Franz
  Ossietzky, Carl v.
  Riefenstahl, Leni
  Ruttmann, Walther
  Schinkel, Karl Friedrich
  Speer, Albert
  Tieck, Ludwig
  Tucholsky, Kurt
  Ury, Lesser
  Varnhagen, Rahel
  Wenders, Wim

 
Lang, Fritz

b. Dec. 5, 1890, Vienna, Austria-Hungary
d. Aug. 2, 1976, Los Angeles, Calif., U.S.

Austrian-born American motion-picture director whose films, dealing with fate and man's inevitable working out of his destiny, are considered masterpieces of visual composition.

The son of an architect, Lang briefly studied architecture at Vienna's Technical University, then travelled widely before settling for a time in Paris as a painter. While recovering from wounds suffered in the service of Austria during World War I, he started to write screenplays; after the war he went to Berlin to work with Erich Pommer, a German film producer.

His first successful picture as a director was "Der müde Tod" (1921; Between Worlds). "Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler" (1922; Dr. Mabuse) studied a criminal mastermind; "Die Nibelungen" (1924; released in two parts in the United States, "Siegfried" and "Kriemhild's Revenge") was based on the early 13th-century German poem; "Metropolis" (1926) was an Expressionist vision of the future; and "M" (1931), his most famous German film, explored the compulsion to murder. "Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse" (1932; The Last Will of Dr. Mabuse), in which a madman speaks Nazi philosophy, attracted the attention of Joseph Goebbels, the Nazis' chief propagandist, who invited Lang to supervise German films. Lang left for Paris the same evening and later moved to the United States.

"Fury" (1936), a study of a lynch mob, is his most praised American film. Others include "You Only Live Once" (1937), "Western Union" (1941), "Hangmen Also Die" (1943), "Scarlet Street" (1945), "Clash by Night" (1952), "Rancho Notorious" (1952), "Moonfleet" (1955), and "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt" (1956).

Source

"Lang, Fritz" Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
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