Fritz Lang

[…]”.

Social issues cannot be dismissed with — however well-intentioned — a phrase like: 'The mediator between the head and the hands must be the heart.' And regarding the mutilation of the film — in its original version, it ran exactly two hours — you know very well, dear Mr. Poetzsch, that there is no copyright protection for film directors, and one is powerless against such cuts. […]"*.

„Seit 1900 war er freischaffender Künstler in seiner Heimatstadt und schloß sich der sezessionistischen Freien Vereinigung württembergischer Künstler an“ (DBE). Lang schuf vorwiegend Ölbilder sowie Druck- und Buchgraphik mit Landschafts-, Tier- und Pflanzendarstellungen; einem größeren Publikum wurde er als Illustrator von Jugendbüchern bekannt. – Der Brief im linken Rand gelocht (keine Textberührung); die Karte mit einem gedr. Motiv Langs, einer kleinen Rostspur durch eine alt entfernte Büroklammer und einer von fremder Hand stammenden Mitteilung an Schönemann..

wieder in Deutschland sein werde. [...]“ Fritz Lang arbeitete gerade an dem Zweiteiler Der Tiger von Eschnapur / Das indische Grabmal (1959), der auf einem stark abgewandelten Lang-Drehbuch von 1921 basierte. Lang prägte die Filmgeschichte mit, indem er – vor allem in der Ära des späten Stummfilms und des frühen Tonfilms – neue ästhetische und technische Maßstäbe setzte. Seine Stummfilme erzählen zumeist utopische und fantastische Geschichten, die in einer expressiv düsteren Atmosphäre inszeniert wurden. In seinen Tonfilmen rückte er einzelne Menschen und deren innere Beweggründe in den Mittelpunkt; ihre Themen waren dem Alltagsleben entnommen und basierten häufig auf Presseberichten. Der Stummfilm Metropolis (1927) und der Tonfilm M (1931) gehören zu den Meilensteinen der deutschen und internationalen Filmgeschichte. Eberhard Hauff (geb. 1932) ist Regisseur, Drehbuchautor und Filmproduzent. Er war Initiator des in der Münchener Kaulbachstraße befindlichen Deutschen Instituts für Film und Fernsehen (DIFF), der Vorläuferorganisation der heutigen Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film München (HFF)..

[…] What you write to me about the mutilation of Hangmen Also Die is, sadly, very typical for the distribution system. There is hardly a single film that hasn’t been mutilated over the years and various circumstances — be it by cinema owners themselves, who often heavily shorten a film in order to squeeze in one more screening per day, or by an employee in a foreign country eager to prove their ‘efficiency.’ […] The idea for the film came entirely from me. At the time, I told Brecht about it and asked whether he would be interested in working on the screenplay with me. Brecht enthusiastically agreed, and after he and I had worked together for, I believe, a few weeks outlining the sequence of scenes in broad terms, the production and I looked for an English-speaking collaborator for him, since Brecht spoke very poor English. We eventually settled on a certain John Wexley, who spoke perfect German. […] At first, Brecht and Wexley got along very well. But when, after completing the manuscript, the question arose as to who would be credited as the author of the screenplay, a dispute broke out between them. As is customary in such cases here, both parties were summoned before an arbitration tribunal of the Screen Directors Guild of America. Although Hanns Eisler, the composer, and I fully supported Brecht, sole authorship of the screenplay was awarded to Wexley. That this was not only a great injustice but complete nonsense is obvious to anyone familiar with Brecht’s writing style, and to anyone who reads even a few scenes of the final screenplay. For example, the scene where the professor delivers a lecture about the Gestapo in his study before the assassin seeks refuge with him, or the prison scene where he dictates a letter to his daughter, intended for his son, which she is to memorize — and many others. The reasoning of this peculiar arbitration tribunal was that, after the war was won, Brecht would return to Germany anyway, and therefore sole authorship would be more valuable for Wexley than for Brecht.”.

Walter Wanger himself passed away about a year ago. […] And now to myself — or more precisely, to the F.L. film retrospective you are planning, on the occasion of the somewhat undesirable, but now inevitable, 80th birthday of the gentleman in question. […] I have often said that a director should not write or speak about his films: His films should speak for him! Furthermore, I believe film is the art form of our century. As such, its foremost task is to be critical — and not merely to ‘entertain.’ Just as the young people of our time are far ahead of previous generations in their aspirations, I believe that film — and I hope I have done this in my own work — should also be socially and critically engaged with the present. Film should reflect and shape us. The social consequences — for example, in my so-called crime films — are essentially the discreet assertion of a standard of right and wrong, of good and evil, in our time! Idealism and realism are, at their core, inseparable — and equally inseparable in their importance for human freedom. […]”.

This was followed by the sequence showing the assassin’s escape. (I can no longer recall precisely, but I don’t believe the actual assassination of Heydrich was shown — though of course, there was later the scene with Heydrich in the hospital, which Lotte Eisner wrote about.) The ending of the film showed a Nazi report in which they admitted that the Czech resistance had planted a scapegoat (a traitor to the cause of the Czech people) as the supposed assassin, and that they still did not know the identity of the real attacker. This was followed by a scene where the Czech people pass by the graves of the executed hostages — including the professor — which were lavishly decorated with flowers and wreaths, and they lay more flowers on the graves. Then came the final title card: an image with the large word NOT (Emergency/Resistance) and then The End. Brecht only worked on the script and had no involvement in directing the film. He also made no suggestions whatsoever regarding the direction. The work on the script and the pre-script stage belongs to the most pleasant memories of my career in film. […]”.

[…]”.

Russian films are, unfortunately, not accessible to me here in America. Sadly." In very fine condition. Accompanied by the original mailing envelope..

That was in 1919, if I recall correctly, towards the end of October. The idea of the three painters was entirely new — purely from a visual and artistic standpoint — compared to any other films being made at the time, all of which were entirely realistic. I didn’t believe that an unprepared audience would immediately accept this bold, new concept. From other films, I had already experienced how an audience — not yet educated in or accustomed to film — would react with laughter to any deviation from familiar realism. Destructive laughter. And this was true not only for film, but also for painting and sculpture. Since I welcomed every new path that young cinema took — I already considered film back then to be the art form of our century, the art of the people — I feared this destructive, killing laughter. The subject of the film, which takes place among the insane in an asylum, offered me a solution: a short, realistic framing story would make it easier for the general — and I repeat, still uneducated — audience to understand the expressionist design of the film as representing the world of the insane, where everything is distorted, unhinged, mad.” And regarding Siegfried Kracauer’s claim about the destructive role of the framing story: “Where exactly is the framing story destructive, or in other words, damaging? And what, according to Kracauer, has it destroyed? Certainly not the film, which is still rightly regarded as a classic to this day. […]”.