raymond bellour - on fritz lang
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8/18/2019 Raymond Bellour - On Fritz Lang
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On Fritz LangAuthor(s): Raymond BellourSource: SubStance, Vol. 3, No. 9, Film (Spring, 1974), pp. 25-34Published by: University of Wisconsin PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3684509Accessed: 21-09-2015 14:49 UTC
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ON
FRITZ
LANG
Raymond
ellour
An
amazing
fate,
Fritz
Lang's,
and
fraught
with
paradox.
Like
Stroheim,
he was
one
of
the
foremost
directors,
yet
not an actor embellished
by
the
surprising
prestige
accorded
every
wretched
performance;
he was like
Sternberg, yet
without
a
woman
like Marlene at
his
side;
like
Murnau,
dying (forty
years
ago)
a death
wrapped
in
mystery;
in a
sense,
Fritz
Lang
was the
first
in
his
day,
solely
for
his
work
as
a
filmmaker,
to
have
become
cinematic
legend.
There is
Welles,
of
course,
again
an
actor,
whose
reputation (being
at
least
mythic)
rests
upon having provoked America. And there is Hitchcock. But the
myth
here is concealed
beneath
a
sociological
facility,
an
imag-
ery
which
hides
the essential
man. In a
sense
Lang
alone incar-
nates,
decisively yet
abstractly,
the
concept
of direction
or
mise-en-scene.
Nor
is his
life
foreign
to this idea:
his
op-
position
to
Goebbels,
his
flight
from
Germany
and his
disillu-
sioned return
after
twenty years
of
exile
in
America;
the
way
he
visibly poses,
from
the
filming
of
Siegfried,
as
scenarist
of
destiny
--
all
this
gives
Lang
a
quality
of violent
compac-
tion.
This
is
the
horizon which
protects
the
pure
and
rigorous
image
of cinema
par
excellence.
From Les trois Lumieres
in
1922,
each
of
Lang's
films
con-
firms his status
as a
great
artist
--
the
greatest,
with
Murnau,
of the German filmmakers. Twelve years later he is in Hollywood.
Enmeshed in the
gears
of the American
machine,
he
produces
twen-
ty-three
films:
a
little more than one
per year.
Even
though
he
often
turns down one
project
and
chooses
another,
he films
every
possible Hollywood subject:
psychological
and
social
drama,
detective
and adventure
stories,
war
films, Westerns;
he
does
everything
but
American
or
musical
comedy,
and he
touches
on that
in You
and
Me.
Lang
becomes a
Hollywood
director;
the
independent
author
of
Metropolis
reluctantly
shoots
a
remake of
La Bate
humaine.
He is a
great
director,
praised
for
his
excep-
tional
rigor
and keenness.
Nothing
more. The
grandeur
of
Hollywood amply
rewards
the
absence
of
critical distance.
SUB-STANCE
No
9,
1974
25
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26
Raymond
Bellour
But when
Lang
leaves America
in
1958,
his
reputation
has
al-
ready been forming in France. For Astruc, Rivette, Rohmer or
Douchet,
Lang
is no
longer just
like
other
filmmakers. Not
that
he
is the
greatest;
it's
quite
another matter:
Lang
embodies,
in a
sense,
the
very
possibility
of
cinema
--
what is
ambiguous-
ly
called direction
or
mise-en-scene.
In the
double set
of his
American
and German
works,
he
shows
a
particular
faithfulness,
rather
explicit,
and
more and more
strict.
The
paradox
of
Lang's
American
films,
set back to back as
they
are to their German
counterparts,
rests in this:
they
properly
show how
a
vision
of
things
takes
form;
what
one
might
call
ultimately,
if
vague-
ly,
a
vision of the world
which
Lang
showed
unequivocally
in
his
earliest
films. Thus
Lang acknowledges,
through
his own
singu-
lar method of comparison, a primacy of vision; it is not by
chance
from
Fury
on,
both in the
script
and the
picture,
Lang
implicitly
stages
the
vision
itself,
using
every
possible
tech-
nique,
especially
the
presence
of
the
inquisitor,
the
reporter,
and
the
photographer
--
the
man
who
sees
the
image
and
retains
its
appearance
in
the narrow
rectangle
of
his
movie
camera.
Every
filmmaker,
in
a
sense,
defines
the
essence
of
his
art;
but
is there a
single
one of
them for
whom,
as
for
Lang,
the
film
is the
ultimate
metaphor,
stark and
beyond
all
circuity?
When
a
Sternberg
film
opens
the
possibility
of
vision,
we
are
sent
back,
as soon as we look
for
a
reference
point,
to
Woman,
the
visible
subject
and
object;
with
Hitchcock,
we are sent be-
yond a moral system bound to appearances to a dizzying duplica-
tion
of a
symbolically
doubled
subject;
in
Eisenstein's
work,
to
a
theatrical and visual
potential
of
the
historical
dialec-
tic. But
what
can be
said
precisely
for
Lang:
vision
of vision?
This
has none of the ineffective
redoubling
which would
deplete
Lang's
art,
ensnaring
it in its own
myth;
on the
contrary,
the
horizon is
enlarged
at
every point,
corroborating
Lang's
reply
to the
question:
What is
the most
indispensable
quality
for
a
filmmaker?
He
must know
life.
By
this
we must
understand:
life
as a
place
where vision
is
experienced.
It remains to
dis-
cover what lies beneath
this
word,
vision ,
how
exactly Lang
endows it with
force;
and,
finally,
in what form it
shows or
shows through.This is what
explains
the
passion,
which some find
peculi-
ar,
of
certain
of
Lang's
admirers for his last three
films.
Made
in
Germany by
a man whom
the American
experience
made
mas-
ter
of
all the artifices
of fiction
(with
one theme
and
subjects
from
his
first
period),
Die
tausend
Augen
des Dr.
Mabuse,
Der
Tiger
von
Eschnapur,
and
Das
indische
Grabmal
offer
this
para-
dox:
they
are at
once
surprisingly disguised
and
misleadingly
frank.
Naive and
almost
puerile
on
the
surface,
they
are not
unlike the Hindu
doublet;
for beneath the
conventionality
and
gratuitousness
of the
serial,
the
last
Mabuse
reveals
a
particu-
larly urgent
gravity
of theme. These
extremely
theoretical
films
reject
the
reassuring
alibi of
Lang's
American
work while
transposing its basic facticity into a Germany where nothing
has
survived;
they
disavow the
certainty
of the
myths
which
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On Fritz
Lang
27
subtend the German period and thus bring them to the level of
a
double
adventure,
individual and
collective,
of film and his-
torical conscience.
Lang's
destructive-reflective
irony
belies
utmost
integrity:
he makes
a
game
of
the
hackneyed
subjects
he is
offered,
as
if
through
a
derisory
faithfulness
to
himself,
but
in
his
third
Mabuse
he foils the ultimate
games
of vision
and
life,
precipitating
the
myth
into
a reflection which
guides
it
towards its ultimate
reality:
the
cinema
as
possible.
The
metaphor
for
this is evident
not
only
in the
symbolic
title
Die
tausend
Augen
( The
Thousand
Eyes ),
but in
the
dazzling
visual
multiplication
of
television
screens which Louxor
Mabuse,
rein-
carnated in
his
son,
places
in
the hotel
lounge
--
as
if to
im-
ply (it has often been noted) -- the director himself. As for
the two Indian films:
they
are
precarious, penetrated
by
blinding
moments;
they speak
only
of
a beautiful
and
just
stub-
bornness where
despair
blossoms;
where
the
mise-en-scene
and
even
its
idea
(as
Blanchot
said
of
writing)
seems,
in the
silence
which
encloses
it,
a dissociation
of its
components,
an
inabil-
ity
to lie which reaches the
tragic.
It
is therefore
not
surprising
that these
films
--
the last
of
perhaps
the
only
oeuvre
which covers
nearly
fifty
years
of
filmmaking
--
constitute
the
vital
matter
by
comparison
with the
myth.
For
in France
today,
where Fritz
Lang
is
becoming
legend
(far
from America which
was not
able
to
recognize
him,
and
his
native
Germany
which didn't
know how to rediscover
him),
those
who flock to the
CinemathBque
come more or less
consciously
to
admire
the
man
who
in
his
work saw
film
as
the ultimate
meta-
phor,
and
whom
Godard,
by
a
happy
decision,
has
precipitated
in
the double
game
of
Le
Mepris. Lang's
only trump
cards
are
the
statues colored
violently
with Greek
legend, just
as
in
Le
Tom-
beau hindou
his
trumps
are
the
gardens,
the
palaces,
and the
ac-
tors
placed
there like
huge
marionettes
around
whom
beauty
has
been
suddenly
born.
Despised by
the
producer
who
pays
him,
des-
pising
everything
which is not life or the
power
to tell
the
life
which
vision
masks,
Lang
--
alone,
disillusioned,
but
always
anxi-
ous
to retain truth within
and around
himself
--
does not
finish
shooting
The
Odyssey,
does not
finish
relating
the life which
is
already woven into the threads of his own fiction.
Lang plays,
then,
a
refined
and
skillful
game
with
his stor-
ies and with each element of his
material:
varied, assertive,
and
more
or less
disguised,
a
game
which it would be
fitting
to
formulate
visibly
through
his
forty
films. He
himself,
as one
might expect,
offers little
help.
In
the handsome
documentary
book
put
together
by
Alfred
Eibel1, Lang
contradicts
himself,
jokes,
limits his
discussion
to
questions
of ideas
and
story,
to
thematic,
political
and social
aspects
of
each of his
films,
or confines
himself,
with
seeming
irony,
to remarks
about
tech-
nique.
But the
testimony
of his
many
collaborators invites
us
to
ask,
if
indirectly,
the
question
of form
about
which
Lang
al-
ways claims ignorance. For all of them -- actors, scriptwriters,
cameramen,
set
designers
--
describe an
extraordinarily
attentive
man,
concerned with the smallest
gesture,
demanding
from each
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28
Raymond
Bellour
frame of film a rigorous life which quite often defies the illu-
sory
banality
of
his
tale.
From
his book
(sparsely
written in im-
passioned episodes
which trace
Lang's steps
--
illuminating
him
and
making
him
more
accessible),
the
certainty
is born that
the
more
Lang
insists on the
apparent
meaning
of
his
films,
the
more
the
enigma
of
that
meaning
must be determined
through
a
systema-
tic
exploration
of
the form
through
which
multiple
correspondences
are
presented
and which alone
illuminates
the
irreducible
feeling
of
totality.
It is
surprising,
then,
that no
text has
yet
thrown
full
light2
on an author
so
intimately
bound to the essence
of
his
art
--
as
Claude
Ollier
has
done,
for
example,
in his
very
beautiful study (if only on a single film) of Josef von Stern-
berg3;
and,
considering
the
infinite
diversity
and
rigor
of
Lang's
films,
that
no one
has
sought
to
define
the
paradoxes
and
the
strange,
broken
unity
which
show
through
both
the entire
doc-
umentary
book devoted to
him
and
his
recent confession
which he
entitles
La nuit viennoise 4
in
memory
of his
birthplace;
a
statement so admirable
in
tone,
in
details,
ambiguities
and chal-
lenge.
I
intend here
only
to
bring
together
haphazardly
some
of
the
very
numerous elements
which,
when
described,
analyzed
in
detail,
and
arranged
according
to
the series of connections
which
they
demarcate,
would be
the
basis
for
a
systematic approach
to
the Langian universe. Notes, of a sort, for a cinemanalaysis .
1.
The
position
of
an author is defined
by
the relation-
ship
which
he maintains with
his characters. In the
film,
one
form
of
this
relationship
rests
on the
systems
of
vision which
the
pictures
reveal:
how the author
fragmentarily5
indicates
and
encloses the
viewpoint
of
his
characters within the
contin-
uity
of
his
own
viewpoint
constitutes the
viewpoint
of the film.
Minnelli,
for
example, generally
remains external to
what he
shows; Hitchcock,
inversely,
makes
the
clearly
defined
vision
of
his characters
a
part
of the
system
of his
own
vision.
In this
regard Lang
himself
shows
a
weighty
and decisive
ambiguity.
There
is one
strictly
univocal
manner of
framing
a charac-
ter's
vision: to enclose the
shot of the seen
object
between
two identical shots of the
seeing
subject.
Lang
seldom does
more
than indicate
the
possibility
of such
certitude,
and
then
only
to
challenge
it
immediately
and
to
plunge
it
into
an
equi-
vocality.
This occurs
with the three
looks
of
the assassin
in
While
the
City Sleeps.
--
At
the
time
of the first
murder,
he is framed
from the
waist
up,
in front of
the door:
one
feels that the
assassin
is
watching
something
in
particul'ar,
but cannot
say
what;
a
very
brief
close-up
of the door
latch
follows,
but the shot
which
comes
next is itself
divergent
in
terms of the
assassin's
gaze.
--
The assassin
enters
the studio of
Doroth6e
Kyne:
he
sees
her
in
a
mirror
smoothing
her
stocking
with
a
long
and
very gentle movement; the close-up which follows, showing the
assassin
in the middle
of the
room,
says
nothing
about
his
sup-
posed point
of view.
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On Fritz
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29
-- Later he leaves the house and moves towards a low win-
dow
which looks
into
the
bar;
he bends
down,
one
sees a
long
shot
of
the
barroom;
we are assured the
camera is outside the
room
by
the
deformation
of the
glass;
everything clearly
indi-
cates
that
the shot reflects
the
assassin's exact
view,
but
nothing
proves
it;
for
instead of
reframing
the
assassin,
Lang
passes
to
something
else.
In a
different manner
(using
three methods
of non-disclos-
ure)
Lang
allows
ambiguity
to hover
over
the
relationship
which
unites character and
director
in the vision.
An attitude
which
one
finds
again
and
again
in almost all
his
films,
and
which is
completely
manifest,
for
example,
in the
twice-repeated
leper
sequence of Le Tigre du Bengale and Le Tombeau hindou. And
which
Lang
deliberately plays
upon
in The
Blue
Gardenia,
where
Norah's
waking
gives
way
to deformations
in
the substance
of
the
frame,
again leaving
us faced
with two
possibilities:
either
Lang
is
showing
that
only
an
artifice can
precisely
situate
a
viewpoint
--
that vision
of
the
real
alone
cannot;
or
he is de-
liberately moving
to
a
symbolic
level,
making
an
assertion
of
this trick shot
which,
far
from
identifying
the author
with the
characters
even
for a
moment,
distances him
from
them even
more.
2. The author defines himself
by
his
point
of
view towards
the
objects
he unveils. This
point
of
view is
manifest
in the
first
place
by
the distance
at
which the camera is held.
The
distance of the camera from its objects varies; this variation
constitutes
a
first
level of
cinematographic
reality
(or
unreal-
ity)
and of all
analysis.
With
Lang
it seems
to be
either vivid
or
disguised
in
manner,
keeping
constant
(by
his
multiple
detours)
the
fascination
and
the
difficulty
one
experiences
in
watching
his
films.
From
a
thousand
possible
examples,
here is
an almost the-
oretical
one
from The
Blue Gardenia:
Lang
devotes three shots
to
evoke
his
three heroines in bed
in
their shared
apartment:
--
The camera
frames
a
comic-book
in
close-up,
then
draws
back,
revealing
Rose
sprawled
on
her
bed,
seen
in
the
light
from
the
night lamp
which she has
not
put
out.
-- With a wide still-shot, the camera frames Crystal who is
murmuring
her
lover's name in her
sleep.
--
The camera frames in
long-shot
the corner of the room
where
Norah's
bed is
placed,
and
advances with
a
travelling-shot
until she
is
isolated;
thus
only
Norah
is shown
closely
(for
she
is the main
character);
she
is
listening
to the
radio
beneath
her
sheets.
The
distance,
the
impression
of
distance,
also
depends
es-
sentially
upon
the
interplay
of forms
within the
picture.
Hence,
(a
constant with
Lang),
the
deepening
of the vision
through
an
unforseen
opening.
In Mrs.
Robby's
office in
the
shadowy
house
of
Le Secret
derriere la
Porte,
an
engraving
with
sharply
de-
fined and
fleeting
lines catches
one's
eyes,
as
if
multiplyingthe view. Similarly, in Le Testament du docteur Mabuse, when
Kent and
his friend Lilli sit down
in a
caf6
to
confide their
confusion
to each
other,
the camera frames in the
upper part
of
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Raymond
Bellour
the shot a window which looks out on a long, white, almost unreal
avenue whose
dizzying
depths
are
made more
vividly
manifest when
a
passer-by
(only
his head
is
visible)
appears
and
crosses
the
frame.
I
shall note another such
shot
in
La
Mort
de
Siegfried,
drowned almost
totally
in
white;
young
newlyweds
are
conversing
charmingly
near
a
bench which
is
placed
against
a
background
of
foliage;
but above
the
trees,
five wide arches
caught
in
shadow
appear
to
tear
the
frame;
this
contrast
leaves a
feeling
of dis-
tance which unbalances
the vision
and
secretly
announces
the
fatal
outcome
of
the
plot.
Let
us
also note
the
interplay
of distance
which
hinges
not
on
the
distribution
of fixed masses
but
on movements within
the
frame. Thus, almost thematized -- so often do they lend support
to
the
story
--
are
the
opening
and
closing
doors.
They
constant-
ly
vary
spatial
relationships
as
they
reveal
more
or
less hidden
depths
--
according
to
the
light
and
the terrain. Such are the
doors which
one
encounters
in each of
Lang's
films,
most
parti-
cularly
in the
Chinese
quarter
in
Les
Araignees,
the
cemetery
in
Les
Trois
Lumieres,
in
Le
Tigre
du
Bengale
and
Le
Tombeau hindou--
everywhere,
with
a
violence
that
multiplies
when
Henri
Mercier,
going
down the
corridors as
the
doors
are
closing
ends
up
in the
tigers'
pit.
Similarly,
the
queen's
cloaks
in
La
Vengeance
de
Krimhilde
(cloaks
with wide
skirts)
billow and
fall
endlessly,
sometimes
radically modifying the distribution of forms in the shot: Krim-hilde
(addressing
the horde of Huns from the
top
of a
staircase)
with
her
cloak
--
black
and dull
on
the
inside,
brilliant
and
adorned
on
the
other
--
subjects
the
frame
to
a
strange
play
of
shadows and surfaces as
she raises
or
lowers her arms
against
her
body.
A
configuration
which
Lang
will
remember,
and
which
will
occur
again
(though
less
theatrically
and
more
closely
bound to
the narrative
adventure
of
the
picture)
in
Die
Spione,
where
the
beautiful
Sojia
unfurls
her immense black
and
silver
lam6
cape
around
Haighi
in
the
same
game
of
oppositions.
3. There
are
innumerable
formal and
thematic
references,
configurations
which come
into
play
from film to film and
organ-
ize
the
enigmatic
web
of
Langian
knotwork. Hence the
sign,
the
token, around which the narration is organized, the significant
object
Lang always
indicates
with
a
close-up
which
is
the first
easily
located
link
between the
chain of
shots
and the
thematic
chain. From the
seal affixed to
the fateful act in
Les
Trois
Lumibres
to
the
grease pencil
mark on Mercier's shirt
in
Le
Tombeau
hindou,
there is
a
lengthy inventory
of
maps, plans,
letters,
photographs
--
multiple
references which stake out
Lang's
forty
films. These establish
a
definable
series
through-
out the
script;
what
might
be called
a
series of
events
of the
script
which are
manifested in one or
several formal
series in
the
picture:
the
close-up
is
followed
almost
invariably
in
this situation
(for
example,
in the
talking
films and
especially
the American ones) by a movement of back-travelling starting
with
the
brusquely
introduced
object.
This
short,
precise
move-
ment,
which
reveals
the
object
in its
surroundings,
breaks
and
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8/18/2019 Raymond Bellour - On Fritz Lang
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On Fritz
Lang
31
demarcates the sudden fascination of the close-up.
I shall
cite
only
three
examples
of
this,
all taken from
the
same
film,
Scarlet
Street.
The
sequence
begins
with
a
close-up
of a
flower;
the
movement
reveals
Christopher
lovingly
painting
the flower offered
by
Kitty.
Later,
a letter rests
on
a
table
among
other
objects:
the
movement
which reveals
Kitty's
studio for
the first time
accurately
defines
the
relationship
between the
young
woman
and
Christopher
--
one
immediately
under-
stands
it
is a
letter
from him. The
travelling
shot
which
brings
to
light
Johnny's
hat,
hidden
in
Kitty's
new
apartment,
states
with ironic
insistence
and without the aid
of
a
single
word,
the
respective
situations
of
the three characters
in this
harsh and cruel remake of Jean Renoir's La Chienne.
4. The
generally
intensified
partialization
of
space
which
disrupts
the
viewpoint
in order to lead it to its
more
rightful
place
which carries
to
an
extreme,
in
cinematographic
space,
a
dialectic
of
subject
and
object
finding
its
origin
in
the German
cultural tradition and its achievement
in
the fundamental
mater-
ialism of
industrial civilization.
If
the
object possesses
a
particular importance
in the
unfolding
of
the
action,
it seems
to
recapture
in the
intensity
of the film
something
of the
sym-
bolic life of
the
bewitched
objects
of
Hoffmann or
Arnim. The
subject
is often
a
vagrant
body, only
one
object
among
other
ob-
jects.
One finds a
particularly
striking
inversion
of this order
in
the
flight sequence
of
La Femme
sur la Lune,
between the
rocket
(which
seems to be the
only
actor)
and its
interpreters
(its
ac-
cessories)
and,
in
Human
Desire between Jeff Warren
and the loco-
motive,
when he
drives
it down
the
track
into the
depot.
This
subject-object
game,
when
divided,
provokes
the
eye,
making
an incredible
fissure
in
Fritz
Lang's
films
which is bal-
anced
with a
type
of
shot
that is
particularly frequent
and
mean-
ingful,
multiplying
the dialectic
of
continuity/discontinuity
proper
to
the
system
of the
Langian
vision: the
fragmented
body
of the
subject
and
object,
united
as
two
mechanisms
in
a
single
frame,
offers
a
perfect
example
of
partialization
of
space.
Thus,
in
Man
Hunt,
the hero's
hand
which
hesitates
again
and
again
on
the
trigger
of
the
rifle,
is
shot
in
extreme
close-up.
And
in
Les Espions are shown two forearms and the heavy, round handle
of
a
chest which
the
hands
want to
turn;
the muted
light
of the
black
leather
raincoat
answers the clearer
steel
one,
and
both
of
these
reply
to the whiteness
of
the
hands: from
the
beginning
of this
film
(this
is
the
first
shot)
Lang places
it beneath
the
sign
of
the
enigmatic
division of
space.
5.
Lang,
like
every
filmmaker
(but
more
precisely
and more
insidiously
than
others)
bases
the
possibility
of
his narrative
on
the
richness and
the
perversity
of
oppositions
in the
series
of
identical
configurations.
From film to film
one
can follow
the marks
of
a
perpetual
game
of similar
questions
and
different
replies;
one
can
evoke
their rigorous nature extracting the types of opposition which
are
simultaneously arranged
in the
picture,
the
sound,
the inter-
pretation
and the
narrative,
sufficient material
for an
unpre-
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8/18/2019 Raymond Bellour - On Fritz Lang
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Raymond Bellour
cedented inventory whose very limits and meaning are difficult to
define.
But
this
game
is
the
logical
outcome of the
writing
and
the vision.
Here
are two
examples briefly
summarized
from
a
sing-
le
story,
While the
City
Sleeps.
--
Walter
Kyne,
Jr.,
and Edward
Mobley
are
conversing
in the
manager's
office. In a fixed
long
shot,
appearing
from left to
right,
are:
Kyne,
Jr.,
standing,
dressed
in
black;
higher,
a-
gainst
the
wall,
the
portrait
of his
father,
Walter
Kyne,
also
dressed in
black;
then,
through
the
window,
the
city,
with its
sharp
and
regular
gray
masses;
finally,
Mobley,
seated,
dressed
in
gray.
Each
of
the four
principal
elements
of
the shot is
placed
at a
different
distance
from
the
camera;
the colors
are
distributed two by two. Some moments later, after brief detail
shots of the
various
protagonists,
Lang
returns to the
same
long
shot,
from
a
slightly
different
angle.
But
the elements
have
changed.
From
left
to
right: Kyne,
Jr.,
Mobley,
the
portrait,
the
city.
The distances
have
changed.
Mobley gets
up;
the cam-
era follows his movement.
A
triple
opposition
is
at
work in two
shots
which are
formally
identical:
an
opposition
between
the
distribution
of
the
actors,between
tonality
and distance
(each
element sustains the two
others)
setting
up
the third
opposition
(immobility/movement),
effecting
the
forward movement
of the nar-
rative.
--
The bar where
the New
York
Sentinel
journalists
gather.
Again, a fixed long shot. We see Mobley sitting at the counterand the bartender
standing;
in the back of the room is a
barely
perceptible
staircase,
going
up
to
the left. We
wait;
Lang
pro-
longs
the silent
irritation
of the
shot,
until Mildred
appears
on
the
staircase,
with the intention
of
making
advances
to
Mobley.
Why
does
he hold such
a
simple
shot
for so
long?
Because
Lang,
some
sequences
earlier,
had
already
filmed
exactly
the
same
space,
in the same
manner;
because
he
had
already
lingered
there
in an almost casual
way,
and because
no
one
had then
appeared
at
the bottom
of
the stairs.
6.
Lang
thus
keeps
the
point
of
view
in
perpetual
hesita-
tion;
for
the
event,
whether
it
is foreshadowed
or has
already
occurred,
always
seems
linked
to
something
else whose
force
is
arresting even though one does not know how to delimit it but
which could
not
be
sustained
alone.
The
film
plays
subtly
on
an incessant
disequilibrium by
means
of this
dyssymetrical
ex-
pectancy.
This
flagrant
and
deliberately
abstract
waiting
in
a
shot
(a
visual
and
narrative
sign)
marks
all
of
Lang's
work.
Its
principle
is
simple.
It is
a matter
of
a
fixed
long
shot
with
three terms:
two
actions
which
separate
a dead time.
A
character
goes
out
of the
shooting angle;
the
camera remains
fac-
ing
the
set;
a
second
character
enters the
shooting angle
by
an-
other
entrance
(this
could be --
though
it
rarely
is -- the
same
character
who
returns,
and
by
the
same
entrance).
The
set,
at
this
moment,
is
always particularly
beautiful and
heavy
with
meaning and possibilities: the commissary office in the first
Mabuse,
the
corridor outside
the
doctor's office
in
the
second,
the staircase
landing
leading
to the
apartments
of the
two
young
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8/18/2019 Raymond Bellour - On Fritz Lang
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On Fritz
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33
women in While the City Sleeps, caverns beneath the castle in
Le
Tigre
du
Bengale
and
Le
Tombeau hindou.
The characters
are
bound
by
the
imminent
event:
this shot
almost
always
intervenes
in
the moments
of
greatest
dramatic
intensity.
Thus
in his
own
way Lang
breaks the ideal
hurried flow
of the
action,
wounding
his
story
and
distorting
time
apparently
for
the
benefit of a
visual
purity;
thereby
imparting
a
strangeness
to the action
(as
if
spreading
it
out)
and
likewise
to
the
vision which becomes
suddenly
too
heavy
and insistent. Then
he
recaptures
or almost
recaptures
what he
is
doing
for
a
single
vision,
in a
much brief-
er
and
tighter
shot,
when he
assembles
the
elements
in
such
a
way
that the
viewpoint
always
seems
badly
placed
--
either
too
close or too far away. Thus in La Mort de Siegfried: three
warriors
occupy
the
near
totality
of the screen's
surface;
they
are so
close that one
cannot see them
in their
entirety;
between
them
are some blank
spaces
and
a
bare
wall in the
background.
The
frame is
perfectly
flat;
one
would believe
the
soldiers
cut
out of
cardboard. When Krimhilde
passes
behind
them,
followed
by
her
women,
the
perspective
is
brutally
reborn
--
so
vividly
that one feels it
too
deeply,
and
it seems to be
another
illu-
sion.
7. For
Lang
plays
the most
perverse
of
games.
It
is
by
means of the
fissures
--
by
means of
the
gaps
which
he
sets
up
--
that he can
be understood. That
is
what
must be
deciphered,
and
at each of its levels. Thus Lang, more than anyone else, workswith counter-shots. Here
begins
the
quest
which reveals that at
the
other
extremity
of his
films, Lang
also
manifests this coun-
ter
game
--
this time of
the
counter-script.
As
he
strains the
shot
and
unbalances
it,
he loses
sight
of
his
narrative,
obscur-
ing
his
characters. And thus he works
(as
Luc
Moullet
has clear-
ly seen)
in
counter-genre;
even in
America,
he
simultaneously
es-
pouses
and
insidiously transgresses
the laws
of
the most
tradi-
tional art.
He
incorporates
the
principle
and
destroys
it. In-
deed,
what are
Frau
im
Mond,
Rancho
Notorious,
Moonfleet,
Beyond
a
Reasonable
Doubt,
Der
Tiger
von
Eschnapur
and
Das indische
Grab-
mal
to
the science-fiction
film,
the
Western,
the
adventure
film,
the
police story
and the exotic
film,
if
not
enterprises
of
vio-
lent perversion?
It
remains for us
to
understand
why Lang persists
in this
disjunction.
Persists
in
often
leaving
in
his films the mark of
a
subtle defeat which is revealed
by
the
impossibility
of
a
closed
system, actually
closed
upon
itself.
Lang's
films
are
so
dense that
they
seem
to have
cracked,
as
if
the
author
always
wanted
to
leave
a
tenuous
reality
visible and
evident,
and
to
show the
illusory
nature of the idea of a
harmony
through
an
entire
autonomy
of
representation.
From
shot to
shot,
from
one
end of
the film to
the
other,
a
writing
unfolds that is
strictly
defined, divided,
always
anxious to
maintain,
in each
constituent
operation,
the effort which
constitutes that
operation;
to mark
the permanent turning of creation upon itself with the density
of
its
material;
and to do this with all
the more
rigor,
as cin-
ema
conquers,
with
its
technical
mastery,
new
possibilities
of
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8/18/2019 Raymond Bellour - On Fritz Lang
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Rayond
Bellour
expression. The camera possesses that magical ability which makes
it so
difficult for
us
to
follow
it:
to
be
an actor
full of
im-
portance,
mobile,
alive,
on
the
surface
of
life
to
which
it
al-
ways
weds
itself in order
to
capture
life.
Thus,
with
Lang,
in
a
sense,
the
film
always
seems
to
be in
the
process
of
creating
it-
self. One
feels
effort,
the
temptation
of the
possible,
the
dis-
tance
between
desire
and its
object,
something
like
the
typical
experience
of
a
book assured
of
its
strength,
but
always
a
little
defeated
and wearied
as
well. Hence the
fascination
and the
im-
pression
of
distancing
which his
films
--
so
beautiful
--
always
leave.
And the
feeling
that,
for
Lang,
the
mise-en-sc~ne
alone,
attains the
mythic.
from
e
Livre des
autres,
(L'herne,
1971)
with
permission
1.
Presence
du
Cinema,
1964.
2.
Let
us
mention, however,
the
all-too-brief
study
of
Lotte
Eisner
( Notes
sur
le
style
de
Fritz
Lang,
Revue
du
Cinema,
No.
5,
fevrier, 1947)
and the
pages
of
L'Ecran
demoniaque
by
the same
author
which
are
only,
let
us
hope,
the
preface
to
future more
general
study.
Two
other texts as well:
by
Gerard
Legrand
( Notes
pour
un
61oge
de Fritz
Lang,
Positif,
Nos.
50-51-52,
mars,
1963),
and
by
Michel
Mourlet
( Trajec-
toire
de
Fritz
Lang,
in
Sur
un
art
ignore,
La Table Ronde
1965).
And
above
all some
remarkable
criticism
by
Jacques
Rivette on
Invraisemblable
Verite
( La main,
Cahiers du
Cinema, No. 76, novembre, 1957), by Jean-Luc Godard on
Le
Retour
de Frank
James
(fiche Ufoleis, 1955),
and
by
Jean
Douchet on
Le
diabolique
Docteur
Mabuse
( L'6trange
obses-
sion,
Cahiers du
Cinema,
No.
122,
aoft
1961).
3.
Claude
Ollier,
Une aventure
de
la
lumihre,
Cahiers
du
Cinema,
No.
168,
juillet
1965.
4.
Cahiers
du
Cinema,
No.
169,
aout
1965.
5. With the
exception,
of
course,
of
Robert
Montgomery's
La
Dame du
Lac
(1947),
where the
camera
absolutely espouses
the
viewpoint
of the main
character.
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