Fritz Lang - Biography | The German-Hollywood Connection

German-Hollywood Connection > FRITZ LANG > METROPOLIS > FILMS

Fritz Lang in Vienna, Berlin and Hollywood

“Lang makes you want to puke. Nobody in the whole
world is as important as he imagines himself to be. I completely understand why he is so hated everywhere.”

— Kurt Weill, in a 1937 letter to his wife Lotte Lenya (as quoted in
Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast by Patrick McGilligan)

The man born Friedrich Christian Anton Lang in Vienna in 1890, claimed to have studied art and architecture in Vienna, Munich, and Paris. But according to biographer Patrick McGilligan (Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast), this was just one of several Fritz Lang legends that the director carefully cultivated over the years. In reality, Lang dropped out of Vienna’s Technische Hochschule (technical college) after only two years.

The Five Star Collection DVD features four of Lang’s greatest silents: Metropolis, The Nibelungen, The Spy, and Woman on the Moon.
DVD > Fritz Lang Epic Collection (Box Set) (4 films, 5 DVD discs)

At the age of 21 Lang left home for his traditional Wanderjahre (“wander years” — a type of coming-of-age period), or so the legend went. In fact, he seems to have returned home several times and not to have traveled as extensively as he claimed. He did spend time in Paris, but a contemporary has said that the budding artist was more interested in women than painting. About six months after the outbreak of war, in 1915, Lang enlisted and served in World War I as an artillery officer and was wounded at least three times. It was during the last year of the war that he met Erich Pommer — who would later produce films directed by Lang and others.

Less than a year after the war, Lang was working in Berlin as a film director. For most of his Berlin films, including Metropolis, he collaborated with his wife, Thea von Harbou (1888-1954), who wrote the script or story for most of his films. (They had married in 1922. Lang’s first wife, Lisa Rosenthal, committed suicide under mysterious circumstances in 1920.)

Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou in their Berlin apartment in the 1920s.
PHOTO: Waldemar Titzenthaler

Following Metropolis, the Lang-von Harbou team went on to make another science-fiction movie for Ufa in 1929. Less successful than Metropolis (partly because it was silent just as sound was taking hold), Frau im Mond (“The Woman in the Moon” - now on DVD) was also based on a story written by von Harbou. The film is probably most notable for inventing the rocket launch countdown.

With the advent of sound, Lang made the classic M, probably his best film. M features the Austrian actor Peter Lorre in the role of a big-city child molester and murderer. Both the film’s camerawork and sound technique were remarkable, especially considering it was Lang’s first “talkie” and that one of Lang’s most notable quotes is, “To begin with, I should say that I am a visual person. I experience with my eyes and never, or only rarely, with my ears—to my constant regret.”

Woman in the Moon was Lang’s last silent film.
> Buy DVD

After the Nazi takeover in Germany and the banning of some of his films, Lang left for Hollywood via France in 1933. (He was Catholic, but his mother was Jewish.) Lang’s wife, von Harbou, got along famously with the Hitler regime. She remained in Germany (after divorcing Lang), working for the Nazi-controlled Ufa studio of the 1930s.

Although he adapted to Hollywood and made several very respectable films there, Lang felt stifled and frustrated by the US studio system. He came to dislike Hollywood as much as Hollywood disliked him. (Lang had a well-deserved reputation for being arrogant and dictatorial.) Being blacklisted in the McCarthy era (for his work with Bertolt Brecht and some other communists) didn’t help. His US film work, including Fury (1936), Western Union (1941), Ministry of Fear (1944), Rancho Notorious (1952, with Marlene Dietrich), and The Big Heat (a classic 1953 film noir), ended in 1956 when he left for India to do a picture that was never produced. After a brief return to Germany in the late 1950s, where he made a few more films, Lang spent his retirement in California until his death. His Metropolis cameraman, Karl Freund (1890-1969), a fellow Austrian who had left Germany years before Lang, was very successful in working behind the camera on countless Hollywood productions, including Dracula (1931) and Key Largo (1948).

Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast by Patrick McGilligan
SEE BOOKS BELOW

In his later years, Lang was in poor health and legally blind. Despite his reputation for being difficult, Lang had a group of friends (including film critic Lotte Eisner) who stuck by him in these difficult times. His wife, Lily Latté, cared for him at their home on Summit Ridge Drive in Beverly Hills, but she would later be criticized for how she handled Lang’s estate, destroying many documents in an odd effort to protect his legacy. (Although there is no official record of their marriage, the Jewish, Berlin-born Latté had been with Lang in the US ever since she arrived from Paris in 1935. She had first met him in Berlin around the time of M and became his mistress while still married to her second husband.)

On August 2, 1976 Fritz Lang suffered a stroke and died at the age of 85. He was buried in Forest Lawn-Hollywood Hills Cemetery, which was once the legendary Nestor Ranch filming location during the silent era.

On the next pages, read more about Lang’s great Metropolis and his other films.

NEXT > Metropolis and a Lang Filmography

MORE > Ufa and the Babelsberg studios

MORE > German-Hollywood Connections

Fritz Lang in Print

Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast by Patrick-McGilligan (paperback biography)
Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast by Patrick-McGilligan (hardcover biography)
Fritz Lang: Interviews (Conversations With Filmmakers) - Barry Keith Grant, editor (paperback)
Fritz Lang by Lotte Eisner. An examination of his films. (paperback)

Related German Way Pages

Ufa and the Babelsberg studios, where Lang shot Metropolis and other films
Famous German Movies - Films from Germany have made their mark on world cinema—and influenced Hollywood
Germans (and Others) in Hollywood - About the three main waves of Germanic immigration to Hollywood
Berlin City Guide - Sights, history
German Cinema - From the German Way book
Famous Germans, Austrians and Swiss
Famous Graves - The graves and cemeteries of the famous