Rent The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933)

Goodbye Berlin. - The Testament of Dr. Mabuse review by Steve

Mythic horror/crime hybrid which is a sequel twice over. There's the return of Fritz Lang's criminal Übermensch, 11 years after Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler. And he is pursued by the Inspector from Lang's 1931 film, M... Mabuse has been in a mental hospital since '22, constantly scrawling meaningless hieroglyphics on endless reams of paper. But it's '33 and time to return.

Mabuse controls the people through telepathy. Which brings a satisfying circularity to the end of golden age Weimar cinema which began in 1920 with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, with another hypnotist in an asylum. Lang says Goebbels banned his picture and asked him to lead the Nazi film industry. So Lang fled the country. It wasn't shown in Germany until '51.

Critics like to undermine Lang's assertion that this was intended to be a warning about the rise of fascism. But it's unmissible. The interesting, exciting plot isn't much different from a Dick Tracy adventure. But Lang's villains actually repeat hate-speech and propaganda taken from Nazi rallies. The mood of panic, anarchy and paranoia is incredibly powerful.

This is a suspenseful thriller unbalanced by its weighty allegorical insinuations. Which then turns nightmarish as the mastermind runs crime from beyond the grave! It's pessimistic with an incredibly heavy, desolate score. Lang directs with panache, and even takes us back to the expressionism of the original. For me, this is his best German film.

Evil Has a Filing System - The Testament of Dr. Mabuse review by griggs

I’d known the film’s reputation, so I braced for homework. Instead, it grabbed me and wouldn’t let go — one of the very few films from this period that genuinely lives up to its legend.

What starts as a tidy police procedural curdles into a paranoid fable about crime as an idea: leadership without a face, orders without a body, just a plan and enough willing hands. Lang makes sound feel dangerous — disembodied commands, murmurs behind doors, the sense that the building itself has ears.

Otto Wernicke’s Lohmann stays human and slightly harassed, which is exactly what you want here. Oscar Beregi’s Professor Baum is respectability turned predatory, and Rudolf Klein-Rogge’s Mabuse lingers like a thought you can’t shake.

Bleak, bracing, and weirdly current. The nightmare isn’t one mastermind — it’s the method.

Ghost of the Manipulator - The Testament of Dr. Mabuse review by NW

Technically impressive, lively ... effective ... but rationally and logically preposterous: impact and effect have been given precedence over coherence and sense of plot ... supernatural events allow the cutting of rational corners! There are also ambiguities and discontinuities ... poorly matched disparate plot lines? ... which are carried through on the vigour of the action but also reflect Fritz Lang’s own ambiguities of intent (political? anti-nazi or not?) and his dubious accounts of dealings with Doctor Goebbels and the regime. The accompanying “documentary essay” is as interesting as the film itself!