"Architect Harald Berger, en route to an appointment as an adviser to Chandra, the Maharajah of Eschnapur, rescues Seeta, an Indian dancer also bound for Chandra's palace, from an attack by a man-eating tiger. Their friendship subsequently flourishes..." So begins Fritz Lang's two-part film, The Tigress of Bengal, which he returned to Germany in 1958 to direct, based on a script that he had written in 1920 (with Thea von Harbou) for Joe May's The Indian Tomb. Berger (as the story continues) becomes caught up in a rebellion to overthrow the ruler, is thrown in a dungeon, sees his enemy become a crocodile's dinner, and eventually leaves in peace--with Seeta. If the narrative is unabashedly--even faithfully--pulp serial, the set-pieces are flamboyant to the extreme, and the coloration is exotic, all this only makes it obvious that, once again, Fritz Lang has taken a genre and exaggerated it to his own formal purposes. German film historian Lotte Eisner describes The Tigress of Bengal as a work of "crystal clear composition which is not the creation of an old man, but the crowning of maturity...the balancing of colors and structures. It is the formal perfection, the masterly use of decor and spatial structuring on which the extreme admiration of the films is based."