Admission: 50 cents

“Dr. Mabuse, the master criminal, is described by one character: ‘Who he is nobody knows. He is there. He lives. He stands over the city - huge like a tower - he is damnation and eternal bliss. He is the greatest man that ever lived.' Mabuse is an archetypal Lang figure - attempting to control his own fate, and that of others (‘I am going to be a giant, a Titan, who throws into turmoil gods and laws'), yet also a victim, by virtue simply of being human. These films are at once thrillers and social portraits. Mabuse capitalises specifically on the malaise of postwar Germany in the building of his criminal empire. An extraordinarily bleak picture results, with police and criminals equated to give an impression, as Luc Moullet has described it, of two rival gangs, battling it out in a hostile world.”