Der müde tod (Destiny)

Made shortly after Lang’s mother died, Destiny is “the director’s most thoughtful and compassionate meditation on mortality” (Patrick McGilligan). Inspired by a dream from Lang’s childhood, the film is a fantasy/allegory set in three historical periods—ancient Baghdad, seventeenth-century Venice, and imperial China—bracketed by a modern-day framing story. Destiny was Lang’s first film to gain him wide European recognition and remains one of his most brilliant cinematic achievements. Its magic-carpet fantasias inspired Douglas Fairbanks to make his Thief of Bagdad, according to historian Siegfried Kracauer. Luis Buñuel wrote, “Destiny opened my eyes to the poetic expressiveness of the cinema.”