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7.8/10
9.2K
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Arch-criminal Dr. Mabuse sets out to make a fortune and run Berlin. Detective Wenk sets out to stop him.Arch-criminal Dr. Mabuse sets out to make a fortune and run Berlin. Detective Wenk sets out to stop him.Arch-criminal Dr. Mabuse sets out to make a fortune and run Berlin. Detective Wenk sets out to stop him.
- Awards
- 1 nomination
Rudolf Klein-Rogge
- Dr. Mabuse
- (as Rudolf Klein Rogge)
Gertrude Welcker
- Countess Dusy Told
- (as Gertrude Welker)
Hans Adalbert Schlettow
- Georg, the Chauffeur
- (as Hans Adalbert von Schlettow)
Károly Huszár
- Hawasch
- (as Karl Huszar)
Julius E. Herrmann
- Emil Schramm
- (as Julius Herrmann)
Anita Berber
- Taenzerin im Frack
- (uncredited)
Paul Biensfeldt
- Mann, der die Pistole bekommt
- (uncredited)
- …
- Director
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaSoviet editors re-cut the Dr. Mabuse films into one shorter film (see Alternate Versions). The lead editor was Sergei Eisenstein.
- GoofsThe sign at the Excelsior about languages spoken declares "Her talces svenska" ("Her" and "talces" are pure nonsense). It should read "Här talas svenska" ("Swedish spoken here").
- Quotes
Cara Carozza, the dancer: You gamble with money, with people and with fate and most horrifying of all, with your own self.
- Alternate versionsIn 1995 it was released in Spain on a silent films collection on video. There was a reduced version of 88 minutes retitled "The Fatal Passion". Originally distributed by "The Interstellar Film Company".
- ConnectionsEdited into Histoire(s) du cinéma: Fatale beauté (1994)
Featured review
Karmaspiel between worlds
I really urge you to watch this, but watch beyond the caper, watch the character beyond the simply nefarious evil mastermind that he appears as, and you'll be stunned with the the complexity of forces at work; at the center is a man who - having mastered the mind - can guide vision into shaping worlds and, from the inverse point-of-view of the unwitting victims, the shaped world as the stage of some indecipherable, chaotic spiel.
So what this really is, is the precursor of film noir. The genre as later assumed by American hands - once Germans fled there - transferred Mabuse out of sight, but the fundamental movement remains: we had to assume the notion that somewhere, on a cosmic station above, the images that down here formed reality were being controlled and manipulated. What the protagonists in these films experienced as a world of fertile, opportunous chaos, and would therefore exploit to their own advantage, was eventually revealed to be a chimera of the mind led astray; the world was being supervised and kept in ledgers all along.
This is pretty amazing stuff to have then; we can see the manipulator inside the manipulated world, and the motions that bring consequences on both ends of the illusion. The first scene shows Mabuse dealing cards with on them the faces of the players, the actors who are about to perform in the orchestrated fiction - Mabuse's inside the film, and also Lang's film about Mabuse. And there is a woman who is our surrogate viewer in all this; she watches the gamblers from a distance, searching faces for thrills and sensations.
All this touches at the heart of self-referential cinema in ways that still astound by how erudite, how in-sightful. Viewers who are looking for films about the mind weaving films will be delighted.
There is one scene that will be absolutely unequaled in film until the second great cinema of Resnais and Tarkovsky some forty years later. It shows Mabuse operating an illusion on stage before a packed theater; the entire audience watches transfixed at people magically walking out of a screen into the middle of the auditorium - and vanishing at a snap of the fingers - none of them realizing the confrontation that is actually playing out within the fantasy.
But there is an extra layer that further elevates this. So what is perceived by the players as unluck or the chance turn of a card, from our double perspective rooted in Mabuse's mind is revealed as part of the same, decisive plan. Yet Mabuse is not a godlike presence, he is steeped in human passions; icy but on occasion petulant, seething, lusting, the mask full of emotional cracks.
So, on one level we have a controlled reality as a puppet show of absurdities, but on the other end finally we get a glimpse of the mind cracking under the weight of what it must control, under the burden of the operated illusion. The final vision is a nightmare where these controlled images animate themselves against their tyrant. Tellingly it happens in a locked room; the blind people that were tasked by Mabuse to deal with his fortunes, in fact his counterfeit fortunes, now transform into apparitions of guilt.
Few films have so deeply influenced our cinematic vision, from Vertigo to Lynch. It has been since disguised and embellished, but it's revealed here for the first time.
So what this really is, is the precursor of film noir. The genre as later assumed by American hands - once Germans fled there - transferred Mabuse out of sight, but the fundamental movement remains: we had to assume the notion that somewhere, on a cosmic station above, the images that down here formed reality were being controlled and manipulated. What the protagonists in these films experienced as a world of fertile, opportunous chaos, and would therefore exploit to their own advantage, was eventually revealed to be a chimera of the mind led astray; the world was being supervised and kept in ledgers all along.
This is pretty amazing stuff to have then; we can see the manipulator inside the manipulated world, and the motions that bring consequences on both ends of the illusion. The first scene shows Mabuse dealing cards with on them the faces of the players, the actors who are about to perform in the orchestrated fiction - Mabuse's inside the film, and also Lang's film about Mabuse. And there is a woman who is our surrogate viewer in all this; she watches the gamblers from a distance, searching faces for thrills and sensations.
All this touches at the heart of self-referential cinema in ways that still astound by how erudite, how in-sightful. Viewers who are looking for films about the mind weaving films will be delighted.
There is one scene that will be absolutely unequaled in film until the second great cinema of Resnais and Tarkovsky some forty years later. It shows Mabuse operating an illusion on stage before a packed theater; the entire audience watches transfixed at people magically walking out of a screen into the middle of the auditorium - and vanishing at a snap of the fingers - none of them realizing the confrontation that is actually playing out within the fantasy.
But there is an extra layer that further elevates this. So what is perceived by the players as unluck or the chance turn of a card, from our double perspective rooted in Mabuse's mind is revealed as part of the same, decisive plan. Yet Mabuse is not a godlike presence, he is steeped in human passions; icy but on occasion petulant, seething, lusting, the mask full of emotional cracks.
So, on one level we have a controlled reality as a puppet show of absurdities, but on the other end finally we get a glimpse of the mind cracking under the weight of what it must control, under the burden of the operated illusion. The final vision is a nightmare where these controlled images animate themselves against their tyrant. Tellingly it happens in a locked room; the blind people that were tasked by Mabuse to deal with his fortunes, in fact his counterfeit fortunes, now transform into apparitions of guilt.
Few films have so deeply influenced our cinematic vision, from Vertigo to Lynch. It has been since disguised and embellished, but it's revealed here for the first time.
helpful•92
- chaos-rampant
- Sep 18, 2011
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Languages
- Also known as
- Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler part one: The Great Gamble
- Filming locations
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- See more company credits at IMDbPro
- Runtime4 hours 2 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1
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Top Gap
By what name was Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler (1922) officially released in India in English?
Answer