video library has been released in a box set that brings together two of the diptych Indian film directed by Fritz Lang at the end of his career. Courtesy of the publisher given below the text that I wrote for the booklet attached.
The path that a director must take to transform a project into a film itself is almost always a minefield fraught with difficulties which may require dedication and persistence well beyond what you think. Ma anche con questa premessa, il fatto che Fritz Lang ci abbia messo 39 anni a portare sullo schermo La tigre di Eschnapur costituisce, se non un record assoluto, quantomeno un caso limite. Quella che avrebbe dovuto essere una delle primissime opere del regista viennese ne è diventata praticamente il canto del cigno, di modo che l’inizio e la fine del progetto appaiono delimitano l’alfa e l’omega di una brillante carriera - determinata in gran parte, come si vedrà, da una combinazione di audacia e di coincidenze più o meno fortunate. Nato a Vienna alla fine del 1890, dall’architetto Anton Lang e da Paula Schlesinger, il giovane Lang accetta inizialmente di frequentare studiare engineering, but in reality is determined to become a painter. As it starts to get busy with paintbrushes, drawing mainly Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt, Lang uncovers a passionate womanizer, "I was early and I started very early," he recalled in an autobiographical sketch written by Lotte Eisner, "The Viennese women were the most beautiful and most generous in the world. It was common custom to meet secretly in some cafe in Vienna during the interval of a play or, by chance, after 11, in a cabaret or a nightclub. "
Maybe even easier to indulge in these pleasures, Lang found a job as master of ceremonies in a couple of cabaret (The Femina and Holle, or "hell"), even if he has to stop immediately when the father is informed. Following his father's reaction, the young man escapes the house and certainly went first to Belgium and then get to travel around the world: North Africa, Turkey, Asia Minor and even Bali. At the end happened to be in Paris. I earned a living by selling hand-painted postcards, my drawings and, occasionally, some cartoon for newspapers. " In the French capital, Lang attended the day school of painting by Maurice Denis, and at night he went to study at the Academie Julien drawing the nude. But it is at this time begins to receive regular movie theaters, with a growing interest in the potential of the moving image.
But there are still some way to go. In 1918, after an injury that occurred on the Italian front, Lang is now declared unfit for further duties on the frontline and discharged. After two months in hospital, he was allowed to spend their days around Vienna, provided that fits within eight in the evening. One afternoon in a cafe, someone comes up to him and offer him the hand of a lieutenant in a play entitled Der Hias . Lang accepts (1000 Crown alleged that instead of the 800 they gave me ") and the choice is particularly lucky in one of the representations is noticed by producer Erich Pommer, who offered him a contract with the Decla (the production company he founded Just two years earlier) and invited him to Berlin.
For Lang, the experience is exciting despite the gains are very scarce. Pommer to work first as a player and then as a writer of screenplays on his own, but to supplement the revenue participation as an actor in three films written by him (her roles are, respectively, "a German courier, an old priest and Death" ) until the day he gets the job of shooting his first film as director, Halbblut , a drama of love shot in just five days, followed immediately from the analogous Der Herr der Liebe , the first the thriller Die Spinnen (the episode was entitled Der Goldene See ) and finally Hara Kiri, a reduction of the classic Madama Butterfly.
Pommer is at this point that suggests the young director a person entitled des Doktor Caligari, Das kabineta . Lang reads it carefully and then feel a producer: "Erich, the public will not understand anything about a film such expressions, with distorted perspectives, etc, unless you put a scene at the beginning of the film with two people talking in the normal way in setting realistic so that the public is aware from the outset that the story is told by a madman. " Although the author's original screenplay is absolutely contrary opinion, the manufacturer accepts the idea with enthusiasm, only that Lang is a victim of its own success: "The owners of the rooms had a lot of money with the first episode of Die Spinnen who immediately wanted a second. So Caligari Pommer was forced to take off so I could finish the series. " Thus the title of German parent is directed by Robert Wiene, while Lang is dedicated to Das Schiff Brillanten - and despite the commercial success of this second and final part of series Die Spinnen , it's no wonder that at the end of his contract with Pommer the director decides not to renew it. Accepts, however, an offer from Joe May - with whom he worked for some time a popular writer named Thea von Harbou.
In 1918, the year Lang was discharged from the army, the Von Harbou had with the publisher Ullstein Verlag published a novel called Das Indische Grabmal that quickly turned out to be a great success - and instructs May Lang work with you to bring out a screenplay. A convict labor: the encounter with the writer of the thirties film is a stroke of lightning whose effects are manifested simultaneously on an artistic and personal. Married since 1914 to actor Rudolf Klein-Rogge, the Von Harbou it will separate very early and, after divorcing in 1921, will become a year after Mrs. Lang Not before, however, that Joe May has, for the second time , dealt with the director a new and even more bitterly disappointed.
"Me and Mrs. Von Harbou worked on the script and the theme was extended to become a two-part film (...). When we finished the script - I'll never forget - I and Mrs. Von Harbou we went to Joe May, who began to read it. Gave it to his wife, Mia May, and her daughter read it and rilessero everyone. E lui disse: "È fantastica, magnifica - magnifica". Mi chiamava Fritzska - perché, non lo so. Così io e la signora Von Harbou tornammo a casa molto contenti. Tre giorni più tardi lei venne da me e mi disse: "Fritz, ho delle notizie molto brutte per te". Io chiesi quali fossero e lei rispose: "Per venire subito al sodo: non puoi girare questo film". "Perché no?", dissi io. E lei: "Joe May mi ha detto che la banca non gli darebbe i soldi se lo dirigessi tu, perché sei un regista troppo giovane per un film così costoso". Era una bugia. Perché in realtà il signor Joe May era convinto che questo film sarebbe stato un grande successo e voleva dirigerlo lui stesso. Non potevo fare niente - il film was finished for me. " As you can imagine, the partnership with Joe Lang May runs out very soon and the director back to work for Erich Pommer directing Destiny (Der Tod Müde, 1921) Von Harbou screenplay, a film that became his first great personal success. "But not right away," Lang recalled, "When it was first shown in Berlin critics, for reasons that have never been able to understand, tried to kill the film. One of them said that the film makes the viewer to look tired, "an obvious reference to the film's title, literally translated as Death tired. To save the career of the director with decades of advance on the rediscovery del periodo americano di Lang da parte dei Cahiers du Cinéma , è la critica francese: “Dopo due settimane fu ritirato dalle sale di Berlino: ma uscì poi a Parigi e altrove ricevendo le recensioni più incredibili. Uno dei critici francesi scrisse: "Questa è la Germania che un tempo amavamo" - tutto questo subito dopo la Prima Guerra Mondiale, ricordate. Poi il film fu ridistribuito in Germania e divenne un successo mondiale”. Nella versione originale diretta da Joe May, il Maharaja di Eschnapur è interpretato da Conrad Veidt, uno dei divi più celebri del cinema tedesco di allora (oggi ricordato soprattutto per aver interpretato in Casablanca il nazista maggiore Strasser - destino ironico per un attore che si era trasferito negli Stati Uniti proprio in segno di rifiuto per l’avvento di Adolf Hitler). Un architetto europeo viene da lui convocato in India per fabbricare un tempio più grande del Taj Mahal - ma ben presto scopre che questo ambizioso monumento dovrà servire a seppellire viva l’amante infedele del committente. Girato interamente in Germania, il film viene distribuito in due parti per via della lunghezza (i titoli degli episodi sono Die Sendung des Yoghi , “la missione dello yogi”, e Das Indische Grabmal ) e sembra ispirarsi a modelli decisamente alti, come spiegano Meenakshi Shedde e Vinzenz Hediger nel saggio Come On, Baby, Be My Tiger - Inventing India on the German Screen in Der Tiger von Eschnapur and Das indische Grabmal . Il film, a loro dire, “fa pensare in modo inquietante a un’opera di Richard Wagner in termini di ritmo e dell’accento che pone sui tormenti emotivi dei personaggi piuttosto che sull’azione fisica – per non dire della fidanzata dell’architetto che ha l’aspetto di un’eroina wagneriana, una Valchiria bionda e tarchiata”.
Non che si tratti di un salto interpretativo rivoluzionario, soprattutto se si pensa che nemmeno tre anni più tardi il duo Lang/Von Harbou dichiara, in buona sostanza, i propri modelli realizzando il dittico I Nibelunghi (Die Nibelungen, 1924; i due episodi si intitolano Siegfried e Kriemhilds Rache , “Sigfrido” e “La vendetta di Crimilde”). Ma quello wagneriano è un modello che si perde in gran parte in un primo remake del Sepolcro indiano realizzato già nel 1938 da Richard Eichberg e che, a differenza della versione precedente, si gira in India a Udaipur, nel Rajasthan. La trama si complica notevolmente con maggior attenzione alle scene spettacolari, l’aggiunta di personaggi russi, di una scimmia bevitrice di whisky e qualche notevole modifica negli snodi narrativi. Se nel primo film l’architetto veniva convocato in India da uno yogi specifically raised by the maharaja (hence the title of the first of two episodes), here we meet the more prosaically, the plane that is bringing it to your destination and it is clear that the message was delivered with the traditional media of the era of telecommunications. The task for which the maharaja has called, among other things, is no longer the erection of a temple of love lost but a model city. As for the final, lover sentenced to a premature burial does not end as a suicide in the previous version, but manages to escape with her lover.
The choice to shoot on location did not appear impressed cast members. In interviews of the time you read statements to this effect: "It was terribly difficult to work with the people there (...) They work like snails and some of the natives were so stupid that we would first train a dog." In addition, some members of the crew complained about the fact that it was impossible to shoot scenes with women who were bathing because the director did not allow the touch. Comments where you feel the item too racist ideology that has been launched by Germany towards a future disaster and trigger, predictably, a controversy that begins with an article about India's Film Baburao Patel: "In total arrogance national pride and power of a newly conquered, the modern German has become blind to the subtlety of the feelings that distinguishes the best of human beings ... The Tiger of Eschnapur , is simply a despicable film that at this moment does the dirty work in European countries defaming and ridiculing the Indians before the world ... In the spirit and essence is anti-Indian. "
almost unnecessary to note that, as far as we know, Eichberg of the film was never distributed in the Indian market. What should be stressed however is that when the movie comes out in Germany, Lang's life has a long way. It's the same director to tell, in his autobiographical notes, the episode that made him decide to leave the country, and that occurs some time after the banning of his The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (Das Testament des Dr, Mabuse, 1932) , in which the director and his screenwriter had put in his mouth to proclaim Nazis eponymous supervillain: "I was summoned by Goebbels, as I feared, to be called to account for the film, but to my surprise to hear that the Reich Minister of Propaganda asking me to accept the position of Supreme Director German film industry. " Lang, who on his mother knows he does not belong to the pure Aryan race courted, he points to Goebbels to be part jew, but it freezes the answer: "Herr Lang: but we we decide who is jew." The reaction of the director, not just laid off from his powerful host, it was almost instantaneous: "I left Germany that night. With Goebbels The interview lasted from noon to 14.30 and hour banks had closed and I could not withdraw money. I had just enough to buy a ticket to Paris and arrived at the Gare du Nord virtually penniless. "
In Paris, Erich Pommer and Lang found, obtained a work permit, he realizes with Liliom for Fox before accepting a contract with MGM and moved United States. But unlike her husband, Thea von Harbou decided to stay in Germany instead of embracing the cause of National Socialism - which can only put an end to marriage which is the artistic collaboration. Space does not permit here to dwell on the parallel development of their careers. In a sort of fast forward on Von Harbou, is worth to note that once separated from her husband, the writer will go in person to the director (finding, inter alia, to direct her first husband, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, however, already starred in several films of the same face and Lang, among other things, his aforementioned Dr. Mabuse). Participation in a personal capacity production of various film propaganda, does not facilitate the career after the war, without bringing it to a real professional marginalization. For tragic fatality, the indirect cause of the untimely death of the writer will be that first hit film Lang made after the betrayal of Joe May: in 1954, attending a screening in honor of Destiny , the Von Harbou accidentally falls and suffers a trauma that leads quickly to death.
is one of them to bring it back to the East. Lotte Eisner recalls that "in 1956, Lang urged the Indian government in India to make a movie. The project was centered on the maharaja of the 17th century who built the Taj Mahal in memory of his beloved. Lang abandoned the project when it became clear that the Indian ideal of beauty was completely different from Europe, so the casting became a big problem. This stay of several weeks, However, it was a great help later for his German films set in India. " The occasion does not hesitate for long: the German producer Arthur Brauner, director of CCC Films has acquired the rights to the original script Das Indische Grabmal and propose to the director complete creative freedom, a more than decent budget and the possibility to shoot on location . Lang agrees with some enthusiasm, perhaps attracted by the idea to take finally revenge on the theft of Joe May, perhaps to return at the end of his career, a story that brings him back to the years of her invincible youth. 
Just as the original directed by May, this third version of the story comes on the screen divided into two parts - and the perceived desire for Lang to make up almost naive adventure of many years ago, the concept of serial and taste for the return of narrative conclusion the next episode, all but means much more substantial benefit of color, mostly real locations and four decades of experience. Operation, to think of it, which anticipates more than twenty films like Raiders of the Lost (Raiders of the Lost Ark, 1981) but that most critics are not willing to endorse. Overall, the film is judged by German press of the time anachronistic and without interest - completely ignoring the fact that the reference to the nostalgic past is the main essence. But beyond the nostalgia for the sentiments perhaps naive film before the war, evasion of taste end in itself, the evergreen appeal of exoticism, the connoisseurs of cinema in the film by Lang were able to appreciate the taste for set design, the reference to issues already appeared in the past (the scene in the cave of lepers, creatures that closely resemble the workers reduced to automatons Metropolis and, curiously, also anticipate a decade of the Living Dead George A. Romero ) which, to quote Robin Wood, are "implemented with a purity of line and an economy of means learned in Hollywood. "
the negative reaction of the reviewers of the time, Lang somehow had to be prepared if, in an interview in 1959 in Jacques Rivette and Jean Domarchi for Cahiers du Cinéma (the magazine in which for the first American cinema of the time Lang had been a bit 'of serious critical attention) said: "Critics are too sophisticated now and prefer to ignore the fact that we really love a woman and she is fighting for something important and necessary. While preparing for Eschnapur The tiger, I had a discussion with my dialogue because I wanted to say al Maharaja: "Se mi date la vostra parola d’onore, vi lascerò libero nel mio palazzo". E lui mi ha risposto: "Stammi a sentire, il pubblico si metterà a ridere. Al giorno d’oggi, la parola di un uomo non vale niente". È triste, bisogna ammetterlo”. Ma se questa consapevolezza non poteva certo bastare per guadagnare al film l’approvazione della critica, almeno il pubblico reagì favorevolmente, tanto che Brauner convinse Lang a un altro revival, producendogli Il diabolico dottor Mabuse (Die tausend Augen des Dr. Mabuse, 1960) . Per Lang, questi ritorni al passato avevano, fra l’altro, motivazioni di strategia professionale che sulla carta appaiono validissime ma which, unfortunately, would prove futile: "I did those films because they were important but because I hoped that if I made a big commercial success for someone I had the opportunity again - as I had had with M - to work without restrictions. It was my mistake. " In fact, the last return of Dr. Mabuse also marked the final conclusion of Lang's career as a director. 
Around 1960, recalls Lotte Eisner, "in Lang was offered the opportunity to shoot two more films set in India. However, projects were eventually abandoned when the Italian manufacturer insisted on certain changes to the script despite the contract with Lang guaranteed the director complete artistic control "*. But apparently fate had decided otherwise and Lang would not return behind the camera. It would instead appear in the part of himself in the film Contempt (Contempt, 1963) Jean-Luc Godard, filming a bizarre version of the Odyssey.
Outside of Germany, Eschnapur of The Tiger and The tomb Indian fared pretty well at the box office despite some accident of course. In the U.S., the diptych suffered the same fate at the time the two parts of the version Joe May: two films lasting about one hour and forty each, the distributor American International I get one from a little over an hour and a half, redubbed and summarily dealt with under Journey to the Lost City (Journey to the Lost City). In Italy, things went a bit 'better, even if the complaint Democrat lightened here and there the more daring scenes depriving the spectators, among other things, much of the spectacular dance sexy Debra Paget in front of the cobra. The restored edition that you are holding the movie back to its original splendor, restoring the deleted scenes and offering adventurous film a real missing link between the Classical and the Postmodern. Alberto Farina
* "The film would Kaly Yung covered the largest criminal conspiracy of Indian history, the brotherhood of the Thugs. Over ten million innocent travelers had been strangled with rumal , a curiously knotted handkerchief on the corners, presumably in honor of the bloodthirsty goddess Kali, to rob them of valuables. The fact that also belonged to this secret organization Mahradschahs and other high-level authorities made English even more difficult to eradicate the evil cult. Set in 1875, the film centers on a young doctor who runs a clinic to treat cholera. When his Sikh disappear during a mission to provide supplies, ask a guest to investigate but this, a sick old man who does not want trouble, he refuses. The matter is further complicated when the doctor discovers that the girl he loved in England was already old wife. Is guilty of murder at the hands of thug and suspicions are directed to the doctor. In an attempt to exculpate these starts to investigate himself with an Indian friend (a dancer leads by Thug) and ends up involved in various adventures. Her love and understanding for India prevail, the thug is murdered and his name rehabilitated. "(Eisner)
Bibliography:
AA.VV., Filmlexicon of authors and works , Experimental Center of Cinematography, 1957-1971
AA. VV., The politics of the authors , Minimum Fax, 2000
Peter Bogdanovich, Fritz Lang's second film The , Practices, 1988
Alfonso Canziani (Editor), Cinema worldwide , Mondadori, 1978
M. Dutta, A. Fitz, M. Krogh, A. Schneider & D. Wenner (editors), Import / Export: Cultural Transfer Between India and Germany , Parthas, 2005
Lotte Eisner, Fritz Lang , Da Capo, 1976
Barry Keith Grant, Fritz Lang: Interviews (Conversations With Filmmakers) , University Press of Mississippi, 2003
Christopher Lyon (curatore), Directors/Filmmakers , MacMillan, 1984
Tom Gunning, The Films of Fritz Lang: Allegories of Vision and Modernity , British Film Institute, 2008
John Wakeman (curatore), World Film Directors Volume I - 1890-1945 , Wilson, 1987
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