LADIES’ PARADISE (1930)

This late-period French silent film begins with a rather didactic title card telling us that the economic battle of the small shop versus the giant store will always be problematic, and you can only blame progress. The orphan Denise arrives in Paris to stay with her uncle Baudu who runs a small textile shop which is in danger of being put out of business by the block-long department store across the street, Au Bonheur des Dames (Ladies' Paradise). In fact, the first thing that Denise sees in Paris is a plane dropping leaflets onto the streets advertising the store where you can get "everything you desire." Baudu takes her in but cannot give her a job as he can barely take care of his daughter Genevieve and her fiancé Colomban, so she heads across to the Bonheur where, thanks to a fortuitous meeting with Mouret, the store's owner (though she doesn't know that), she is hired as a fashion model. Mouret takes a liking to her, despite the fact that he is anxiously waiting for her uncle's shop to fail so he can demolish that entire side of the street to expand his store. With financial help from the wealthy Madame Desforges, he wants to build the biggest store in the world, a "temple of elegance, luxury and beauty." Mouret and Denise develop a casual friendship and he comes to her rescue when she is assaulted by a male worker in the enormous lunch room, and she eventually learns who he is at a company picnic. Meanwhile, she makes an enemy of Clara, a co-worker whose flirtatious glances across the street at Colomban turn into a real threat to his relationship with Genevieve, who has become quite sickly, basically living in her bedroom. Demolition begins with the sad sight of Baudu's mostly empty store still standing. In the end [Spoiler!] Baudu is driven out of business, goes on a shooting spree in the store, and dies when he is hit by a Bonheur truck (whether he is pushed, falls or deliberately jumps is unclear) and dies. The odd ending, which is taken directly from the Emile Zola novel the film is based on, has Mouret decide he went too far in his desire for progress until Denise tells him that progress itself is to blame, but that progress isn't all bad after all, and the expanded store opens as they make plans to become an official couple. Quite a whiplash ending.

Directed by Julien Duvivier, who went on to direct some seventy movies in France (Pepe Le Moko) and Hollywood (The Great Waltz, the Vivien Leigh Anna Karenina), this is a marvel of visual style, with a nearly constantly moving camera, some incredible crowd scenes—including the shooting spree—and impressive sets with the spectacular store interiors shot in a real department store where most of the crowd scenes take place. Getting lost in the style is a way to draw attention away from the weak central performance of Dita Parlo as Denise who overacts, largely with her eyes, especially in close-ups. In fact, the only strong performance comes from Pierre de Guingand as Mouret who is the only actor to really overcome the curse of silent movie overacting. Also good are Fabien Haziza as Colomban and Ginette Maddie as Clara, perhaps because their characters are well differentiated from the others, mostly store workers, who blend together. The modern score by Gabriel Thibaudeau is good, except for the occasional vocal aria worked in awkwardly. The Criterion Channel aired this as an example of a forerunner of the French movement of poetic realism, and while the visual style is indeed effective, I'm not sure the “poetic” is quite the right word for its impact. Pictured at top left are Parlo and de Guingand. At right is a shot of the impressive interior of the store. Original French title: Au bonheur des dames. [Criterion Channel]

THE FLAME BARRIER (1958)

A new satellite, the X-117, is launched with a chimp on board but is lost 200 miles up, somewhere around the "flame barrier" where the Earth's atmosphere ends. The satellite is presumed to have disintegrated but actually it falls to Earth in a Mexican jungle. Scientist Howard Dahlmann takes off to find the wreckage but isn't heard from for months and his wife Carol heads down to hire a search party led by the reliable Dave Hollister and his cocky ne'er-do-well brother Matt. It's the rainy season and Dave is reluctant to go, but Carol offers them $7000 if they find Howard alive or 10% of his estate if he's proven dead. Villagers warn them that animals in the area are dying. They find a skeleton that Carol thinks is Matt but it's actually a native who was mysteriously burned up. Soon some of the team members have left and tensions grow between the brothers, in part because Matt is putting the moves on Carol, though Carol seems more attracted to Dave. Another native is found with chest burns; he eventually dies and his flesh melts off leaving just his skeleton. Finally they find the satellite in a cave, with Howard's body engulfed in a glowing pulsing blob. An invisible forcefield extends from the satellite which sets fire to anything it comes in contact with, and it's doubling in size every two hours. If the search party leaves, that means they'll be leaving the nearby villagers, and eventually the entire world, at the mercy of the force. But can they quickly find a way to fight and destroy it?

The bulk of this B-movie is of the jungle adventure genre with sci-fi elements thrown in at the beginning and end. If you plan to watch this as a sci-fi film, you'll be disappointed. It's fairly short, 70 minutes, and the jungle melodrama, complete with dangerous animals and sweaty trekking, tends to drag in the middle. But the climactic scenes are tense and effective. Some critics assume that this was originally intended to be all jungle story but the Russian launch of Sputnik, which occurred just a couple of months before filming began, may have influenced its turn toward satellite sci-fi. It's no gem but I enjoyed the mash-up of genres. Kathleen Crowley holds her own as the strong lead female, though she does come off as a little whiny in her single-minded focus on her mission, ignoring the bad outcomes for everyone else that seem likely. Arthur Franz is serviceable as Dave, the good brother, though he's awfully bland compared to the handsome Robert Brown as Matt, the less-good brother—he's not really bad, just a problem drinker who tends to be full of himself and redeems himself in the end. Brown went on to minor fame as a regular on the late 60s TV show Here Come the Brides. If the unusual combo of genres sounds appealing to you, you'll like this one OK. Pictured are Franz, Crowley and Brown. [YouTube]

CASTLE IN THE DESERT (1942)

Reclusive millionaire Paul Manderley lives in a secluded castle in the middle of a California desert with his wife Lucy. He wears a scarf across half his face due to a facial scar and the couple lives off the grid, so to speak, with no electricity and no telephone. They are currently entertaining a small group consisting of Walter (Paul’s lawyer), his wife Brenda, a German doctor named Retling, and the visiting Professor Gleason. When Gleason dies after drinking a doctored cocktail, Lucy freaks out—she is a descendent of the notorious Borgia family and her late stepbrother was suspected of murder by poison. Gleason's body is taken to a nearby hotel to be found. In San Francisco, detective Charlie Chan gets a letter from Lucy asking for his help, so he heads out to the castle only to discover that Lucy denies sending the letter. Soon it's like Grand Central Station at the castle. Showing up eventually are Chan's son Jimmy, the mysterious local fortune teller Madame Saturnia, a sculptor friend of the family, a history professor of Chan's acquaintance, and a private investigator. There is another poisoning and Dr. Retling thinks that Lucy is responsible and should be committed to an asylum. Meanwhile, we discover that not everyone is who they seem and there are possibly two separate conspiracies going on. Never fear, however, as Chan soon gets to the bottom of the mysteries.

This was the last Chan movie that Twentieth Century Fox made, the last one that had a decent budget and the resources of a major studio. It is quite enjoyable, and one reason is the fabulous castle interior, apparently left over from Fox's filming of The Hound of the Baskervilles. It looks good and is shot well with some inventive camera angles here and there, and the matte painting of the castle's exterior is effective. Sidney Toler (Chan) was still in good shape and Victor Sen Yung is in his element as the modern American son who winds up comically trapped in a suit of armor. The strong supporting cast, several of whom appeared in other Chan movies, includes Douglass Dumbrille as Paul, Edmund MacDonald as Walter, Ethel Griffes as Madame Saturnia who provides some mild comic relief (and is referred to as a “queer number” by a townsperson), Steven Geray as the doctor, and Richard Derr as the history professor. It's a particularly tricky mystery with fun twists, and it's paced quickly enough to be over in an hour. I liked Chan's quip about his son: "Glamour boy who jump to conclusion sometimes gets hair mussed." Though not based directly on any Chan novel, the setting seems inspired by Earl Derr Biggers’ second Chan book The Chinese Parrot. I don't know that I can name one Charlie Chan movie as my favorite, but this is certainly near the top. [DVD]

OLD SHATTERHAND (1964)

In the American Old West, a frontier couple is killed by bow and arrow and two Comanche Indians are left dead at the scene, making it look like Apaches were responsible. But the attackers are white men on a mission: to undercut the ranchers' trust in the Apaches and to stop a treaty with the Apaches from being signed in Washington. They don't realize yet that the couple's young son escaped and can serve as a witness against them. The bad guys are led by Bradley and Dixon; the good guys are a German man named Old Shatterhand (though he's not that old), his Apache blood brother Winnetou, Winnetou's adopted son Tujunga, and an actual old guy named Sam Hawkens. There are casualties (surprisingly, the boy is killed during a shooting match by one of the villains) and the two hour running time is too much, but there is an effective climax at a fort, and the promise of more adventures with Old Shatterhand and Winnetou. The two main characters are creations of the German author Karl May (1842-1912), with Winnetou actually being the primary character in his books. The stories were very popular in Europe but weren't translated into English until the 1970s. Based on the evidence of this movie, these are fairly traditional western stories of ranchers and land grabbers, with an emphasis on friendly relations between the white men and the Indian tribes. Over a dozen movies based on May characters were made in Germany in the 1960s and were very popular. The American actor Lex Barker played Old Shatterhand in seven movies (this was the third one released), and another popular May creation, Kara Ben Nemsi, in other films. Some viewers call this a Eurowestern, akin to a spaghetti Western but filmed in Germany rather than Italy, though in style, it's much closer to the traditional Hollywood Western epics of the late 50s and 60s—and the theme song practically plagiarizes the theme of The Magnificent Seven. Barker is fine, but he's certainly no Clint Eastwood, though he is a bit of a loner. French actor Pierre Brice played Winnetou and he's acceptably stoic and respectable. Israeli actress Daliah Lavi is Paloma (aka White Dove), a part-white part-Apache woman who lives near some impressive waterfalls; she's nice eye candy but doesn't play a large role in the plot, and no real romantic tension is generated between her and Barker. Two handsome actors, Guy Madison and Rik Battaglia, are the chief bad guys. Old Sam Hawkens is played by Ralf Wolter whom I know as the porn writer in the movie Cabaret. The Yugoslavia backgrounds fill in nicely for Arizona or California. I bought a Blu-ray set of seven Karl May movies so I'll probably write a few more up in the future. Western fans should like this, but don't expect anything very different or exotic. [Blu-ray]

THE STRANGLER (1964)

The opening shot is a close-up of an eye in which is reflected a woman in her underwear. The eye we're looking at is that of Leo Kroll, a sweaty overweight young man who has snuck into the woman's apartment and proceeds to strangle her with her own stockings. He closes her eyes and pulls a small doll out of his coat which he leaves. In the next shot, he's at home where he fondles and undresses another doll, and puts it in a drawer with seven other dolls. Indeed, this is the eighth in a series of murders that have baffled the police. Kroll, a medical lab technician, has mother issues: his mom, crippled and confined to the hospital where he works, is an oppressive terror, berating Leo mercilessly especially about his friendless and celibate state: "Even as a little boy, nobody liked you!"; "You're fat!"; "You don't make enough money to keep a good-looking hussy in stockings!" His latest victim worked as a nurse at his hospital, and he scopes out his next victim, Clara, working as his mother's nurse; the two had grown close which Leo seems to resent, and Leo kills her. On the one hand, this has an unexpected benefit: the new nurse warns Leo not to mention Clara's death to his mom on the chance that the shocking news might give her a fatal heart attack. Leo immediately goes into his mom's room, tells her about Clara, and indeed mom drops dead. On the other hand, the death of two nurses from the same hospital causes Leo to come under suspicion. Leo gets his dolls at a ring toss game at a nearby arcade where he chats with the two female workers and gets a crush on one of them, Tally. He makes the mistake of killing the other arcade worker not long after an undercover cop noticed him there (figuring that the dolls left at the scenes of the crimes came from that game), and the net tightens on Leo. The clueless Leo asks Tally to run away with him, and her rejection sends him off the deep end.

This creepy little psychological thriller was based loosely on the real-life Boston Strangler who, at the time of the film's release, was still at large. Victor Buono, who plays Leo, is the main reason to see this. He gives an uncomfortably real performance, assisted by many close-ups of his rotund, sweaty face. He frequently blinks and smirks and makes halting movements. Both Buono and Ellen Corby, who plays his mother, dare to evoke almost no sympathy for their characters. We see how Corby has fucked up her son and we despise her for it—I was almost cheering for her to die in her heart attack scene—but I felt no real sympathy for Buono, just a grudging sadness for how he turned out. The murder scenes are relatively graphic though not gratuitously so, and the whole thing has a grimy, unpleasant feel to it, helped by the black & white and low budget look of the film, undercut occasionally by odd bits of humor among the cops, mainly David McLean as the boss and Michael Ryan as his assistant. Davey Davison as Tally is the standout among the women, giving a fairly subtle performance. Diane Sayer is also good as her ill-fated co-worker. Some may feel this verges on sheer exploitation, but I think it's a bit better than that, though not a must-see except for fans of Buono. Pictured is Victor Buono at top right and Michael Ryan at left. [TCM]

SINS OF ROME (1953)

aka SPARTACO

Thrace in 74 B.C. has been conquered by Rome. A councilman tries to stop Roman soldiers from desecrating the Acropolis and is killed. His daughter Amitys argues with Marcus Rufo and fellow Thracian Spartacus steps in and slaps Rufo. Both Amitys and Spartacus are arrested and made slaves, though seeing his potential during a street fight, Crassus sends Spartacus to gladiator school. Amitys is assigned to Crassus' daughter Sabina. As Amitys engages in what looks like an interpretive dance in the arena, lions are let loose and Spartacus saves Amitys from them. Crassus offers Spartacus freedom but he won't take it unless all the Thracian slaves are freed. Soon Spartacus has helped Octavius lead a rebellion of the gladiators who win a battle with the Roman army, though Crassus downplays their victory by calling it an "incident." Spartacus is given refuge by Sabina who finds him attractive. This leads to a scene in which Spartacus is ready to sex it up with Sabina, but is reminded that there are bigger things at stake. Crassus offers Spartacus a position as a Roman soldier but he turns it down and instead leads a larger battle which ends with a Roman victory and Amitys present for Spartacus to hand her his sword as he dies, as she says, "The flame you lit is still burning." This is an early Italian peplum version of the same story that Stanley Kubrick brought to the screen a few years later with Kirk Douglas as Spartacus. Though it seems to have had a decent budget, with good sets and a well done climactic battle, it can't help but feel a bit puny next to the 1960 movie, as it's not in widescreen or color, and gets fairly talky. Despite the presence of gladiators and an arena, we are shortchanged in terms of action scenes. In fact, it conforms more to the formula of the later Hercules and Maciste movies than to the historical epic genre. And up against the Hollywood epics of the same era (Quo Vadis, The Robe), it didn't stand a chance in the States and was roundly panned by critics. Massimo Girotti (Spartacus) is handsome and commanding; he played a wide range of roles over his long career, though he did get typecast a bit as an action hero in the peplum era. For me, Gianna Maria Canale (Sabina) outshines Ludmilla Tcherina (Amitys) in the sex appeal department. Interesting for me more as a novelty, not quite swords-and-sandals, not quite an epic. Pictured are Girotti and Canale. [Streaming]

SHORT NIGHT OF GLASS DOLLS (1971)

In a park in Prague, the body of reporter Gregory Moore is found. A doctor says, "Call the morgue," but in fact Moore is still barely alive, in a catatonic state. The doctors can detect no life but his body remains unusually warm so he is left on the slab for a time before an autopsy is performed and he narrates his story to us through an interior monologue. Gregory is dating young and sexy Mira and is trying to get her smuggled out of the Communist country to join him in Berlin. At a party, we meet Jessica, another reporter and former lover of Gregory's who is clearly jealous of Mira. A report of a death nearby draws Gregory from the party, but it turns out to be false. When he returns, he finds Mira is missing. Along with Jessica and another reporter, Jacques, Gregory investigates and discovers that young women have been disappearing from the streets of Prague for some time. Clues lead to a private social group of older people that meets at the Klub 99, ostensibly to listen to chamber music concerts. Elements of youth worship and black magic (including a not very sexy orgy) crop up before the surprisingly unsettling climax on the autopsy table. This Italian film directed by Aldo Lado has been accepted into the giallo canon even though it's short on gore and sex and elaborate setpieces; it's basically a mystery—Gregory acts like a detective more effectively than the real cops—with a horror overlay and excursions into not-so-subtle political commentary on authoritarian governments. The setup is reminiscent of the classic noir D.O.A. in which a man who has been fatally poisoned has only a few days left before he dies to find out who his killer is. The narrative meanders a bit and the long flashback is broken up by brief scenes on the autopsy table as a doctor keeps trying to figure out what's going on with this seemingly dead body. Visually, the movie is not particularly distinguished, but handsome French actor Jean Sorel (pictured) delivers a good if somewhat lightweight performance as Gregory. The lovely Barbara Bach has limited screen time as Mira, and Ingrid Thulin, a regular in Ingmar Bergman movies—and top billed above Sorel—is effective as Jessica, keeping us guessing for a time whose side she's on. The climax is a shocker. The title means nothing that I could figure out; its original title, Short Night of the Butterflies, makes a bit more sense due to a reference by Mira about collecting butterflies that can't fly. [YouTube]

BONANZA TOWN (1951)

A guy in a black hat and face mask, whom we later discover is the Durango Kid (Charles Starrett), chases down and stops an out-of-control stagecoach, and its sole occupant, a tinker named Smiley (Smiley Burnette), is knocked unconscious. The Kid rides away to a cave and returns in a white hat as Steve Ramsay, an old friend of Smiley's. Steve, working in secret as a treasury agent, is headed to nearby Bonanza Town, hunting down an old nemesis, Henry Hardison, who has $30,000 in marked cash. The town is run by the corrupt Krag Boseman who controls Judge Dillon, and has Reed, the town marshal, killed just as Reed is about to arrest him. But Krag takes his orders from Hardison. The judge's son Bob, ashamed of his dad's behavior, has put out a call for help from the Durango Kid to lead a group of vigilantes trying to get rid of corruption. As Steve and Smiley head to town, we get a lengthy flashback (consisting of scenes from a previous Durango Kid movie, West of Dodge City) concerning Hardison's past deeds. Hardison was assumed drowned but he survived and Steve vows to get him and Krag Boseman as well. This is the first Durango Kid western I've seen, and I just discovered there are 64 more of them if I'm inclined to keep going. All of them feature Starrett as the Kid, whose real name was always Steve though for some reason his last name changed in every movie (Duncan, Carson, Wood, Mason, Reynolds, etc.). There was also a comic sidekick (often but not always Smiley Burnette) who did some slapstick bits and usually sang a couple of tunes. Bizarrely, this movie is part of a DVD set of classic-era Columbia musicals; despite two drawled ditties by Smiley, this is by no stretch of the imagination a musical, but a B-western. But it is a painless way to spend an hour in the old West watching the Durango Kid get his men—and surprisingly, not only is there no romance, but there are no women in the cast, except in the flashback. Starrett, getting a bit long in the tooth for a Western hero, made nine more Durango Kid films in the next year, retiring from the role and the screen in 1952. Burnette's highlight is wearing a fright wig to cover his shaved head (pictured). [DVD]

GO WEST YOUNG MAN (1936)

The sex symbol actress Mavis Arden (Mae West) makes a personal appearance at the premiere of her new movie "Drifting Lady," claiming to be a totally different person than her onscreen self (which is pretty much just like Mae West's). But we see that is not necessarily so. Her much publicized studio contract bars her from getting married, though she has been seeing politician Francis Harrigan (Lyle Talbot) on the sly. She's not happy with Morgan (Warren William), her publicist, who is accompanying her on her PR tour and trying to keep an eye on her amorous activities. He tells her that her private life has to be an open book, and she replies, "It is, I’m just lookin' for someone to read it." Her car breaks down near a small rural town and, stranded while the car is being fixed, she and her entourage stay at a boarding house run partly by spinster lady Aunt Kate (Elizabeth Patterson). When hunky young mechanic Bud Norton (Randolph Scott) shows up to work on the car, Mavis makes a point of flirting, mentioning his "sinewy muscles" while casually checking out his ass. She promises to take Bud to Hollywood where he can try to sell the studios a movie sound invention he's come up with. Plot points pile up. While the sweet but naive Bud is quite taken with Mavis, his girl Joyce, Aunt Kate's niece, is upset. When Harrigan tries to track Mavis down, he mistakenly believes that she's been kidnapped and the press goes crazy. Starstruck housemaid Gladys (Isabel Jewell) hears the news and leads the cops to Morgan, who is not unhappy about all the fuss. In the end, as complications get cleared up, Morgan admits his love for Mavis, and she reciprocates with a kiss.

Mae West, who also wrote the screenplay, was past her prime here, at least commercially, as the restrictions of the 1934 Production Code hurt her career, and in the first ten minutes, West seems frozen in her old-fashioned persona, but once the movie gets on the road, she loosens up and delivers a likable performance, making mild fun of herself. Critics have claimed that West's leading men often came off as weak up against West, but both Randolph Scott (exuding a healthy and charming cornfed sexiness) and old pro Warren William hold their own. Alice Brady is fine as the manager of the boarding house, but Elizabeth Patterson as the aunt steals most of the scenes she's in; her fuddy-duddy surface is belied by her sharp tongue. When Gladys asks her about the concept of "It" (as in Clara Bow, the It Girl), Aunt Kate replies that her generation had It, "but we didn't photograph it and put it to music." She also says to a complaining boarder, "Oh, go stuff yourself a duck, you old fussbudget!" Other good lines: Mavis calls herself "susceptible" to love and Morgan says his job is "to make sure that she doesn’t suscept too easily"; Gladys does a Marlene Dietrich impression and when Morgan asks her to do the Marx Brothers, she says, "All at once?" and he replies, "Gradually if it's any easier for you." There are silly subplots about the government encouraging marriage and about a fake pregnancy, but in the end, it's harmless fun and goes down easy. Pictured are Scott and West. [TCM]

DR. MABUSE, THE GAMBLER (1922)

In Part One of this German silent film directed by Fritz Lang, we meet Dr. Mabuse, a well-known psychoanalyst who is, in secret, a major underworld figure, as he shuffles a number of photo cards and picks one to be the disguise he's going to wear. With the help of his assistant Spoerri, whom Mabuse accuses of being “hopped up on cocaine,” he applies a white wig and beard to carry out his latest scheme: he steals a secret trade pact between Holland and Switzerland and when news of the robbery gets out, the stock market goes nuts and Mabuse is able to buy up stock cheap. He then arranges for the document to be found and sells the stock at inflated prices. Next we see Mabuse give a lecture on the success he’s had with patients by eliminating as much as possible “third-party influences” by, I assume, the use of hypnosis. We see this in action when Mabuse, in a new disguise as Hugo Balling, gains control of the rich Edgar Hull at a casino and causes him to lose a fortune to Balling. When Hull goes the next day to pay off Balling, he instead meets Cara Carozza, a chorus girl and Mabuse’s lover, who seduces Hull under Mabuse’s order. Prosecutor von Wenk suspects that Hull is the latest victim of the crime lord he calls the Great Unknown and tries to work with Hull to snare the villain. At a casino, the disguised Mabuse plays cards with the disguised Wenk, but Wenk is able to resist Mabuse's mind control, so Mabuse has Wenk gassed in a taxi, tied up, and set in the river. 

At this point, we’re roughly two hours into this 4-½ hour film. Characterization has been shallow but incidents and plot points have been coming at us fast and furious. I realized here that perhaps this movie was best experienced as if it were a serial—indeed, each half is presented in chapters just like a serial would be. In fact, it works much better as a serial, and some of the more outlandish aspects of the plot, such as Mabuse's mind control powers, are easier to accept as occurrences in a traditional serial. In other developments in Part One, we see Mabuse run a successful counterfeiting ring, employing mostly blind men; Count Told, an effete doofus, is tricked by Mabuse into cheating at cards and then exposed by Mabuse to his friends; the alluring Countess Told, who has been helping Wenk with his investigation, is captured by Mabuse. Thus ends Part One. The two-hour second part moves even more quickly, wrapping up all the plotlines, concluding with Mabuse having a breakdown into full-fledged madness and being carted away.

The character of Mabuse is well known to film buffs, mostly from Lang's sound sequel, THE TESTAMENT OF DR. MABUSE, made eleven years later, which features the raving lunatic Mabuse running a major crime ring from his cell through supernatural mind control. In popular culture, this is the more famous Mabuse incarnation, partly because he was taken to be a symbolic stand-in for Hitler who was rising to power in Germany at the time. In 1960, Lang made his third and last Mabuse film, THE THOUSAND EYES OF DR. MABUSE, and German studio CCC produced several more or less official Mabuse sequels, some of which I'll be reviewing soon. Given that I saw TESTAMENT first, I was surprised to find in this origin film a rather different Mabuse persona. Rudolf Klein-Rogge, who plays Mabuse in both movies (pictured at top right), has a tendency to go a bit melodramatic at the drop of a hat. Instead of grimly powerful, the character comes off as something of a neurotic wannabe. We have to take it for granted that Mabuse has a successful crime ring, because in most of what we see, he acts frustrated and depressed, and his mania is shown with much gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair (figuratively at least). Klein-Rogge doesn't let it slip into camp and he has an expressive and threatening face. Bernhard Goetzke is both handsome and effective as the determined von Wenk, Aud Egede-Nissen is quite good as Cora who leaves the story rather sooner than I expected. The cinematography and visuals are spectacular and are always worth looking at even when the story goes a bit slack at times. The last chapter is a good playoff, with Klein-Rogge tossing off all restraint as Mabuse goes crazy. I think Mabuse's importance is in the development of the supervillain, begun perhaps with the French pulp character Fantomas and carried on through Fu Manchu, Lex Luthor, Thanos and Elon Musk. Pictured above is the dealer at the casino. [Blu-ray]