1

Fritz Lang interview

The director talks about his life and work in this 1967 BBC interview

by Alexander Walker - BBC Online

Fritz Lang: The director, in my opinion, is the one who keeps everything
together. Primarily, the basic element for the film in my opinion is the
script, and the director has to be the servant to the script - he shouldn't
make too many detours. In the last years, the part of the producer has
taken over certain things that I think a director should do. I think a
producer could be a very good friend of a director if he keeps away from
him things which hamper him in his tasks, but usually, as it is now in
most studios, the producer tells him what he must do. In this case I call
the director a 'traffic cop'

Alexander Walker: Is it correct that you took the story of M from the
newspapers about the story of the Dusseldorf murders?

So many things have been written about M (1932), it has become so to

speak THE motion picture. I made it 37 years ago, and it plays
constantly in Switzerland, France and even the States if a film survives
so long then there may be a right to call it a piece of art.

The story came out of the fact that I originally wanted to make a story
about a very, very nasty crime. I was married in these days and my wife,
Thea Von Harbou, was the writer. We talked about the most hideous
crime and decided that it would be writing anonymous letters and then
one day I had an idea and I came home and said 'how would it be if I
made a picture about a child murderer?' and so we switched. At the
same time in Dusseldorf a series of murders of young and old people
2

happened, but as much as I remember the script was ready and finished
before they caught that murderer.

I had Peter Lorre in mind when I was writing the script. He was an
upcoming actor and, he had played in two or three things in the theatre
in Berlin, but never before on the screen. I did not give him a screen test,
I was just absolutely convinced that he was right for the part. It was very
hard to know how to direct him; I think a good director is not the one
who puts his personality on top of the personality of the actor, I think a
good director is one who gets the best out of his actor.

So we talked it over very, very carefully with him and then we did it. It
was my first sound film anyway, so we were experimenting a lot.

How did you come to leave Germany at the height of your career and
seek refuge outside the country?

I had made two Mabuse films and the theatre had asked me if I could
make another one because they made so much money. So I made one
which was called The Last Will of Dr Mabuse (1932).

I have to admit that up to two or three years before the Nazis came I was
very apolitical; I was not very much interested and then I became very
much interested. I think the London Times wrote about the fact that I
used this film as a political weapon against the Nazis - I put Nazi
slogans into the mouth of the criminal.

I remember very clearly one day, I was in the office and some SA men
came in and talked very haughtily that they would confiscate the
3

picture. I said if you think they could confiscate a picture of Fritz Lang in
Germany then do it, and they did. I was ordered to go and see Goebbels,
and they were not very sympathetic to me, but I had to go, maybe to get
the picture freed, so I went.

I will never forget it - Goebbels was a very clever man, he was

indescribably charming when I entered the room, he never spoke at the
beginning of the picture. He told me a lot of things, among other things
that the 'Fuhrer' had seen Metropolis (1926)and another film that I had
made - Die Niebelungen (1924) - and the 'Fuhrer' had said 'this is the
man who will give us THE Nazi film.' I was perspiring very much at this
moment, I could see a clock through the window and the hands were
moving, and at the moment I heard that I was expected to make the
Nazi movie I was wet all over and my only thought was 'how do I get
out of here!'. I had my money in the bank and I was immediately
thinking 'how do I get it out?' But Goebbels talked and talked and finally
it was too late for me to get my money out! I left and told him that I was
very honoured and whatever you can say. I then went home and
decided the same evening that I would leave Berlin that I loved very
much.

AW: Mirrors and their reflections are always ominous features of Lang's
movies; the mirror image is his dramatic metaphor. In M the criminal
underworld is clearly a reverse image of bourgeois society.

In his films the individual wages a fight on the side of goodness and
order against the very act of forces of evil and chaos as embodied in the
diabolical Dr. Mabuse (1922), or the lynch mob in Fury or the gangland
boss in The Big Heat (1953).
4

But the fight is psychological too: each Lang hero is a prey to forces
inside himself that he cannot control. Forces that may drive him to
murder in spite of himself, like Peter Lorre in M (1931), or Edward G
Robinson in Woman In the Window (1944) and Scarlet Street (1945).

The fight is one that is fixed in advance by fate, the director looks
literally down on his actors like an ironical Greek god, his characters are
like rats in a maze driven along by his set ups, by his camera movements
and by the relentless logic of his editing to a destiny which is pre-
ordained and from which even Lang can't save them.

The theme of theme of man and his destiny and of man trapped in an
inimical kind of fate runs right through your work?

I am quite sure that this is correct. It would be very interesting if a

psycho-analyst could tell me why I am so interested in these things.

I think from the beginning, one of my first films, the fight of man against
his destiny or how he faces his destiny has interested me very much. I
remember that I once said that it is not so much that he reaches a goal, or
that he conquers this goal - what is important is his fight against it.

It must be very difficult to make films about destiny and God in that
sense today, when people don't believe in heaven or hell in the vast
majority. Do you substitute violence or pain?

Naturally I don't believe in God as the man with a white beard or such a
thing, but I believe in something which you can call God in some kind of
an eternal law or eternal mathematical conception of the universe. When
5

they said in the States that God is dead, I considered it wrong. I said to
them 'God has only changed his address - he is not really dead.' That
seems for me to be the crux: naturally we cannot believe in certain things
that have been told us over the centuries.

When you talk about violence, this has become in my opinion a definite
point in the script, it has a dramatogical reason to be there. After the
Second World War, the close structure of family started to crumble. It
started naturally already with the first one. There is really very, very
little in family life today. I don't think people believe anymore in
symbols of their country- for example, I remember the flag burning in
the States. I definitely don't think they believe in the devil with the horns
and the forked tail and therefore they do not believe in punishment after
they are dead. So, my question was: what are people feeling? And the
answer is physical pain. Physical pain comes from violence and I think
today that is the only fact that people really fear and it has become a
definite part of life and naturally also of scripts.
6

Fritz Lang: The Lost Interview

In the summer of 1972, the enigmatic German director and motion

picture pioneer spoke candidly to two young journalists

Lloyd Chesley and Michael Gould | Published February 10, 2004

If the 1960s gave rise to the young maverick director, it was also the era
that spotlighted the grand old masters of the art. Talk shows,
bookshelves and campus classrooms were enriched by legendary
cinema pioneers who were magnanimous in sharing their knowledge
and happy to be basking in the adulation of vibrant young minds.

In 1972 my friend, Michael Gould, and I had just graduated from the
film program at York University, Toronto, where the school had hosted
a number of such luminaries. When we decided to visit Los Angeles
together, Michael arranged a number of interviews.

The LA summer was already very hot when we arrived, and

Summitridge Drive, high in the Beverly Hills, seemed like a dusty path
in some small town on the edge of the Mojave Desert. Fritz Lang's house
was small, but it evoked his famous Bauhaus mansion of his UFA days
in Weimar, Germany.

Lang welcomed us warmly, smiling and extending both hands, one to

each of us, in a gracious gesture full of old-world charm. Surprisingly,
considering his reputation on the set, he was a pussycat—soft-spoken,
7

thoughtful and very patient with his two young fans. He served us
coffee and delicate cookies from a Viennese pastry shop. Lang had
recently undergone a major operation and was recuperating at home. He
was tired, but gave freely for several hours, generous with his thoughts
and emotions in discussing everything from the art of film to the politics
of the '60s.

At that time, Garth Drabinsky was publishing a Canadian film magazine

which was supposed to run these interviews, but the magazine went
under. Some years later Michael sent the tapes to our professor, Jay
Leyda, who had become Chair of Film Studies at New York University,
and Leyda deposited the tapes there. It wasn't until 20 years later that
we decided to retrieve the tapes, and with great help from the NYU Film
Studies Center and Archive (especially Ann Harris), the tapes were
recovered.

After transcribing all 11,000 words of our conversation, we found the

man and his views to be as fascinating today as on that hot day 30 years
ago. What follows is an excerpt of that interview.

Lloyd Chesley (LC): Do you think of yourself as any single nationality?

Fritz Lang (FL): Not at all. I was born in Vienna, I was working a very
long time in Germany, one of my best films I made in France, and then I
was working here—so I became a kind of international mind. I don't
belong to anyone, and I don't think that what I am or what I do is
important. I think films are important and, generally, I am very much
opposed to interviews because a film should speak for me.
8

LC: In your work in Germany, you dealt with fantasies and fairytale-like
romances, but with M you made an abrupt switch to realism.

FL: Not quite correct. I was born in Austria, yes? I became interested in
the German human being. I wanted to make a film about the romantic
German human being in Destiny; or the German after the First World
War, with the Dr. Mabuse films; or the German of legend with Die
Nibelungen; or the German of the future with Metropolis. And then I
became a tiny bit tired, which had something to do with my private life,
about which I don't want to talk.

Michael Gould (MG): In Metropolis when Maria, the robot, dances for
the men in formal attire, there seems to be a series of jump cuts. Were
these in the original?

FL: Darling, no. There are no jump cuts. I'll tell you what happened.
People cut one film, two films, frames. I don't know. When I was in East
Berlin they wanted to reconstruct Metropolis and I couldn't help them
because I don't have a script. [Note: the current reconstruction retains
these cuts.]

MG: Your German pictures were some of the most expensive films made
at the time.

FL: There has been written a lot of lies about Metropolis. There were
never thousands of extras. Never.

MG: What was the number?

9

FL: Two hundred and fifty, 300. It depends how you use a crowd. After
the first World War there was an inflation, you know? In Die
Nibelungen, I think I had 150 knights. The uniforms would have cost a
fortune, but when it came to paying it was no more as if we would have
paid one knight at the beginning of the film. It was the first time, I think,
in history that a country had such inflation.

MG: Were you anxious to begin making sound films?

FL: No. When I made Woman in the Moon it was my own company, and
the release was UFA. One of the higher echelon from UFA was in the
United States and had heard sound on the first Jolson film. He came
back and asked me to make sound when the rocket starts. And for me, it
was wrong. It was breaking the style of the film. So I said no. And UFA
said “If you don't do it, we break our contract; we don't pay you
anything!” I said ‘Okay, we'll see.' Then my lawyer said to me “Look,
Fritz, you have to deliver everything which you promised.” I didn't get
paid for eight or nine months, and UFA hoped that I would finally
collapse, but I didn't.

MG: Your themes changed from epic to intimate when you began
making sound films.

FL: I got tired from the big films. I didn't want to make films anymore. I
wanted to become a chemist. About this time an independent man—not
of very good reputation—wanted me to make a film and I said ‘No, I
don't want to make films anymore.' And he came and came and came,
and finally I said ‘Look, I will make a film, but you will have nothing to
say for it. You don't know what it will be, you have no right to cut it,
10

you only can give the money.' He said “Fine, understood.” And so I
made M.

We started to write the script and I talked with my wife, Thea von
Harbou, and I said ‘What is the most insidious crime?' We came to the
fact of anonymous poison letters. And then one day I said I had another
idea—long before this mass murderer, [Peter] Kurten, in the Rhineland.
And if I wouldn't have the agreement for no one to tell me anything, I
would never, never have made M. Nobody knew Peter Lorre.

LC: Do you prefer to participate in writing the script?

FL: I think, generally speaking, the scriptwriter, the script creator,

unfortunately, is not judged correctly here in Hollywood. I think that is
very wrong, and when I work with a writer I was always working hand
in glove.

In Fury, there was a four-page outline. This outline was only one thing
that interested me. It was also that one could make a film about
lynching. But the outline itself put the emphasis on something else. So,
when I found this in the chests of MGM, Bartlett McCormack, a very
good writer, and I talked about what I wanted to do. I said we can make
a picture about lynching in the United States. I collected all the
newspapers I could get and we cut out all the reports about lynchings
and we started to work together.

Lang’s groundbreaking Metropolis, made in 1927 and a staple of film

school classrooms and art house theaters worldwide, has been re-
released several times since its premiere, most recently for its 75-year
anniversary in 2002.
11

LC: Fury is a great film for the American audience.

FL: Our first hero was a lawyer. The supervising producer called us and
said “No, children, that is wrong.” And we said ‘Why?' Because we felt
if we make the hero a lawyer, he can talk more. And this man said “No,
it must be somebody with whom the audience can identify—a Joe Doe.”
That was the first direction I got about American audiences. We were to
rewrite the whole first two sequences for a gas station attendant.

In German films, we would always see the hero in most of the films was
a superhuman being—without the kind of trunks you usually put onto
Superman! In America it should be the average citizen so that the
audience can identify with this man or woman, right? I remember when
Die Nibelungen was shown here, in Pasadena. The audience didn't
understand it. They had no fun with it because they had no relationship
to the legend. The only legend which, in my opinion, the American
knows are the westerns.

So, when I got the offer to make Western Union, I had to not make a film
of reality. I had to make a film which was in reality a legend. And it was
something very peculiar. After I made the film I got a letter from some
old-timers and they wrote and said “Dear Mr. Lang: We just saw
Western Union and liked it very much. We have never seen a film that
shows the west as it really was, except Western Union.” Which wasn't
true, but it was the west they dreamed about—the past they wanted.

LC: So do you feel you must approach each specific audience

differently?
12

FL: The creative process is something very peculiar. I like audiences.

There is a saying that an audience is stupid; it has the mind of a 13-year
old girl. I never believed this. I try to put something in each film which
people could discuss at home, something that was not only pure
entertainment.

I have nothing against entertainment films. I think if you are a worker

you should still eat something. I think so, no? If he gets something
which entertains him and there is something which makes him think
about some social things which are not quite correct, then he can talk it
over, let's say with his wife, right? He says “Look, what was this?” And
she says “No, that was not quite as you said it was.” Then he says “He
said something different? Let's see it a second time.” And they go and
then I not only have two people who want to see the film once—I have
two people who want to see the film twice.

LC: Do you worry if the film makes money?

FL: Look, the studios are responsible for the money and they want to
know how many people were in the theater. They want to know if they
get their money back. I go to the theater, too, and I want to know how
many people have seen the film. But I am not interested in the money; I
am only interested how many people I reach with my ideas.

MG: Do you storyboard each shot?

FL: Yeah. Each close-up. When I go and start to shoot, I know exactly
what I want to do. I work at night at my desk and I know the set; I have
the floor plan. I make a rehearsal; I go with my actors through every
single shot and my cameraman knows this.
13

And then we shoot everything in one direction and then we throw the
lights around and shoot in the other direction. It can save money, not to
make a film cheaper, but so I can use this money in another way. I am
not one of those directors (and I am not saying that these directors are
wrong), who see things in the studio and start to change his mind when
he sees the set.

MG: Do you prefer studio or location shooting?

FL: I definitely prefer studio.

MG: Why?

FL: Simple. I make a shot of you, huh? And five hours later I want to
make a close-up of you with the same lighting. But when I make it
outside the sun is in the morning there, and five hours later it's there, so
I cannot make the shot anymore because it's different light. You
understand?

MG: Yes. Is location shooting a bad trend?

FL: There are many trends which I personally don't like, but this is
something else. I don't see any necessity. For example, on M, everything
was made in the studio.
14

MG: The scene in Man Hunt, where he gets off the boat in London,
reminded me of a scene in Pabst's Pandora's Box.

FL: You know, all the shots were made on the lot of 20th Century Fox.
There was a lake, and when they follow him with the dogs, that was
made in it, but otherwise the valley where he creeps up on George
Sanders, it was made in the studio.

LC: How about the opening—that shot that looks at his muddy
footprints and leads up to him on the cliff with the rifle?

FL: Built in the studio.

MG: Did you allow your actors to improvise?

FL: No. No improvisation. I change something when an actor comes and

says “I cannot speak this line,” but I don't change the meaning of the
line. I don't like what many directors do—to play the part for an actor.
You know, many directors say “Look, I have no time to explain it to you,
for Christ's sake.” I don't want to have 25 little Fritz Langs running
around on the screen.

MG: Why did you use Sylvia Sidney in your first three American films?

FL: When you work the first time with an actor or actress there is always
a kind of strange relationship. For example, the girl has to step on a
ladder and jump down. So you go to the actress and say ‘Look, Miss so-
and-so, I apologize, but when do you have your tender days?' She says
15

“Why?” I say: ‘There is a scene where you have to jump down from a
ladder and I don't want you, when you don't feel well, that you must do
such a thing.' So she tells it to me, and there is immediately a
relationship between director and actor which is a kind of intimacy.
Nothing personal, but a professional intimacy. And then you start to talk
with her. You just have a feeling. You make a hand move and you know
exactly.

LC: Which actors did you find the most sympathetic?

FL: Darling, you cannot ask me if I think “How is this director?” or

“How is this actor?” I think this is very unfair. Neither if the European
actors are better than the Americans or if the European actresses are
more sexy.

MG: How do you see the difference between action and violence in film?

FL: Do you remember in M once the child is killed? She was playing
with a ball and then he buys her a balloon. Now, we see just a bush and
then the ball rolls out and comes to a standstill. Immediately we know
that the girl is dead and then we see the balloon flying away. This is
action, in a certain way. It is not violence.

At the time when I did M, I had to show one thing—how a murderer

rapes a child, right? Let us say he slits her up. Fine. Aside from the fact
that it is very horrible to look at, and very tactless, it is only one way to
show it and many people would look away. But if you don't show it—if
you just let the audience know what happened—then every single man
16

and woman can imagine the most horrible things, correct? And then
they help me. I don't show any violence and I don't have to show them
the horrible thing of how a child has been raped.

MG: In The Big Heat, when Gloria Grahame gets hot coffee in her face,
it's off-screen.

FL: I made it so the water was really boiling, clouds of steam coming
out. There is violence in that, but it was the violence of the evil people. I
always thought that I never showed violence, which is wrong. Have you
seen the fight in Cloak and Dagger? This fight is violent. I was very
proud. Gary Cooper, who usually never made a fight—his double made
the fights—he made this fight. I am, let me call myself, a liberal, which is
not very correct, but let me call me that; and I hate fascists, and this was
the fight of a decent man against a fascist. So, seemingly, my hatred got
the better hand of me.

LC: Do you think violence is a growing trend in America?

FL: When I came to this country, there were not so many murders and
not so much shooting. The average American is violent. I am very
unhappy today with what's going on in the United States. I can't
understand, with the best of my intelligence, how anyone can be for the
war. And you know what I don't understand? That everyone talks only
about the 56,000 Americans that have been killed. What about the
100,000 Vietnamese? What do we have to do over there? We have an
undeclared war. First we see some people come and bomb and then they
catch someone. They are mercenaries. They are not prisoners of war
because there is no war. Congress has not declared a war. It depresses
me very, very much. I am very unhappy with what's going on.
17

LC: Do you have hope in American youth and the various youth
movements?

FL: Yeah. One hundred percent.

MG: Let's get back to movies on that positive note. In Man Hunt, the
love story between Walter Pidgeon's and Joan Bennett's characters is
very oblique.

FL: Here is a girl who is a whore. She's in bed, crying, and she doesn't
understand that he doesn't sleep with her because she loves him. And
maybe she loves him twice as much; maybe she wouldn't love him if he
would have gone to bed with her. But everything which he does to her is
something so new. It has never happened before, to her, that anyone
kisses her hand. Is it really necessary to show naked breasts for such a
thing?

LC: Still, Pidgeon's character seems very much a white knight.

FL: No, but look. When Goebbels offered me the leadership of German
film, that same evening I left Berlin. So, naturally, at a time like this I
think ‘What should I say?' Otherwise, would I rather end up in a
concentration camp? And I looked out the window and it was already
too late to get my money—that is another story—thinking what can
happen to me ‘til I leave Germany. And do you think if the most
luscious girl would have come, I would have gone to bed with her? No. I
have other things to do.
18

MG: Did you have final cut in your American films?

FL: In While the City Sleeps there was a scene with Ida Lupino and Dana
Andrews sitting in a bar—I had seen something similar in New York.
She orders a drink and he's already drunk and she opens her purse and
takes a small frame out, looks at it and smiles. And you know
immediately she is naked; she is on the make for him. You see the
barkeeper, who looks over and would like to see it, too; and Dana
Andrews wants to look because everybody knows they will see Ida
Lupino naked. Dana Andrews grabs her wrist and the little frame falls
over the bar. The barkeeper jumps on it and looks at it, and now you
show it for the first time: and it's a naked baby on a bear rug. And the
audience laughs.

The producer wanted to cut that out. “It's not funny.” I said ‘You have
no right to cut it out. But after the preview you can do whatever you
want.' So I had to fight with him because I don't want to have to fight
five days. We left it in. And it comes to the preview. I am sitting there,
holding my tongue, and the film goes and goes and now it comes. And I
am waiting and waiting and the audience starts to laugh and applaud.
And the producer runs out and meets my cutter outside and the cutter
says “You see, Lang was right.” The producer said “Yes, he was right
here, but I will show it at a preview until the audience doesn't laugh.”
And then I cut it. Look, against the stupidity of human beings, you are
powerless.

MG: Do you prefer your German films or those you made in America?

FL: If you have many children, which one do you like best? Can you
give me an answer? You have no children! Well, we'll talk when you
have some, then.
19

LC: Peter Bogdanovich, in his book, implies that your films improved
when you came to the States.

It was only after he was given total control over his project that Lang
made the classic M, starring Peter Lorre. If it weren’t for the agreement,
“I would never, never have made M,” he says.

FL: But wait a minute. It is different when you work for two different
audiences. The European audiences are another audience from the
American audience. Right?

LC: Would you say you are attracted by certain themes?

FL: What I resent in today's filmmaking is they are “special cases.” They
are never, or mostly never—like in Fury, a case of lynching; or like in M,
the child murderer. These are eternal problems. If I would—

if I could—make a film today with my eyes, you know what I would do?
I would do a film about a 15-year old girl who is pregnant and how she
has to face life. That is something which happened 20 years ago and will
happen 20 years from now.

LC: In Bogdanovich's book, you mentioned something about a project

you had for Jeanne Moreau, The Diary of a Career Girl?

FL: Yeah. There was a time in Hollywood where there were career girls
who said everything can be sacrificed for a career. I wrote an outline, but
I didn't have time to follow it up.
20

LC: An interesting theme in light of women's liberation.

FL: Yeah. Maybe you are right. I didn't think about that. I suppose you
would have to make long, long research. When I made Clash by Night, I
was looking through these women's magazines and I found that over 77
percent of women had extramarital relationships. So you have to try to
find out what's really going on in life before you make such a film. And
about women's liberation I couldn't, because I have not much experience
with young women.

LC: Clash by Night and Human Desire both open with wonderful
documentary sequences.

FL: With regard to Clash by Night, Nicholas Musuraca, who is a

wonderful cameraman, we went up to Monterey and we had nothing to
do so we started to shoot a bit. After three days we had 10,000 feet. And
we sent it back to Jerry Wald and we expected that he would say “You
son of a bitches, what are you doing with the film?” But we got a wire
“Congratulations. That's a wonderful opening!”

I didn't want to make Human Desire. There was a time when there was
a standstill in Hollywood and I wanted to step out of this film—for
reasons which would be too long now, and I would have to attack a man
who is dead. Harry Cohn said “Fritz, naturally you can get out. You
don't have to do it, but according to your contract you are still under
contract to Columbia and you can't get paid and you will not get paid
and you have no right to work anywhere else as long as you don't
work…” So I made Human Desire. I don't know any other desire than
human desire.
21

MG: What filmmakers do you admire?

FL: I admire all film which is good. But you can learn only from a bad
film, not from a good film. I prove it: if you are an audience, you go to a
good film. Period. If you see a bad film and you say “What is this? That
is wrong. I wouldn't have done it that way,” then you have learned
something.

MG: This question has nothing to do with movies. But what do you do
to relax?

FL: I couldn't relax. I made only movies in my life. That was all. MM