And he influenced a LOT of film genres. Metropolis was a big inspiration for Universal's Frankenstein and a thoughtful sci-fi dystopia piece. His Dr. Mabuse films questioned the mastermind myth. Dramas like Fury and Hangmen Also Die looked at the ugliness and inspiration of mass human action respectively. And his film noirs are worth a peek always.
The Big Heat is in the top three best for me of the Classic Hollywood noir films & it's probably the most brutal of all of them also. Scarlet Street I think is one of the most underrated & is one of my favourites too. Lang & Preminger did so many great noir pictures.
I LOVE The Big Heat, favorite film noir, hands down. But my favorite film from Lang is one of his lesser known ones, Hangmen Also Die. It's a wartime drama based on the actual assassination of Czechoslovakia's Reichsgovernor by local Resistance. It's a bit like Casablanca but less sentimental.
10: Sergio Leone (The Good, The Bad And The Ugly) 9: Akira Kurosawa (Seven Samurai) 8: Fritz Lang (Metropolis) 7: Alfred Hitchcock (Rear Window) 6: Frank Capra (It’s A Wonderful Life) 5: Andrei Tarkovsky (Stalker) 4: Sergey Bondarchuk (War And Peace) 3: Charlie Chaplin (City Lights) 2: Orson Welles (Citizen Kane) 1: Stanley Kubrick (A Clockwork Orange)
Fritz Lang is one the most underrated among the greatest film directors but it never stopped him from being a genius at work. Besides he had a huge influence on what the French called 'nouvelle vague'. I love his pictures so thank you Criterion!
I went on a major Fritz Lang kick in my twenties. He was one of the all-time film greats and a terrible human being. But I learned a lot from him in terms of storytelling. I owe him...and thus I honor him.
@@thejquinn He was your classic martinet as a director, threw his weight around on the set. Peter Lorre learned to hate his guts on the set of M and it's telling how few actors worked with him twice (Glenn Ford and Gloria Graham being two exceptions). In short, he seemed to be how Kirk Douglas once described Stanley Kubrick: "a talented shit".
I have just seen 2 of his films until now (M and The Testament of Dr Mabuse) but I must say there's just something about his films. I feel like I am interacting with the movie.
