On Fritz Lang

Author(s): Raymond Bellour

Source: SubStance, Vol. 3, No. 9, Film (Spring, 1974), pp. 25-34
Published by: University of Wisconsin Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3684509
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ON FRITZ LANG

RaymondBellour
An amazing fate, Fritz Lang's, and fraught with paradox.
Like Stroheim, he was one of the foremost directors,
yet
not an actor embellished by the surprising prestige accorded
every wretched performance; he was like Sternberg, yet without
a woman like Marlene at his side; like Murnau, dying (forty
years ago) a death wrapped in mystery; in a sense, Fritz Lang
was the first in his day, solely for his work as a filmmaker,
to have become cinematic legend.
There is Welles, of course,
again an actor, whose reputation
(being at least mythic) rests
And there is Hitchcock.
But the
upon having provoked America.
an imagfacility,
myth here is concealed beneath a sociological
man. In a sense Lang alone incarery which hides the essential
or
the concept of direction
nates, decisively
yet abstractly,
his opNor is his life foreign to this idea:
mise-en-scene.
to Goebbels, his flight from Germany and his disilluposition
sioned return after twenty years of exile in America; the way
as scenarist
he visibly
poses, from the filming of Siegfried,
of destiny -- all this gives Lang a quality of violent compaction.
This is the horizon which protects the pure and rigorous
image of cinema par excellence.
From Les trois Lumieres in 1922, each of Lang's films con-- the greatest,
with Murnau,
firms his status as a great artist
of the German filmmakers.
Twelve years later he is in Hollywood.
Enmeshed in the gears of the American machine, he produces twena little
Even though
more than one per year.
ty-three films:
he often turns down one project and chooses another, he films
and social
every possible
psychological
Hollywood subject:
and adventure stories,
war films, Westerns; he
drama, detective
does everything but American or musical comedy, and he touches
the
on that in You and Me. Lang becomes a Hollywood director;
shoots a remake of
independent author of Metropolis reluctantly
He is a great director,
La Bate humaine.
praised for his exceptional rigor and keenness.
Nothing more. The grandeur of
distance.
Hollywood amply rewards the absence of critical

SUB-STANCE No 9, 1974

25

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26

Raymond Bellour

But when Lang leaves America in 1958, his reputation has alFor Astruc, Rivette,
Rohmer or
ready been forming in France.
Not that
Douchet, Lang is no longer just like other filmmakers.
he is the greatest;
it's quite another matter:
Lang embodies,
in a sense, the very possibility
of cinema -- what is ambiguousdirection
or mise-en-scene.
In the double set of his
ly called
American and German works, he shows a particular
faithfulness,
rather explicit,
and more and more strict.
The paradox of Lang's
American films, set back to back as they are to their German
rests in this:
counterparts,
they properly show how a vision
of things takes form; what one might call ultimately,
if vaguein his
ly, a vision of the world which Lang showed unequivocally
earliest
films.
Thus Lang acknowledges,
through his own singular method of comparison, a primacy of vision;
it is not by
chance from Fury on, both in the script and the picture,
Lang
techimplicitly
stages the vision itself,
using every possible
the presence of the inquisitor,
the reporter,
nique, especially
and the photographer -- the man who sees the image and retains
its appearance
in the narrow rectangle of his movie camera.
Every filmmaker, in a sense, defines the essence of his art;
but is there a single one of them for whom, as for Lang, the
film is the ultimate metaphor, stark and beyond all circuity?
When a Sternberg film opens the possibility
of vision,
we are
sent back, as soon as we look for a reference point, to Woman,
the visible
with Hitchcock, we are sent besubject and object;
to a dizzying duplicayond a moral system bound to appearances
tion of a symbolically
doubled subject;
in Eisenstein's
work,
dialecand visual potential
of the historical
to a theatrical
tic.
But what can be said precisely
for Lang:
vision of vision?
This has none of the ineffective
redoubling which would deplete
Lang's art, ensnaring it in its own myth; on the contrary, the
horizon is enlarged at every point, corroborating
Lang's reply
to the question:
"What is the most indispensable
quality for
a filmmaker?"
"He must know life."
By this we must understand:
It remains to dislife as a place where vision is experienced.
cover what lies beneath this word, "vision",
how exactly Lang
endows it with force; and, finally,
in what form it shows or
shows through.
the passion,
which some find peculiThis is what explains
ar, of certain of Lang's admirers for his last three films.
Made in Germany by a man whom the American experience made masof fiction
ter of all the artifices
(with one theme and subjects
from his first period),
Die tausend Augen des Dr. Mabuse, Der
Tiger von Eschnapur, and Das indische Grabmal offer this paraand misleadingly
dox:
they are at once surprisingly
disguised
Naive and almost puerile on the surface, they are not
frank.
and
for beneath the conventionality
unlike the Hindu doublet;
the last Mabuse reveals a particuof the serial,
gratuitousness
larly urgent gravity of theme. These extremely theoretical
alibi
of Lang's American work while
films reject the reassuring
into a Germany where nothing
its basic facticity
transposing
has survived;
they disavow the certainty of the myths which

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On Fritz

Lang

27

subtend the German period and thus bring them to the level of
of film and hisa double adventure, individual
and collective,
torical
conscience.
irony belies
Lang's destructive-reflective
utmost integrity:
he makes a game of the hackneyed subjects
he is
to himself, but
offered, as if through a derisory faithfulness
in his third Mabuse he foils the ultimate games of vision and
which guides it
the myth into a reflection
life,
precipitating
The
towards its ultimate reality:
the cinema as possible.
metaphor for this is evident not only in the symbolic title Die
tausend Augen ("The Thousand Eyes"), but in the dazzling visual
of television
screens which Louxor Mabuse, reinmultiplication
carnated in his son, places
in the hotel lounge -- as if to imAs for
ply (it has often been noted) -- the director himself.
the two Indian films:
they are precarious,
penetrated by
and just stubblinding moments; they speak only of a beautiful
and
bornness where despair blossoms; where the mise-en-scene
even its idea (as Blanchot said of writing) seems, in the silence
of its components, an inabilwhich encloses
it, a dissociation
ity to lie which reaches the tragic.
It is therefore not surprising
that these films -- the last
of perhaps the only oeuvre which covers nearly fifty years of
the vital matter by comparison with the
filmmaking -- constitute
myth. For in France today, where Fritz Lang is becoming legend
(far from America which was not able to recognize him, and his
native Germany which didn't know how to rediscover
him), those
to
who flock to the CinemathBque come more or less consciously
admire the man who in his work saw film as the ultimate metain
has precipitated
phor, and whom Godard, by a happy decision,
the double game of Le Mepris.
Lang's only trump cards are the
with Greek legend, just as in Le Tomstatues colored violently
and the acbeau hindou his trumps are the gardens, the palaces,
tors placed there like huge marionettes around whom beauty has
been suddenly born.
Despised by the producer who pays him, despising everything which is not life or the power to tell the life
but always anxiwhich vision masks, Lang -- alone, disillusioned,
ous to retain truth within and around himself -- does not finish
the life which is
shooting The Odyssey, does not finish relating
already woven into the threads of his own fiction.
game with his storLang plays, then, a refined and skillful
ies and with each element of his material:
varied, assertive,
and more or less disguised,
a game which it would be fitting to
formulate visibly
He himself, as one
through his forty films.
In the handsome documentary
might expect, offers little
help.
book put together by Alfred Eibel1,
himself,
Lang contradicts
to questions
of ideas and story,
jokes, limits his discussion
to thematic, political
and social
aspects of each of his films,
or confines himself, with seeming irony, to remarks about techinvites us
But the testimony of his many collaborators
nique.
to ask, if indirectly,
the question of form about which Lang alFor all of them -- actors,
ways claims ignorance.
scriptwriters,
attentive
cameramen, set designers -- describe an extraordinarily
man, concerned with the smallest gesture, demanding from each

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28

Raymond Bellour

frame of film a rigorous life which quite often defies the illuFrom his book (sparsely
of his tale.
written in imsory banality
him
passioned
episodes which trace Lang's steps -- illuminating
and making him more accessible),
the certainty
is born that the
more Lang insists on the apparent meaning of his films, the more
the enigma of that meaning must be determined through a systematic exploration
of the form through which multiple correspondences
are presented and which alone illuminates
the irreducible
feeling
of totality.
It is surprising,
then, that no text has yet thrown full
light2 on an author so intimately bound to the essence of his
art -- as Claude Ollier has done, for example, in his very
beautiful
study (if only on a single film) of Josef von Sternthe infinite
and rigor of
berg3; and, considering
diversity
Lang's films, that no one has sought to define the paradoxes and
the strange, broken unity which show through both the entire documentary book devoted to him and his recent confession which he
a
entitles
in memory of his birthplace;
"La nuit viennoise"4
and chalstatement so admirable in tone, in details,
ambiguities
lenge.
I intend here only to bring together haphazardly some of
the very numerous elements which, when described,
analyzed in
and arranged according to the series of connections which
detail,
they demarcate, would be the basis for a systematic approach to
the Langian universe.
Notes, of a sort, for a "cinemanalaysis".
The position
of an author is defined by the relation1.
In the film, one
ship which he maintains with his characters.
rests on the systems of vision which
form of this relationship
how the author fragmentarily5 indicates
reveal:
the pictures
within the continthe viewpoint of his characters
and encloses
the viewpoint of the film.
uity of his own viewpoint constitutes
for example, generally remains external to what he
Minnelli,
makes the clearly
defined vision of
shows; Hitchcock,
inversely,
In this
a part of the system of his own vision.
his characters
ambiguity.
regard Lang himself shows a weighty and decisive
univocal manner of framing a characThere is one strictly
to enclose the shot of the seen object between
ter's vision:
shots of the seeing subject.
two identical
Lang seldom does
and then
of such certitude,
the possibility
more than indicate
it immediately and to plunge it into an equionly to challenge
in
This occurs with the three looks of the assassin
vocality.
While the City Sleeps.
-- At the time of the first murder, he is framed from the
is
one feels that the assassin
waist up, in front of the door:
but cannot say what; a very
watching something in particul'ar,
of the door latch follows, but the shot which
brief close-up
comes next is itself
gaze.
divergent in terms of the assassin's
-- The assassin
enters the studio of Doroth6e Kyne: he
sees her in a mirror smoothing her stocking with a long and
showing the
very gentle movement; the close-up which follows,
in the middle of the room, says nothing about his supassassin
posed point of view.

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On Fritz

Lang

29

-- Later he leaves the house and moves towards a low window which looks
into the bar; he bends down, one sees a long
shot of the barroom; we are assured the camera is outside the
indiroom by the deformation of the glass;
everything clearly
the assassin's
cates that the shot reflects
exact view, but
Lang
nothing proves it; for instead of reframing the assassin,
passes to something else.
In a different manner (using three methods of non-discloswhich
ure) Lang allows ambiguity to hover over the relationship
An attitude which
unites character and director in the vision.
one finds again and again in almost all his films, and which is
leper
completely manifest, for example, in the twice-repeated
And
sequence of Le Tigre du Bengale and Le Tombeau hindou.
which Lang deliberately
plays upon in The Blue Gardenia, where
Norah's waking gives way to deformations in the substance of the
either
frame, again leaving us faced with two possibilities:
a
can precisely
situate
Lang is showing that only an artifice
viewpoint -- that vision of the real alone cannot; or he is deof
making an assertion
liberately
moving to a symbolic level,
this trick shot which, far from identifying the author with the
him from them even more.
characters
even for a moment, distances
2.
The author defines himself by his point of view towards
the objects
he unveils.
This point of view is manifest in the
at which the camera is held.
The
first place by the distance
this variation
distance
of the camera from its objects varies;
a first level of cinematographic
constitutes
(or unrealreality
With Lang it seems to be either vivid
ity) and of all analysis.
or disguised
in manner, keeping constant (by his multiple detours)
the fascination
and the difficulty
one experiences
in watching
his films.
From a thousand possible
examples, here is an almost theoretical
one from The Blue Gardenia:
Lang devotes three shots
to evoke his three heroines in bed in their shared apartment:
-- The camera frames a comic-book in close-up,
then draws
Rose sprawled on her bed, seen in the light from
back, revealing
the night lamp which she has not put out.
-- With a wide still-shot,
the camera frames Crystal who is
name in her sleep.
murmuring her lover's
-- The camera frames in long-shot the corner of the room
and advances with a travelling-shot
where Norah's bed is placed,
until she is isolated;
thus only Norah is shown closely
(for she
is the main character);
to the radio beneath
she is listening
her sheets.
The distance,
the impression of distance,
also depends esHence,
sentially
upon the interplay of forms within the picture.
(a constant with Lang), the deepening of the vision through an
unforseen opening.
In Mrs. Robby's office in the shadowy house
of Le Secret derriere la Porte, an engraving with sharply defined and fleeting lines catches one's eyes, as if multiplying
the view.
in Le Testament du docteur Mabuse, when
Similarly,
Kent and his friend Lilli
sit down in a caf6 to confide their
confusion to each other, the camera frames in the upper part of

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30

Raymond Bellour

the shot a window which looks out on a long, white, almost unreal
avenue whose dizzying depths are made more vividly manifest when
a passer-by
(only his head is visible)
appears and crosses the
I shall note another such shot in La Mort de Siegfried,
frame.
drowned almost totally
in white; young newlyweds are conversing
charmingly near a bench which is placed against a background of
but above the trees, five wide arches caught in shadow
foliage;
appear to tear the frame; this contrast leaves a feeling of distance which unbalances
the vision and secretly
announces the
fatal outcome of the plot.
Let us also note the interplay of distance which hinges not
on the distribution
of fixed masses but on movements within the
frame.
Thus, almost thematized -- so often do they lend support
to the story -- are the opening and closing doors.
They constantas they reveal more or less hidden
ly vary spatial
relationships
Such are the
depths -- according to the light and the terrain.
doors which one encounters in each of Lang's films, most partiin the Chinese quarter in Les Araignees,
the cemetery in
cularly
Les Trois Lumieres, in Le Tigre du Bengale and Le Tombeau hindou-that multiplies
when Henri Mercier,
everywhere, with a violence
going down the corridors as the doors are closing ends up in the
tigers'
pit.
the queen's cloaks in La Vengeance de Krimhilde
Similarly,
billow and fall endlessly,
sometimes
(cloaks with wide skirts)
of forms in the shot:
Krimradically
modifying the distribution
hilde (addressing
the horde of Huns from the top of a staircase)
and
with her cloak -- black and dull on the inside, brilliant
adorned on the other -- subjects
the frame to a strange play of
shadows and surfaces as she raises
or lowers her arms against
her body.
A configuration
which Lang will remember, and which
will occur again (though less theatrically
and more closely
bound to the narrative
in Die Spione,
adventure of the picture)
where the beautiful
Sojia unfurls her immense black and silver
lam6 cape around Haighi in the same game of oppositions.
3.
There are innumerable formal and thematic references,
which come into play from film to film and organconfigurations
ize the enigmatic web of Langian knotwork. Hence the sign, the
the significant
token, around which the narration is organized,
with a close-up which is the first
object Lang always indicates
located link between the chain of shots and the thematic
easily
chain.
From the seal affixed to the fateful act in Les Trois
shirt in Le
Lumibres to the grease pencil mark on Mercier's
Tombeau hindou, there is a lengthy inventory of maps, plans,
letters,
photographs -- multiple references which stake out
a definable
These establish
series
throughLang's forty films.
out the script;
a series of events of the
what might be called
in
formal series
script which are manifested in one or several
the picture:
the close-up
in
is followed almost invariably
this situation
(for example, in the talking films and especially
the American ones) by a movement of back-travelling
starting
This short, precise movewith the brusquely introduced object.
breaks and
the object in its surroundings,
ment, which reveals

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On Fritz

Lang

31

of the close-up.
demarcates the sudden fascination
I shall cite only three examples of this, all taken from
the same film, Scarlet
The sequence begins with a
Street.
of a flower; the movement reveals Christopher lovingly
close-up
Later, a letter rests on
painting the flower offered by Kitty.
a table among other objects:
the movement which reveals Kitty's
studio for the first time accurately
defines the relationship
between the young woman and Christopher -- one immediately understands it is a letter from him. The travelling
shot which
brings to light Johnny's hat, hidden in Kitty's new apartment,
states with ironic insistence
and without the aid of a single
of the three characters
in this
situations
word, the respective
harsh and cruel remake of Jean Renoir's La Chienne.
of space which
4.
The generally intensified
partialization
disrupts the viewpoint in order to lead it to its more rightful
to an extreme, in cinematographic
place which carries
space, a
of subject and object finding its origin in the German
dialectic
cultural
tradition
and its achievement in the fundamental matera
ialism of industrial
If the object possesses
civilization.
it seems
particular
importance in the unfolding of the action,
to recapture in the intensity of the film something of the symbolic life of the bewitched objects of Hoffmann or Arnim. The
is often a vagrant body, only one object among other obsubject
One finds a particularly
jects.
striking inversion of this order
in the flight sequence of La Femme sur la Lune, between the rocket
(its ac(which seems to be the only actor) and its interpreters
cessories)
and, in Human Desire between Jeff Warren and the locomotive, when he drives it down the track into the depot.
This subject-object
game, when divided, provokes the eye,
fissure in Fritz Lang's films which is balmaking an incredible
anced with a type of shot that is particularly
frequent and meanof continuity/discontinuity
ingful, multiplying the dialectic
the fragmented body
proper to the system of the Langian vision:
of the subject and object,
united as two mechanisms in a single
of space.
frame, offers a perfect example of partialization
Thus,
in Man Hunt, the hero's hand which hesitates
again and again on
the trigger of the rifle,
is shot in extreme close-up.
And in
Les Espions are shown two forearms and the heavy, round handle
of a chest which the hands want to turn; the muted light of the
black leather raincoat answers the clearer steel one, and both
of these reply to the whiteness of the hands:
from the beginning
of this film (this is the first shot) Lang places
it beneath the
of space.
sign of the enigmatic division
5.
and more
Lang, like every filmmaker (but more precisely
of his narrative
than others) bases the possibility
insidiously
on the richness and the perversity of oppositions
in the series
of identical
configurations.
From film to film one can follow the marks of a perpetual
and different replies;
one can evoke
game of similar questions
their rigorous nature extracting
the types of opposition
which
are simultaneously
the sound, the interarranged in the picture,
and the narrative,
sufficient
material for an unprepretation

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Raymond Bellour

32

cedented inventory whose very limits and meaning are difficult

to
define.
outcome of the writing and
But this game is the logical
Here are two examples briefly summarized from a singthe vision.
le story, While the City Sleeps.
-- Walter Kyne, Jr., and Edward Mobley are conversing in the
In a fixed long shot, appearing from left to
manager's office.
right, are:
Kyne, Jr., standing, dressed in black; higher, aof his father, Walter Kyne, also
gainst the wall, the portrait
dressed in black;
then, through the window, the city, with its
dressed
sharp and regular gray masses; finally,
Mobley, seated,
in gray.
Each of the four principal
elements of the shot is
from the camera; the colors are
placed at a different distance
after brief detail
distributed
two by two.
Some moments later,
shots of the various protagonists,
Lang returns to the same long
But the elements have
different angle.
shot, from a slightly
From left to right:
changed.
Kyne, Jr., Mobley, the portrait,
the city.
have changed.
The distances
Mobley gets up; the camis at work in two
era follows his movement. A triple opposition
between the
an opposition
shots which are formally identical:
of the actors,between
distribution
(each
tonality and distance
element sustains
the two others) setting up the third opposition
effecting the forward movement of the nar(immobility/movement),
rative.
-- The bar where the New York Sentinel
gather.
journalists
We see Mobley sitting at the counter
Again, a fixed long shot.
in the back of the room is a barely
and the bartender standing;
We wait; Lang prostaircase,
going up to the left.
perceptible
of the shot, until Mildred appears
irritation
longs the silent
with the intention of making advances to Mobley.
on the staircase,
Because Lang,
Why does he hold such a simple shot for so long?
had already filmed exactly the same
some sequences
earlier,
space, in the same manner; because he had already lingered there
in an almost casual way, and because no one had then appeared at
the bottom of the stairs.
6.
Lang thus keeps the point of view in perpetual hesitation; for the event, whether it is foreshadowed or has already
occurred, always seems linked to something else whose force is
even though one does not know how to delimit it but
arresting
The film plays subtly on
alone.
which could not be sustained
exan incessant
disequilibrium
by means of this dyssymetrical
abstract waiting in a
This flagrant and deliberately
pectancy.
and narrative
shot (a visual
sign) marks all of Lang's work.
It is a matter of a fixed long shot
is simple.
Its principle
A
a dead time.
two actions which separate
with three terms:
character
goes out of the shooting angle; the camera remains facenters the shooting angle by aning the set; a second character
other

entrance

(this

could

be

--

though

it

rarely

is

--

the

same

The set, at
character who returns, and by the same entrance).
and heavy with
beautiful
this moment, is always particularly
the commissary office in the first
meaning and possibilities:
office in the second,
Mabuse, the corridor outside the doctor's
the staircase
landing leading to the apartments of the two young

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On Fritz

Lang

33

women in While the City Sleeps,

caverns beneath the castle
in
Le Tigre du Bengale and Le Tombeau hindou.
The characters
are
bound by the imminent event:
this shot almost always intervenes
in the moments of greatest dramatic intensity.
Thus in his own
way Lang breaks the ideal hurried flow of the action, wounding
his story and distorting
time apparently for the benefit of a
visual
to the action (as
purity; thereby imparting a strangeness
if spreading it out) and likewise to the vision which becomes
or almost
Then he recaptures
suddenly too heavy and insistent.
in a much briefrecaptures what he is doing for a single vision,
er and tighter shot, when he assembles the elements in such a
way that the viewpoint always seems badly placed -- either too
close or too far away. Thus in La Mort de Siegfried:
three
warriors occupy the near totality
of the screen's
surface;
they
are so close that one cannot see them in their entirety;
between
them are some blank spaces and a bare wall in the background.
The frame is perfectly flat; one would believe
the soldiers
cut
out of cardboard.
When Krimhilde passes behind them, followed
is brutally reborn -- so vividly
by her women, the perspective
that one feels it too deeply, and it seems to be another illusion.
7.
For Lang plays the most perverse of games.
It is by
means

of

the

fissures

--

by means

of the

gaps

which

he sets

up --

that he can be understood.

and
That is what must be deciphered,
at each of its levels.
Thus Lang, more than anyone else, works
with counter-shots.
Here begins the quest which reveals that at
the other extremity of his films, Lang also manifests this "counter" game -- this time of the counter-script.
As he strains the
obscurshot and unbalances
it, he loses sight of his narrative,
And thus he works (as Luc Moullet has clearing his characters.
even in America, he simultaneously
esly seen) in counter-genre;
the laws of the most tradipouses and insidiously
transgresses
tional art.
He incorporates
the principle
and destroys it.
Indeed, what are Frau im Mond, Rancho Notorious, Moonfleet, Beyond
a Reasonable
Doubt, Der Tiger von Eschnapur and Das indische Grabmal to the science-fiction
film, the Western, the adventure film,
the police
of viostory and the exotic film, if not enterprises
lent perversion?
It remains for us to understand why Lang persists
in this
in often leaving in his films the mark of
Persists
disjunction.
a subtle defeat which is revealed by the impossibility
of a
closed system, actually
closed upon itself.
Lang's films are so
dense that they seem to have cracked, as if the author always
wanted to leave a tenuous reality visible
and evident, and to
show the illusory
nature of the idea of a harmony through an
entire autonomy of representation.
From shot to shot, from one
end of the film to the other, a writing unfolds that is strictly
defined, divided,
always anxious to maintain, in each constituent
the effort which constitutes
that operation;
to mark
operation,
the permanent turning of creation upon itself with the density
of its material;
and to do this with all the more rigor, as cinema conquers, with its technical
of
mastery, new possibilities

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Rayond Bellour

34

The camera possesses

that magical ability
which makes
expression.
it so difficult
for us to follow it:
to be "an actor full of imon the surface of life to which it alportance, mobile, alive,"
in order to capture life.
Thus, with Lang, in a
ways weds itself
sense, the film always seems to be in the process of creating itself.
One feels effort, the temptation of the possible,
the distance between desire and its object,
something like the typical
of a book assured of its strength, but always a little
experience
defeated and wearied as well.
Hence the fascination
and the impression

leave.
attains

1.
2.

3.
4.
5.

of distancing

And the feeling

the mythic.

which

that,

his

films

for Lang,

--

so beautiful

the mise-en-sc~ne

--

always

alone,

Presence du Cinema, 1964.

Let us mention, however, the all-too-brief
study of Lotte
Eisner ("Notes sur le style de Fritz Lang," Revue du Cinema,
No. 5, fevrier,
1947) and the pages of L'Ecran demoniaque by
the same author which are only, let us hope, the preface to
future more general study.
Two other texts as well:
by
Gerard Legrand ("Notes pour un 61oge de Fritz Lang," Positif,
Nos. 50-51-52, mars, 1963), and by Michel Mourlet ("Trajectoire de Fritz Lang," in Sur un art ignore, La Table Ronde
And above all some remarkable criticism
1965).
by Jacques
Rivette on Invraisemblable
Verite ("La main," Cahiers du
Cinema, No. 76, novembre, 1957), by Jean-Luc Godard on
Le Retour de Frank James (fiche Ufoleis,
1955), and by Jean
Douchet on Le diabolique
obsesDocteur Mabuse ("L'6trange
sion," Cahiers du Cinema, No. 122, aoft 1961).
Claude Ollier,
"Une aventure de la lumihre," Cahiers du
1965.
Cinema, No. 168, juillet
Cahiers du Cinema, No. 169, aout 1965.
of course, of Robert Montgomery's La
With the exception,
Dame du Lac (1947), where the camera absolutely
espouses
the viewpoint of the main character.

fromLe Livre des autres, (L'herne, 1971) with permission

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