Themes: Reincarnation, Supernatural Romance, Death of a Partner
Main Cast: Lil Dagover, Lil Dagover, Lil Dagover, Lil Dagover, Walter Janssen, Walter Janssen, Walter Janssen, Walter Janssen, Bernhard Goetzke, Bernhard Goetzke, Bernhard Goetzke
Release Year: 1921
Country: DE
Run Time: 114 minutes
Plot
Fritz Lang was a stickler for realism in his American films; not so his German silents, which were fanciful to the point of being fairy tales. Der Müde Tod, Lang's first big critical success, is an allegorical tale of love, fidelity and death. The heroine (Lil Dagover), who in her dreams is confronted by Mr. Death, argues for the life of her beloved, but is unable to make the personal sacrifices that Death insists upon. Originally presented in three parts, Der Müde Tod was often boiled down to a single film for its non-German showings. Its English-language titles range from The Weary Death to Between Two Worlds to Beyond the Wall to Destiny. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
Fritz Lang may have immersed himself in German culture with his Siegfried and Kriemhilde's Revenge, but he was never more Germanic anywhere than he was with Destiny. Inspired by a childhood dream, this grim yet entertaining story about life-and-death, and the struggle to overcome the latter, never quite escapes its origins, in terms of a somber tone and caste to its plot and characters -- indeed, it is as self-consciously German as Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal (with which it has much in common) is self-consciously Swedish. It's easy to understand how other filmmakers, most especially Douglas Fairbanks Sr. as a producer (on The Thief of Bagdad), would have lifted much of Destiny's form and images, but little of its substance. The movie still holds up, but it is a little tougher to absorb than, say, Lang's Nibelungen films, lacking a conventional heroic presence or story-arc for audiences to grab onto. Indeed, in many ways, the work it most closely resembles thematically is Harold S. Buquet's On Borrowed Time (1939), which has a somewhat similar resolution. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
Rudolf Klein-Rogge - Girolamo; Paul Biensfeldt - Ahi; Eduard von Winterstein - Kalif; Grete Berger; Wilhelm Diegelmann; Georg John - Bettler; Paul Rehkopf - Kuester; Hermann Vallentin; Max Adalbert - Notar/Schatzmeister; Hermann Picha - Schneider
In the Expressionistic frame story, in which human lives are each represented by a candle, Death grants a woman three chances to save her lover, if love can triumph over death. The three stories within the story each occur in a setting that is nominally historic, but really in the realm of fantasy: an adventure tale with a Persian setting out of the Arabian Nights, a RenaissanceVenetian romance, and a largely comic story set in China.
