What else happened
this year? In Germany, Hitler installs himself as chancellor after
the reichstag fire. Not a great time to be Germany. Probably some other stuff happened outside of Germany, too.
What is the plot - in one sentence? In Germany, a police officer is on the lookout for the mysterious Dr Mabuse, who is still operating criminal undertakings despite the notable handicap of being first imprisoned, then dead.
I don't have time, just spoil it for me? Weird one this, a psychologist who was looking after Dr Mabuse before his death is (possibly) possessed by Dr Mabuse, and continues to run the Mabuse operations either through possession, or reading his works. One of the members of the gang switches sides, and helps to identify some other gangsters, before the professor / Mabuse is captured. the final scene shows the professor destroying the works of Dr Mabuse.
What is the meaning of the title? Mabuse has died, but before his death he left some criminal plans behind - hence the testament of Dr Mabuse.
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| Here are some of Mabuse's henchmen, here being berated over microphone. The guy second from left is our man Tom Kent, who looks more like that bloke from 'Office Space' who gets with Jennifer Aniston than you'd imagine from this picture. |
Anything that's not aged well? Does a woman get slapped around? This must have been very on the nose in Nazi Germany. A charismatic conman talking about a world doomed to annihilation from a prison cell? That's not going to be popular with the authorities. There's not really violence to women here, in fact the two who talk do pretty well for themselves.
Any thoughts? Despite being named after the villain - the movie's real hero is the large policeman named Lohmann. The character who gets the most time on screen is the gang member of Mabuse who leaves the gang and helps the police. He does this after a crisis of conscience at killing someone, and at the behest of the 'one woman in the movie' - their romance is shown in flashback. Strangely, his name is Thomas Kent.
The movie has a huge number of scenes with infuriating logic. A ratty underling sees something important - and calls Lohmann. He tells him 'I have something to tell you' and arranges to meet, when what he wanted to tell was 'the guy in charge is Dr Mabuse!' - why not just tell him on the phone? Despite that, he's later killed in a very cool scene.
Later, Thomas Kent
and the policeman meet up. Kent tells him that Mabuse has only ever
been heard, he's never seen him as he uses voice recordings and microphones for contact. Immediately the policeman asks if he
could recognise his face, and gets annoyed that he can't identify
him by sight alone. If he'd listened, he'd have known that was a dumb question.
Kent admits to some of his crimes when he was working in the gang. We're shown through a flashback that he took the job as a last resort. One of his crimes is a murder, which he admitted to. Despite the fact that he helped to solve the crime, he's definitely going back to prision after this movie ends, surely? Also, this 'criminal / civilian who is able to just help solve crimes' is an annoying bugbear of mine in movies.
Kent and his girlfriend hunt down Mabuse, but are trapped in a room. It eventually fills with water. The voice recording (Mabuse's stuff is often done by recording) tells them that 'within three hours' they'll be dead. It's a precursor to an escape room, sure, but 3 hours is a long time. By the way, you'll be happy to know that they solve it by using plumbing.
Would you recommend this? It's definitely an important movie, for the context it was made in. I also think that Dr Mabuse is a really good character - an evil genius of great charisma and possibly magical properties. There are a lot of interesting camera special effects, and some really great playing with the media. There are also some great scenes, but the whole thing seems a bit disjointed, and I didn't enjoy it as much as I might.I'd recommend 'M' which is by the same director, and I think was made in the same year.
Final thoughts? I didn't quite get the logic of this. Mabuse is supposed to be a very charismatic genius who is able to inspire some just by reading about him... but he's also able to possess them? His plans seem to be formulated in a catatonic state, and mirror Nazi techniques of infrastructure disruption very closely, but we're shown him 'writing' them and it looks like a chimp holding a pen.
The movie also has a particularly pointless, yet cool, siege against a few members of Mabuses gang. The police call for 'tactical units' to come and help... but, it's a single old guy with a moustache who does very little. I'm glad I watched this, but it was weird.
Follow me on my quest to watch a movie from every year possible, look here for ones I've done already.
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