Fritz Lang, the towering figure of German cinema’s golden era, talks to critic and biographer Axel Madsen about his life and times, and his long career in Germany, France and Hollywood.
Fritz Lang, (born December 5, 1890, Vienna, Austria-Hungary died August 2, 1976, Los Angeles, California, U.S.), Austrian-born American motion-picture director whose films, dealing with fate and people’s inevitable working out of their destinies, are considered masterpieces of visual composition and expressionistic suspense. Lang had already created an impressive body of work in the German cinema before coming to the United States in 1934. Although it took him some 21 years to fashion 22 Hollywood films, arguably at least half of them are noirish masterpieces of menace tone poems of fear and fate that have stood the test of time.
Early life and German films
Lang’s father was a