Movie thoughts and fiction updates.
#35 in my ranking of Fritz Lang's filmography. Man Hunt was a pretty obvious effort to mimic Alfred Hitchcock's adventure thrillers to some modest effect. Secret Beyond the Door is an obvious attempt to imitate Alfred Hitchcock's gothic romance Rebecca to much less effect. Uneven with sparks of genuine interest, it effectively descends into complete… Continue reading Secret Beyond the Door
#29 in my ranking of Fritz Lang's filmography. I'm not quite sure that Fritz Lang understood the spy genre. The best spy movie he ever made was the first third of Woman in the Moon, and he'd made several other outright spy adventures that never really grabbed my interest like the pair of films in… Continue reading Cloak and Dagger
#6 in my ranking of Fritz Lang's filmography. Another film marked as the beginning of the film noir genre, it actually feels more like a straight drama for most of the film. That really gives the film a solid character-based foundation on which its final act operates, creating a very well-fleshed out central protagonist who… Continue reading Scarlet Street
#11 in my ranking of Fritz Lang's filmography. I'd say that this is the point where Fritz Lang was firmly planting his feet in the film noir genre. Made in the same year as Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity, it's a formational film to the genre, using shadows extensively, as Lang had been doing since his… Continue reading The Woman in the Window
#23 in my ranking of Fritz Lang's filmography. It's interesting to read that both Fritz Lang and the source novel's author Graham Greene were unhappy with this film. It's not Lang's greatest work, but it entertains well enough. It's also the first Hollywood film from Lang that, I feel, really looks like a Lang film… Continue reading Ministry of Fear
David Vining, Author 