The Masters of Cinema Series

Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse

Fritz Lang, 1933

With the etching onto glass of a single word — “MABUSE” — Berlin reawakens into a nightmare. Fritz Lang’s electrifying Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse [The Testament of Dr. Mabuse] is the astonishing second instalment in the German master’s legendary trilogy, a film that puts image and sound into an hypnotic arrangement unlike anything seen or heard in the cinema ever before — or since.

It’s been eleven years since the downfall of arch-criminal and master-of-disguise Dr. Mabuse (Rudolf Klein-Rogge), now sequestered in a room of an asylum under the watchful eye of one Professor Baum (Oskar Beregi). Mabuse exists in a state of ‘catatonic graphomania’, his only action the irrepressible scribbling of blueprints that would realise a seemingly theoretical “Empire of Crime”. But when a series of violent events courses through the city, police and populace alike start asking themselves with increasing panic: “Who is behind all this?!” The answer borders on the realm of the Impossible…

Not only a follow-up to Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler., but also, with the presence of Otto Wernicke’s Police Commissioner Lohmann, a semi-sequel to Lang’s immortal masterpiece M, Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse is itself considered by many to be Lang’s greatest achievement — a work of terrible and practically supernatural power that, like Renoir’s La Règle du jeu, seems to have prophesied the implications of the Nazi scourge… and the entirety of the 20th Century. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse fully-restored and with new English subtitles.

Only available as part of:
THE COMPLETE FRITZ LANG MABUSE BOXSET