Hello, my name's Justin the Clue, and I'm here today with Will Sloan.

And you're listening to The Important Cinema Club.

And today, we're going back to Germany because that's the most important country in the world when it comes to cinema.

Right, Will?

No.

We're talking about Fritz-Lange. I'm pretty sure America is still the most important country for cinema. The most dictatorial director beside Eric von Stroheim? I got to tell you, I'm coming into this podcast from not a great point of view. I, of course, had seen Metropolis, I'd seen M, maybe a few others. Fritz Lang is not somebody I've always admired him, but he's not somebody who I've really lived with.

Is it? I, of course, had seen Metropolis. I'd seen M, maybe a few others. Fritz Lang is not somebody,

I've always admired him, but he's not somebody who I've really lived with. Is it that the films, there wasn't that kind of attraction that the works of people like Hitchcock have for you? Or? I guess. I don't know. You don't have time for everything. So this week was definitely for me an opportunity to get caught up with Fritz Lang in a way that I hadn't before.

So I want to warn everybody. time for everything. So this week was definitely for me an opportunity to get caught up with Fritz Lang

in a way that I hadn't before. So I want to warn everybody that I'm not coming here from a position

of expertise. So usually when people listen, they're like, Will's the one who's going to put

Justin in his place because he knows everything. But Justin here was, you know, reading Patrick

McGilligan's Fritz Lang biography all week. So I look forward to hearing some interesting facts from him. Put me on the spot here, Will. All right, I'm sitting here. Like, we got to fire. It's story time. And, like, just lay out Fritz-Lang's life in a concise, precise fashion. Who is this man? Fritz-Lang, when he was in Germany, was known as the blockbuster director.

The Steven Spielberg of the German Expressionist. Yeah, he made what was called superfilms,

these giant, sometimes five-hour productions that were the toast of the town. When he was making

films in Germany, he was so famous that people would recognize him by sight when he was walking

around. Probably because he had a hilarious monocle and sometimes an eye patch, or did that come later?

That came later. But the monocle, he actually had to get rid of it in America because people

said, you look too mean when you're wearing that monocle. You have to put glasses on.

And when he was in Germany, he started being a screenwriter. He directed serial-type movies like the spiders

before moving on to films like Destiny and Metropolis and the big giant fanti-see epic,

which I'm going to completely mangle its name, Die Spielger Gevin. Dievin-Sleven.

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