- Format: PAL
- Language German
- Subtitles: English
- Region: Region 2 (This DVD may not be viewable outside Europe. Read more about DVD formats.)
- Aspect Ratio: 4:3 - 1.33:1
- Number of discs: 2
- Classification: 12
- Studio: Eureka
- DVD Release Date: 22 Mar 2004
- Run Time: 116 minutes
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- ASIN: B0001EYTKW
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 75,441 in Film & TV (See Top 100 in Film & TV)
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Amazon.co.uk Review
The Testament of Dr Mabuse is Fritz Lang's sequel to his flamboyant Dr Mabuse two-part epic of the 1920s, this time adding subtle use of sound to the creepy effects developed for the earlier film. Once a Moriarty-like mastermind, the haggard Dr M (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) has become an autistic asylum inmate who scrawls plans for daring crimes in his cell and exerts an unhealthy influence on his psychiatrist. Inspector Lohmann (Otto Wernicke), the jolly policeman from Lang's M, is puzzled by a series of daring crimes that bear the Mabuse signature, and a gang of thugs take instructions from a shadowy figure who claims after the doctor's death to be Mabuse reborn and is staging a reign of crime apparently designed to bring about the ruin of all law-abiding society.
Though it works best as a textbook thriller, some commentators, including Lang, suggested that the pulp plot was intended to allegorise the evil influence of the Nazi party, with a crime boss who rants like Hitler. The many impressive set-pieces still work, too: the pursuit of a spy through a grinding print-works, an assassination at a traffic light, hero and heroine trapped in a room with a bomb and cutting a water main to flood their way to freedom, the persecution of the asylum head by a phantom of his patient, and a last-reel night-time chase.
On the DVD: The Testament of Dr Mabuse on disc is accompanied by a 15-minute illustrated essay on the film and its history. There are English subtitles. --Kim Newman
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
More than Klassic, really Mythic,
By
This review is from: The Testament of Dr. Mabuse [Ultimate Edition] [DVD] (DVD)
A great film that is been re-discovered and restored into respectability after having been thought lost for ever. What makes that film unacceptable in a way in Hitler's Germany was the fact that it could be seen and read like a metaphor of Hitler himself. A gambler and criminal of his time after the First World War, Mabuse actually lost his mind and became insane and was institutionalized, in a psychiatric hospital where is dies. But at the end of his life he uses his hypnotic power to rebuild a crime gang that officiates in jewel stealing and counterfeited money through his own doctor he manages to put under his hypnotic control. It is the vision of a dark society in which nothing can be expected except a bleak and bloody end in bombs and upheavals. The interest of the film comes from the technique of having a ghost in a real image. That special effect was just coming out and a new dimension was found in the cinema. But the other interest is the total despair that surges from this film. Unbearable despair. And just for this bleak black and white and without any colour at all vision of our society based on money and profit I would advise you to watch it: it is in that vision that all dictators in the world can find their support because then they are bringing the colour that is missing to those poor people and Hitler brought red and Stalin brought red and Mao Zedong brought red, and so many brought that same color meaning blood, though some others preferred green meaning some fundamentalist religious vision of life. When you believe the spirit of a man can invade people and take control of them, then you can understand how tyrants and dictators manage to take it over to their own chess game.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Another Lang classic. Highly recommended.,
By Basileus (UK / NL) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Testament of Dr. Mabuse [Ultimate Edition] [DVD] (DVD)
"Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse" is Fritz Lang's sequel to "Der Spieler" and is one of the early sound films. Just as the special effects in "der Spieler" were well ahead of their time, one could say the same of Lang's usage of sound in "das Testament".
"Das Testament" gives Mabuse's evilness a new dimension, as he manages to continue his reign of terror from beyond the grave. He manages to manipulate and steer people from his asylum and in the end his spirit manages to take over other people to continue his plan of destruction, terror and misery. However, the no-nonsense detective Lohman (first appearing in Lang's "M") gets involved through a colleague who warns him of a sinister conspiracy but becomes insane before he can reveal the truth. Together with an unwilling member of Mabuse's gang, who has a love interest, Lohman is undeterred to unravel the complicated plot. Shot in 1933, this film has a political dimension because it was forbidden by Goebbels, reading in "das Testament" criticism of the Nazi regime which had come to power earlier that year. In hindsight, parallels between this film and the political situation in Germany and the direction it was going, are obvious. The plot, the characters, the actors and the sophisticated usage of sound make "Das Testament" another of Lang's classics and it should be part of any film historian's or early German movies fan's collection.
2 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Dark, spooky , gripping,
By Nico "nico" (uk) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Testament of Dr. Mabuse [Ultimate Edition] [DVD] (DVD)
A good story, good acting, amazing scecial effects for the time will keep you glued to the TV.
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