Thea von Harbou (1922 - 1933)
Lisa Rosenthal (? - 1921) (her death)

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Trained as a fashion designer, painter and graphic artist in his native Austria, Lang used his keen mind and painterly eye to the maximum effect, to become one of the world's great directors and foremost creators of atmospheres of menace, whether in actuality or suggestion. 'I always made films,' he once said, 'about characters who struggled and fought against the circumstances and traps in which they found themselves.' In doing so, Lang created living nightmares of both fact and fantasy. Sometimes his characters, usually 'the average man - because that made him easy to identify with' are caught web-like in nightmares of their own making. Sometimes, it is maniacs, master-criminals or psychopaths who do the trapping.

Early in his career, after the move from Austria to the Decla company in Berlin in 1917 (he was invalided out of World War I after serving with distinction in the Austrian army), Lang worked out how studio sets and lighting could be used to create an atmosphere that would ensnare the audience in a world of fantasy. These early films are mostly tremendously imaginative journeys into the depths of human desperation, often with a science-fiction edge, and they are full of images that stay in the mind. As early as 1922 he dreamt up his fiendish master-criminal Dr Mabuse, whose exploits he would return to in two sound films.

The other best-known films from his German period are Metropolis, a brilliantly conceived vision of a terrifying future, filled with huge, expressionist sets whose cost was almost the ruin of UFA, the company for which Lang was now working; and M, by contrast set in the streets and byways of present-day city, the story of a child -murderer brought to light by the underworld, in which darkness and shadow are put to various highly effective uses.

After the outright anti-Nazi propaganda of his second (memorably exciting) Dr Mabuse film in 1932, Lang fled, via France, to America. His wife and screenwriter Thea von Harbou supported the Nazi cause and stayed behind to make films for it; they divorced in 1934.

The theme song to Lang's hauntingly different western Ranchos Notorious tells continually of 'hate, murder and revenge' and these were the themes that were to occupy Lang greatly during his 21 years in Hollywood. Nowhere more so, either, than in his first film, Fury, a fiercely intense indictment of mob violence, with a searing performance by Spencer Tracy.

After You Only Live Twice, a typically poetic and atmospheric exploration of the Bonnie and Clyde theme, Lang experimented with colour on two westerns, The Return of Frank James and Western Union, which have some of the most exciting action scenes ever shot.

There are several expectedly very anti-Nazi war films during the war years, but also his two famous doomy melodramas with the Edward G. Robinson-Joan Bennett-Dan Duryea trio, The Woman in the Window and Scarlet Street, the latter a remake of Renoir's La chienne.

Hate, murder and revenge indeed figure strongly in these brightly seedy portraits of low life, as they do also in the later Glenn Ford-Gloria Grahame pictures, The Big Heat (the film in which she has scalding coffee thrown in her face by Lee Marvin) and Human Desire.

Besides Ranchos Notorious, the best of Lang's later films are both uncharacteristic of him. Clash by Night relies on the strength of its actors for it its power, while Moonfleet, the famous yarn about a small boy and 18th century Dorset smugglers, is an excellent vehicle for Stewart Granger, with atmosphere and suspense well maintained throughout. As to be expected, Lang makes skilful use of CinemaScope.

His last films at RKO, seemed passable thrillers at the time, but were made under unhappy circumstances - Lang was told to 'make them fast and make them cheap' - and look leaden seen on television today. They hastened Lang's departure to Germany, where he made one more Dr Mabuse film and a two-part film set in India, which carries some scenes of tremendous impact.

Failing eyesight forced Lang to give up film-making in 1960. He died in 1976. From about 1931 to his death in 1976, while dating other women, he was close to Lily Latté, who helped him in many ways.

He is interred at Forest Lawn (Hollywood Hills), Los Angeles, California, USA, in the Enduring Faith section, just to the right of plot #3818, two in from the curb.

It is unarguable to suggest that Lang was one of the greatest film directors of the 20th century. His visionary legacy continues to amaze and astound every new generation who come across it. His place among the gods of film-making is assured. His worlds of fear and helplessness live on in the darkest dreams of the wee small hours. No other director before or since has come close to capturing Lang's take on the reality of the surreal.

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