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THE COMPLETE FRITZ LANG MABUSE BOX SET
complete 4-disc boxset

DVD Release Date: October 19, 2009

Studio: Eureka Entertainment Ltd.

Masters of Cinema Series # 89, 90, 91

ABOUT THE BOXSET:
Fritz Lang's MABUSE films are among the great movie series of all time, and the complete trilogy is featured here in this collection. Included are both parts of Lang's epic 5-hour masterpiece DR. MABUSE: THE GAMBLER. The director/screenwriter deftly evokes the soiled and shoddy world of crime-infested and inflation-racked post World War I Berlin in the first installment. The dark and mystical adventure of the criminal mastermind careens towards its stylised climax in the second installment.

The tenuous and terrified atmosphere of Germany on the eve of Nazi ascendancy is cleverly evoked in Lang's sequel to the 1922 film, THE TESTAMENT OF DR. MABUSE (1933). As all of the characters speed chaotically towards the film's dark climax, the idea of a madman controlling a mass of hypnotised people and causing them to commit crimes that he premeditates creates a mystical and simultaneously potent political allegory of Lang's time.

THE THOUSAND EYES OF DR.MABUSE (1960) is not so much a sequel as an extension of Lang's early Mabuse films. Set in 1960, the film begins with a series of unsolved murders in a Berlin hotel.


CONTENTS:

3 feature films:

Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler - Ein Bild der Zeit (Fritz Lang; 1922, 270 min.) imdb.com/title/tt0013086/

Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (Fritz Lang; 1933, 116 min.)
imdb.com/title/tt0023563/

Die 1000 Augen des Dr. Mabuse (Fritz Lang; 1960, 99 min.)
imdb.com/title/tt0054371/

Format: PAL

DVD Size: 6.84 + 7.04 + 6.49 + 6.13 GB - Exact Untouched Copy

Time (total): 485 minutes

Type: Black and White

Aspect Ratio: 1.32:1 (Gambler) | 1.19:1 (Testament) | 1.69:1 anamorphic (1000 Eyes)

Sound (main features): German | English (Die 1000 Augen)

Subtitles: optional English

SET DETAILS
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DISC ONE + TWO
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DR. MABUSE, DER SPIELER
1922, 270 min.
One of the legendary epics of the silent cinema ? and the first part of a trilogy that Fritz Lang developed up to the very end of his career ? Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler. [Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler.] is a masterpiece of conspiracy that, even as it precedes the mind-blowing Spione from the close of Lang's silent cycle, constructs its own dark labyrinth from the base materials of human fear and paranoia. A bridge between Feuillade's somnambulistic ***-films and modern media-narratives of elusive robber-barons, Lang's two-part classic set the template for the director's greatest works: social commentary as super-psychology, poised at the brink of combustion.

# New, officially licenced transfer from restored materials.
# New and improved optional English subtitles with original intertitles.
# Newly recorded feature-length audio commentary by film-scholar and Lang expert David Kalat.
# Three video pieces: an interview with the composer of the restoration score, a discussion of Norbert Jacques, creator of Dr. Mabuse, and an examination of the film's motifs in the context of German silent cinema.

DISC THREE
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DAS TESTAMENT DES DR. MABUSE
1933, 116 min.
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). Considered by many to be Lang's greatest achievement ? a work of terrible and practically supernatural power that seems to have prophesied the implications of the Nazi scourge? and the entirety of the 20th Century.

Posted in: a.b.dvd.classics
Poster: JimB