Fritz Lang’s Spione

I don’t think there’s ever been a bad Fritz Lang movie, even if he suffered the occasional misfire.  Spione (Spies) typically gets passed off as one of his minor films, and that’s a grossly unfair characterization.

Spione is a proto-James Bond romp, a precursor to films like Alfred Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent, Saboteur, and North By Northwest. 

Fast paced, farfetched, and fun -- what more can you ask for in a spy thriller? 

It moves with the pace of an old serial and at first blush it seems like a cobbled together feature from a chapter play, but no, it was intended as a single production from the git go. 

The episodic nature of the film, with several sub-plots being virtually standalones from the main story, gives it a somewhat disjointed feel at times, especially with Willy Fritsch’s character as the heroic undercover agent No. 326 bouncing back and forth between a super secret agent and an easily manipulated playboy (no, not an undercover identity; he’s just not played consistently through the film).

The ever detestable Rudolf Klein-Rogge (and I mean that in a good way, like the way Charles Middleton and Roy Barcroft were ever detestable when they played villains), last seen as the mad scientist Rotwang in Metropolis, is back as Haghi, a powerful international banker who secretly runs a SPECTRE-like freelance espionage service and moonlights as a government secret agent posing as a clown at a local theater -- where does this guy find time to sleep?!?!?

While made in the late 1920s, Spione harkens back to the penny dreadfuls and popular thrillers of the late 19thcentury, especially with its echoes of the Dreyfuss case (not the unfairly convicted part, but the utter corruption of the military). 

Lang and his co-writer, the ever detestable (and I mean that in a bad way) Thea von Harbou (she became a Nazi and worked for Goebbels; eff her), strove to keep actual politics out of their story but when you’re Germany and sitting square in the middle of Europe between the Western democracies and Russia, well, politics are kinda hard to dodge.

Rudolf Klein-Rogge’s Haghi is presented as apolitical and only in it for the money (and power…and sex…and drugs…well, I guess we answered the sleep question…[man, to have had the amphetamine concession on this film…]).

Nonetheless, he’s made up and costumed to look like Vladimir Lenin, so despite the intertitles remaining strictly neutral and non-committed, it’s pretty clear who the bad guys are supposed to be.

This is reinforced by the climax where he meets his just deserts onstage dressed as a clown and holy crap, if that isn’t the wildest ending to a movie ever filmed, I don’t know what can possibly top it.

Like any good spy thriller, there’s plenty of sex and suspense, the former getting pretty racy for the era but not too outre’ for today, especially for James Bond-style movies.  Gerda Maurus, Lien Deyers, and Hertha von Walther are a trio of devious, duplicitous dames who keep things stirred up and steamy

There’s action aplenty, too, with lots of great set pieces.  At one point an exposed spy needs to get a message to Haghi so he simply crashes -- literally! --  a live radio broadcast featuring a hotel orchestra to take over the mic and broadcasts his warning before the cops swarm in for a big gunfight.

But it’s not just the big stuff that Lang excels at.  He fills the film with marvelous little details and character bits, such as a secret sign language between Haghi and his nurse / minion (presumably Grete Berger, who died in Auschwitz in 1944, so eff you again, Thea von Harbou). 

Designed and filmed in a vividly expressionistic style, Spione offers exceptionally high production values, including a train wreck in a tunnel and the best villain’s lair prior to the ones Ken Adam built for 007 movies.

Does Spione lack the philosophical resonance of Lang’s Metropolis, Dr. Mabuse, and M?  Yeah.

Does it make any difference?  No.

Is it as perfect an example of pure filmmaking as one could hope to find?  You betcha. 

© Buzz Dixon