The Criminal Genius of Fritz Lang

The Testament of Doctor Mabuse is an odd film. It's like one of those Shakespeare 'problem plays' or REAL LIFE where you're not quite sure of the genre.
So, first off it's a sequel to two early Fritz Lang films- Doctor Mabuse, the Gambler and M, the one a story of an evil criminal mastermind with a supernatural talent for mesmerism, the other a thriller following the hunt for a psychologically disturbed child killer. You can see immediately where the problem might be.

It's got suspense, big explosions, a couple of great action set pieces, redemption, comedy crooks, a grumpy copper who gets results, bizarre Edgar Allan Poe/Sir Arthur Conan Doyle era forensics where a typewriter clue is disregarded as worthless but there's a lot of messing around with messages on scratched glass and ballistics analysis is an astonishingly exact science.
Then there's an amazingly creepy scene with a man being possessed by a ghost (a ghost later seen to open doors in a manner which denies convenient psychological rationalisation).
It's basically got everything chucked in that you might fancy in an exciting ride, but it doesn't all quite hang together satisfactorily.

It's not helped that the villain's behaviour, hiding in the shadows transmitting messages to his underground network of hoods by radio, setting elaborate bomb traps with stupidly long countdowns and rigging his door knob to a recording of his voice saying “Go away!” have all been pinched by later far pulpier series and serials - King of the Rocket Men, that ghastly Demons episode last week and of course Doctor Who and Tanni in an exciting adventure with a Powerful Enemy.
The bomb bit is actually slightly stupider than the bit in Demons, if you can believe that, though it combines the rising waters and ticking timer threats far more interestingly and has the advantage of resolving its stupid fantasy peril in a sensible way.

What M and The Testament of Doctor Mabuse share beyond Lohmann, their endearing Police Commissar lead, is a sense of a country in which criminality flourishes and is highly organised- in an era of mass unemployment (when even Labour Exchange clerks are short on funds) it's suggested turning to crime is the only way out for some.
Real or imagined this powerful underground black economy seems to turn up time and again in the little German film and literature between the Wars I know. Certainly, the hyper-inflation of Weimar Germany appears to hang heavily on the film, a large part of Mabuse's plan to destabilise the State is built on circulating counterfeit money, he just has to spoil it all with artsy jewel thievery and mass poison gas attacks.
Top tip for any modern terrorists reading- destroying the banking system from within might just be more effective that some of that old fashioned bomb stuff. You probably know this and have been doing it for a while, of course.

Mabuse defeats himself in the end, which is handy because being essentially an idea, an idea that anyone might house, makes him rather hard to defeat otherwise. Quite why he chooses to give up, when all that's really gone wrong is that he's lost a few of his more rubbish henchmen isn't entirely clear, perhaps he's only really interested in destruction and doesn't really know what to follow his schemes up with, perhaps he's retreated to draw up fresh plans to replace those we see him tearing up at the end, perhaps his high profile but failed attack on the public will bring more anarchy than a successful attack would.
Lang was keen after fleeing Germany to say the film, suppressed by the Nazis, was a coded attack on Hitler, and yes it does feature an incarcerated mad man drawing up a plan for revenge on the world, which at a squint might be writing Mein Kampf in jail, and there is a moment at which Mabuse is reported to have said “I am the State!”, but it's a bit of a push.

Admittedly, coded attacks do have to be a bit obscure, but I suspect the film was genuinely banned for its exciting depiction of acts of terrorism against the State rather than for hinting the State and its violent opponents might be cut from similar cloth.

'Round Hereish be a Dragon's Bones

My other Radio 4 documentary proposal is now definitely happening, which is rather good- what's interesting is it'll be happening broadly simultaneously with my first one and rewrites for my play. The freelance life is a cycle of feast-famine- one way or another you're always being told to get stuffed.

More info as it becomes solid, but at the moment I can safely say it's a literary detective story (though not in the way The Moonstone is, it's about following the fortunes of a piece of literature) it's called The Wantley Dragon and has a great presenter lined up.

Wikipedia and Brewer's Phrase and Fable will give you a clue as to what it's all about (and might help you make a good guess at who our presenter is, actually) but there's a lot more going on than the entries there tell!

Memento Morley

What with the continual deaths of the people who built the media world we grew up in and seem to us part of the furniture of our lives, this could easily turn into one of those 'weblog's which constantly marks the passing of great actors, writers and directors and so forth.
I haven't written about Pinter or McGoohan here because there are others better qualified to talk of them, and besides you already know exactly who they are and what they meant to you just by reading those two surnames alone, and I didn't write about Ron Asheton, the man behind those incredible Stooges riffs, because I was away (and what could I add but a redundant extra 'wow'?).

There is however a lovely little story I was told some years ago about Angela Morley, the great and prolific radio, TV and film composer, arranger and conductor who has just died, that I'd like to pass on here, because I don't know if anyone else will.

Angela, who as Wally Stott wrote the Hancock's Half Hour theme amongst countless other pieces before her 1972 sex change, was to be interviewed over the telephone by a great expert on and enthusiast for broadcast music, who'd been given her number.
The expert rang the number and a very male voice answered. “I'm calling for Angela Morley,” the expert explained, uncertain if he was in fact already speaking to her. 'Oh right,' said the male voice, 'I'll get her for you,' and then casually called out 'Dad! It's for you.'

An illuminating interview later followed, but what I like is the caller's initial careful wariness in approaching the potentially awkward area of Angela's gender countered by the family's complete acceptance of it as utterly normal. I think it's a little story everyone comes out of well.

Doctor Who fans to create peculiar DVD sales spike... again

Matt Smith is the new Doctor Who*!
I'm really rather pleased. Much more interesting casting than expected and the BBC 2/World Productions series Party Animals is going to get a bit more of the attention it deserved.
Watch it- but watch it as a drama first and a Doctor showcase second. Though you know; unlucky in love, committed old school socialist, overshadowed by his family's high flyers- all those could work.

*Yes, it is his name, read the credits for the first 18 years.