As a young couple stops and rests in a small village inn, the man is abducted by Death and is sequestered behind a huge doorless, windowless wall. The woman finds a mystic entrance and is met by Death, who tells her three separate stories set in exotic locales, all involving circumstances similar to hers.
Direction
Lang's three nested narratives are structural audacity for 1921
Cinematography
Shadows so sharp they could cut you—pure Expressionist geometry
Production
Massive wall set and exotic locales built from pure imagination
Director
Fritz Lang
Lil Dagover
Young Woman / Zobeide / Mona Fiametta / Tiao Tsien
Walter Janssen
Young Man / Frank / Gianfrancesco / Liang
Bernhard Goetzke
Death / El Mot / Archer
Max Adalbert
Notary / Chancellor
Wilhelm Diegelmann
Doctor
Karl Platen
Pharmacist
Hermann Picha
Taylor
Paul Rehkopf
Gravedigger
Georg John
Beggar
Lydia Potechina
Landlady
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Lang and Thea von Harbou structured this as an anthology to prove German cinema could compete with Hollywood's spectacle—directly inspired Disney's Fantasia segment aesthetics decades later.
The massive wall was a forced-perspective triumph; Lang later cannibalized its visual language for Metropolis. He married von Harbou during production—then she became a Nazi. Awkward.
DE
