Dr. Mabuse, Der Spieler/Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler (1922)

Country: Germany

Released: May 26th, 1922

Genre: Crime thriller

Directed by: Fritz Lang

Produced by: Erich Pommer

Written by: Fritz Lang

Okay let's jump right into this because there's a lot to rant about and I want to be done with this movie already. Dr. Mabuse, Der Spieler follows German state prosecutor Norbert von Wenk (Bernhard Goetzke) as he hunts down criminal "genius" (I cannot find quotation marks big enough for the word "genius") Dr. Mabuse (Rudolf Klein-Rogge), a psychologist and master of disguise with mind control powers that make Jedis look like back alley grifters. I'm not going to go into too much detail because it's a four fucking hour long movie and a lot happens, so just know that after eluding capture thanks to dumb, stupid luck for most of the film, Mabuse's greed and guilt eventually drive him mad and he is apprehended.

I read one description that claimed that Dr. Mabuse was cinema's first super-villain, a description I completely agree with if super-villains regularly ate asbestos and tried to cure their fetal alcohol syndrome with lobotomies. What I'm trying to say is that Dr. Mabuse is a fucking idiot. It's absolutely amazing how stupid this character is, which becomes even more baffling every time the film tries to describe him as this powerful mastermind, controlling society from the shadows like a puppet and holding Germany hostage with his vast intellect, a la Moriarty or the Riddler. At best he's a third-rate Tintin villain and at worst he's Dustin Hoffman from Rain Man minus the charisma or math skills. I cannot stress enough how utterly idiotic this guy is, so let's go over some of these "brilliant" schemes:

•  Conning a rich, business man out of thousands of Marks at a poker game only to not collect them for some reason (even though he was totally prepared to pay), attracting the authorities to your target and getting jack-shit out of it.
• Continue following said millionaire, for no apparent reason, leading von Wenk closer to catching you.
• Killing the millionaire instead of just leaving him alone in an attempt to get the cops off your trail. Great! Well done. You got no money and now your wanted for murder. Plus the detective had other links to you by that point so why murder the poor schmuck in the first place!? The guy didn't even know anything that could incriminate you!
• Making one of your patients your next target, directly associating yourself with a victim of this long string of crimes the police have been investigating.
• Kidnapping the wife of said victim, and good friend of von Wenk, because you're horny, drawing more suspicion.
• Ultimately get caught because instead of running away like you said you would you decided to throw a public magic show like a dumbass for no fucking reason and chose von Wenk as one of your volunteers. Really? Why would you fucking do that!? Is it to hypnotize him into killing himself?  Ignoring the fact that it would be suspicious when the attorney general commits suicide after getting hypnotized at a magic show that's one fucking hell of a gamble especially since he knows your style mind-control. Jesus you might as well have just straight up told him you were the guy he was looking for!

Also what the fuck is up with his god-damned powers? I get that he can hypnotize people with his gaze, I can believe that. Hell, Les Vampires did something similar, it's not an uncommon trope. But when this motherfucker can get a guy to cheat at cards by staring at the back of his head from across a room for half a second you went from mysterious ability to straight-up wizard. Congratulations movie, you have completely shattered my suspension of disbelief. Now everything you do is stupid. Well fucking done. And for God's sakes man, you have the power of mind-control! Why the fuck are you playing card games? Is this really the extent of your genius? Grifting rich people? Do you just want money? Then why didn't you claim any of the cash you cheated the guy out of? What is your motivation!?

"Oh the humanity,"yells the movie. "He's cheating at card games! Oh how helpless the world is to stop this evil matermind!" Are we really supposed to believe that this is what's paralyzing the police department? Some dirty poker games? There's no sense of danger here, the scale of the crimes are so small I couldn't give less of a shit if they stopped him or not. Why not hypnotize a politician or a general or something? I mean fuck it's already established you're some kind of voodoo master who can bend the wills of anyone you choose so why not get a little more ambitious?

The film also really tries to hammer the point across that he's some kind of Übermensch who's transcended contemptible things like empathy or emotion. One particularly laughable moment is when he's talking to his patient's wife about what's important in life.

"There's something more powerful than us...love," she whispers in a daze.

"LOVE? LOVE!? WHAT IS THIS EMOTION!? DOES NOT COMPUTE! DOOOES NOOOT COOOMPUUUTE!" yells Mabuse as sparks fly out of his motherboard. "LOVE ISN'T REAL, ONLY DESIRE. ALL THAT MATTERS IS POWER!" He then leads his horde of Uruk-hai to attack Gondor and retrieve the One Ring I imagine.

The worst part is that I really, really wanted to like this movie. The opening ten minutes were fucking amazing. Without any exposition we follow as Mabuse organizes this Ocean Eleven-type caper to steal secret documents from a moving train. We see one of his henchman strangle the courier and with precisely synchronized timing throw the briefcase out the window into a car. The driver signals to a nearby telephone pole where a lackey is positioned to tap into the wire and call his boss. And where is Mabuse? At home, getting dressed before getting the phone call that everything's gone according to plan, just like a real criminal genius. What an awesome sequence! Everything is so fast-paced and quickly edited that there's this compelling sense of urgency, and we're told everything we need to know about this character without any exposition. The film then cuts to the stock-market where everything is in chaos. Secret trade agreements between Switzerland and Holland have been stolen and now the Swiss are threatening to pull out of the deal, sending Dutch stocks plummeting. Everyone is panicking, sharply dressed brokers are shrieking at one another, desperate to sell their shares. Then suddenly from the madness Mabuse steps onto a platform and calmly announces that he'll buy the worthless stocks. He looks down onto his panicking peers with contempt, knowing full well that he has them in the palm of his hands. He casually checks his watch when suddenly its announced that the treaty has made it to the Swiss consulate, the deal will go through. The stocks shoot up, doubling, tripling, quadrupling in seconds. He nonchalantly announces that he's selling all his recently purchased shares just as the floor closes, and disappears.

Wow! Holy shit, he just manipulated the entire German stock exchange. And that was just the intro! The rest of the movie must be absolutely insane!

Nope. Poker. That's what we get for the next four hours.

Ugh.

I guess what bothers me is that it's not a bad movie. The acting is great and there is the occasionally interesting shot, but it's all used to create something aggressively mediocre, and in a way that's almost worse than if it had just been awful. At the end of the day Mabuse is missing what his type of character needs to be effective and that is a sense of control. Nothing after the stock exchange scene feels like its going according to his plans, and he loses everything that made him compelling. It's just an exhausting movie.