| Theodore Huff Memorial Film Society |
May 28 1961 |
THE THOUSAND EYES OF DR. MABUSE A CCC-Filmkunst (Berlin) - CEI-Incom (Rome) Co-production. Produced and directed by Fritz Lang; screenplay by Lang and Heniz Oscar Wuttig, from an idea by Jan Fethka; camera, Karl Lob; sets, Erich Kettelhut & Johannes Ott; Music - Bert Grund; editor, Traute Wischniewsky. Starring Peter Van Eyck, Dawn Adams, Gert Froebe, Wolfgang Preiss, with Werner Peters, Andrea Checchi, Reinhard Kolidschoff. |
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| Note: Although a follow-up to Dr. Mabuse and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, the film is in no way a sequel. At one point a sequence was planned bringing back Inspector Lohmann, Lang's old police hero; but this was either eliminated from the script, or edited out after shooting. |
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Synopsis in brief:
The car of tv reporter Barter stops at a traffic light. A dark limousine draws up alongside. When the lights change, the car does not move off. Simultaneously, Inspector Kros is told by a blind clairvoyant of a strange vision ... two cars - a murder ..
At the tv studios, major confusion. Barter had called earlier from the Hotel Luxor announcing the year's "biggest scoop" ... now a tv announcer has to broadcast the news that Barter has died on the way to the studio, apparently of a heart attack. But a police postmortem shows that he was killed by a steel needle, which penetrated his brain, leaving no external trace. Interpol enters the case, since it transpires that an airgun capable of firing such needles was stollen in the USA a year earlier -- the thief later discovered dead, with his throat cut. A veteran officer recalls a similar case of many years ago, committed by the insane Dr. Mabuse, who presumably died in a lunatic asylum at the beginning of the Hitler era. The files of the Mabuse case have disappeared however ... and the underworld firmly believes that he is still alive.
The Interpol has for a long time been working on a series of unsolved crimes, all of which seem to have some link with the Luxor Hotel -- a kidnapped child, a murder, an assassination, a suicide, blackmail.
These unsolved crimes, all with the common link of the Luxor Hotel, suggest to the veteran officer that a spiritual mastermind, a criminal genius, is behind them all -- and his thoughts again turn to Dr. Mabuse. In the meantime, something else happens at the Luxor. A young woman, Marion Menil, threatens to jump to her death from a window, Reporters, police, hotel officials, all fail to dissuade her. Then, from a neighboring window, Henry Travens, an American millionaire, somehow talks her out of it. Finally, it is Marion who explains to Travens, whose love she comes to value more than her own life, the terrible secret behind the resurgence of the Mabuse crimes. |
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(The above is a somewhat inadequate and much shortened (though not in details) version of the original "official" synopsis. We hope it may be of some help in following this untitled version. Those of us with smatterings of
German will try to keep the ball rolling with translations of key lines where possible!) |
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Grateful acknowledgement is made to Richard Gordon, of Gordon Films Inc., for making the print of the film available for
this showing.
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