‘Destiny’ or — Fritz Lang’s ‘Quantum Leap’?!
In the immortal words of Frederick Fronkensteen — “Destiny! Destiny! No escaping that for me!”
As so it is with Fritz Lang’s 1921’s ‘Der Mude Tod’ (‘Destiny’) where a young couple encounter a strange man in a dark hat by the side of the road. They give him a lift to the local village but it is not long before the young man has disappeared and the young woman discovers he has been taken by Death, the strange man, and her beloved has been lost to her. There is nothing she can do.
Appealing to Death to reunite her with her lover he explains to her that, being a sort of reluctant reaper, he is unable to do so. Yet he can give her a chance: there are three candles, each representing a human life, and if she can save one of these lives from Death’s clutches he will return her man to her. The first light/life dwells in an Islamic caliphate, the second in Venice and the third in China. She will be transported into the body of a person living there and she’ll have a limited time for each of her attempts to help this person escape their fate. So it’s essentially ‘Quantum Leap’ as she Bakula’s herself from one body to another whilst Death is never far behind.
Will she outwit Death? Will she be reunited with her true love or will Death win leaving her, literally, on her Tod?
A number of things are interesting about ‘Der Mude Tod’, the most notable being that, despite the subject matter, this is one of Lang’s breeziest movies. It’s not just the short (for him) running time but also a lighter touch and a lighter tone. There’s quite a bit of comedy and humour here, something that is often lacking in other Lang films, and the difference it makes is striking. The village elders are played for laughs and there are a few really funny moments scattered throughout. The pacing is brisk and fluid and another surprising aspect here is the relatively extensive use of exteriors. This might sound like a trivial detail but it helps alleviate that unventilated vibe Lang’s work could sometime have; for all their scope it’s amazing how hermetically sealed Lang’s films could sometimes feel. At this point he hadn’t quite retreated permanently into the studio, and it shows.
Plus, despite being made in Germany in 1921, there’s not much Expressionism to be found here with hardly any of the oppressive, looming shadows and nightmarish geometry we might expect (well, maybe a bit). Besides, Lang never seems too interested in representing inner psychology that explicitly; that would get too much in the way of the romance of adventure and all the exotic fun. Sure, that exoticism is Lang’s typical oriental eclecticism meaning it sometimes doesn’t make much artistic or historical sense what with it all being smashed together — what Shiva is doing in ancient China I have no idea — but its effective and this scenic variation helps keep things interesting. Unlike ‘Mabuse’, ‘Die Nibelungen’ or ‘Metropolis’, all of which can feel like eating a wedding cake by yourself in one sitting, ‘Der Mude Tod’ feels more like a buffet.
Then there’s the influences this film must have had, in its own way as important as Lang’s sci-fi epic, with the depiction of Death, the various special effects, story and design all having an impact on everyone and everything from Ingmar Bergman, ‘The Hitcher’ (1986), Harryhausen, Douglas Fairbanks’s ‘Thief of Bagdad’ (1924) and even ‘Run Lola, Run’ (a young woman given three chances to save the man she loves from death, although I only know that because I read it in the blu ray booklet and would not have figured that out by myself). The influence on Walsh and Fairbank’s ‘Thief of Bagdad’ (the magic carpet ride, the flying horse etc) is obvious although what I didn’t know was that Fairbanks was so impressed by the effects in Lang’s film that he bought the movie so he could delay its release in America until after his film had come out, stopping ‘Destiny’ from beating his movie to the punch of introducing audiences to these particular flights of fancy. This might seem like an underhand move but I can imagine Lang taking it as a huge compliment.
‘Der Mude Tod’ is great. It maybe doesn’t culminate in the overwhelming delirium of his epics but neither does it outstay its welcome. To crowbar it ungracefully and inaccurately into a Three Bears analogy, like Goldilocks’ porridge it’s neither to big nor too small; it’s just right.
But hang on! Is the message of the film essentially that suicide is a good thing? Why would Lang think that? Well, just don’t ask him what happened to his first wife. Now that’s a really scary story.
