achievements.
It starred Peter Lorre (the Jewish actor who also
later fled Nazi Germany) in his screen debut, as a
psychopathic serial child killer. A dissection of crimi-
nal deviance, M was Lang's personal favorite among
his own films.
The director's first American success was Fury, a
1936 film starring Spencer Tracy as a good man
turned bitter and vengeful by the cruelty he sees in the
people around him, a frequent theme in Lang's work.
Similar outcast characters altered by persecutions
they suffered at the hands of the world appear in dif-
ferent scenarios throughout Lang's movies. None are
more striking than a pair of mid-1940s noir flicks
— Lang is often credited with inventing the genre
— starring Edward G. Robinson and Joan Bennett:
The Woman in the Window and Scarlet Street.
Lang's earlier 1940s output included works aimed
at helping the war effort. A veteran of World War I,
Lang directed the anti-Nazi film Man Hunt (1941),
about a British hunter who stalks Hitler and then in
turn is hunted by the Gestapo. He also helmed
Hangman Also Die (1943) and the espionage thrillers
Ministry of Fear (1944) and Cloak and Dagger (1946).
Lang worked in America through the 1950s, most-
ly on suspense films like The Big Heat and While the
City Sleeps, but he also made a few Westerns, includ-
ing Rancho Notorious with Marlene Dietrich.
Then, tired of fighting with Hollywood producers
and yearning for more cinematic control, he
returned to Germany in 1960 and made a third Dr.
Mabuse film, The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse, his
directorial swan song.
In 1963, he appeared in Jean-Luc Godard's
Contempt, playing himself, his famous monocle
firmly implanted in his eye as his "character" futilely
attempts to make a movie of Homer's Odyssey.
He died in retirement in 1976 in Beverly Hills, Calif.
Design Genius
In his youth, Lang had been expected to follow in
his architect father's footsteps. He had studied at a
technical college before setting out to pursue his
own dreams as a graphic and cinematic artist, but
his early training provided him with a sense of grand
scale and striking visual composition.
Lang always acknowledged that Metropolis, since
just after its original release, had not been seen as he
intended it.
His scenes of a magnificent futuristic city —
maintained by workers enslaved underground to run
the machines that keep the aboveground metropolis
alive — are striking in their influence on future sci-
ence fiction movies, like Blade Runner.
But, in its restored version, we see what Lang
achieved with a pair of hands and a vision, as
opposed to the computer-generated imagery that
would populate a 21st-century Metropolis. El
Metropolis screens 7 and 9:30 p.m. Friday and
Saturday, Nov. 29-30, and 4 and 7 p.m.
Sunday, Dec. 1, at the Detroit Film Theatre at
the Detroit Institute of Arts (John R entrance).
$61$5 students, seniors and DIA members.
(313) 833-3237.
`Kiss Me, Stupid'
Once banned in parts of the US., Billy Wilder's
"lewd" comedy screens at the DFT
ERIN PODOLS KY
Special to the Jewish News
T
Like Fritz Lang, he left Germany for Paris in
1933 after Hitler's rise to power, seeing that the
future for Jews in Germany was not bright.
Though Wilder tried to convince his family to join
him in leaving, they did not; his mother and other
relatives died at Auschwitz.
Once in America, in 1934, Wilder again found
work as a screenwriter, this time at Paramount. He
directed his first film in 1942 and went on to gar-
ner 21 Academy Award nominations, winning six.
He was married twice, the second time from 1949
until his death to Audrey Young.
Several years ago, writer-director Cameron
wenty years after director Billy Wilder
made his first true classic, Double
Indemnity, he and writing partner I.A.L.
Diamond wrote a sex comedy called Kiss Me,
Stupid. It was the culmination of Wilder's two
decades of constant envelope pushing of censor-
ship boards and standards of so-called decency.
Never one to shy away from innuendo and
entendre, Wilder went all out, creating the story o
a jealous small-town piano teacher and aspiring
songwriter named Orville J. Spooner (Ray
Walston), who gets stuck with entertain-
ing Dino, a Rat Pack member-esque
Vegas entertainer (played by Dean Martin
in a role that blurs the line between reality
and fiction), after his car conks out while
passing through Climax, Nev.
When Orville learns that his beloved
wife is attracted to the bigheaded
lothario, he kicks her out of the house
and hires a prostitute to pose as the wife
and show Dino a good time.
Kiss Me, Stupid was neither a box office
success nor a masterpiece, but it contains
plenty of typical Wilder humor and a
dressed-down performance from Kim
Novak as the trashy Jersey cocktail wait-
ress willina b to earn a little extra cash.
Dean Martin, Ray Walston and Kim Novak
This was Wilder's only work with the
in Billy Wilder's "Kiss Me Stupid"
actress, and like many other of his
female (and male) leads, he draws her
out in ways that those familiar with her
best-known film, Vertigo, would find
Crowe published a book of his interviews with
surprising.
Wilder, Conversations With Wilder. It is an excel-
The film also marked an end to a stunning run
lent, photo-filled volume full of evidence that even
of classic, enduring Wilder films that include The
in his 90s, Wilder still possessed the sharp wit
Lost Weekend, Sunset Boulevard, Ace in the Hole,
woven
through his movies.
Stalag 17, Sabrina, The Seven-Year Itch, Love in the
When
Crowe requests permission to ask him
Afternoon, Witness for the Prosecution, Some Like it
questions
about Kiss Me, Stupid, the director's
The
Apartment.
Hot and
responds, "It's not OK, but ask them."
After the 1964 release of Kiss Me, Stupid, the
Kiss Me, Stupid isn't as embarrassing. as Wilder
director made only six more films, the last in
makes it out to be, and Novak and Walston (who
1981.
bears a bizarre resemblance here to Eric
McCormack of Will & Grace) make it a film well
worth watching.
Refugee From Germany
A four-minute scene originally cut by American
Wilder, who died in March at age 95, was born
censors has been fully restored in this fresh print. El
200 miles outside Vienna in what is now Poland.
He studied law at the University of Vienna before
dropping out to work as a newspaper reporter.
Kiss Me, Stupid screens 7:30 p.m. Monday, Nov.
In 1926, he moved to Berlin, working as an
25, at the Detroit Film Theatre at the Detroit
escort and continuing to write for newspapers and
Institute of Arts. $61$5 students, seniors and
magazines. Soon, he began to write title cards for
DIA members. (313) 833-3237.
silent films, eventually working as a screenwriter at
several German film studios.
11/22
2002
71 -