Owing to its two parts, [Dr. Mabuse the Gambler] is of an extraordinary length—a dollar-dreadful rather than a penny-dreadful. Trash need not be untrue to life; on the contrary, life may culminate in heaps of trash, such as no writer could ever amass. However, instead of making Dr. Mabuse reflect familiar surroundings, Lang frequently stages the action in settings of pronounced artificiality. Now the scene is an expressionist clubroom with painted shadows on the wall, now a dark back street through which Cesare might have slipped with Jane in his arms. Other decorative forms help these expressionist ones to mark the whole as an emotional vision. Dr. Mabuse belongs in the Caligari sphere…. It is by no means a documentary film, but it is a document of its time.

The world it pictures has fallen prey to lawlessness and depravity. A night-club dancer performs in a d...