Die Spinnen (1919)
Directed by Fritz Lang

Film Review

Fritz Lang had made just two films at the Decla studios in Berlin when he was invited to direct a series of films similar to the Louis Feuillade serials that had recently been made in France and which had rapidly garnered an international audience.  Feuillade's Les Vampires was the primary inspiration for what became Die Spinnen (The Spiders), the latter adopting many of the earlier serial's ingredients, including a secret criminal organisation, a deadly female arch-criminal (Ressel Orla's Lio Sha being a virtual carbon copy of Musidora's Irma Vep) and a shadowy crime boss (an obvious forerunner of the criminal mastermind in Lang's subsequent Mabuse films).  The central hero, Kay Hoog, is an amalgam of the heroic leads in just about every one of Feuillade's crime serials, and bears an uncanny resemblance to Spielberg's Indiana Jones (not surprisingly as Spielberg apparently based his character on his recollection of the silent serials he had seen in his youth). 

It's hardly great art and, compared with Lang's subsequent masterpieces, Die Spinnen comes across as nothing more than a trashy but likeable crowdpleaser, lowgrade entertainment for the masses.  Yet this was the film that established Lang as a filmmaker in Germany and gave him the clout to make far more worthy and original films, many of which proved to be somewhat less commercially successful.  Although it is competently directed, Die Spinnen shows little of the stylistic innovation and flair that Lang woud bring to his later films and is marred by a distinct lack of originality on the script front (the plot is essentially a lazy rehash of borrowed storylines) and a disjointed narrative that has neither logic nor cohesion.  It is tempting to dismiss the film as an over-enthusiastic deluge of derivative froth but, with its strong visuals and hectic pace, it proves to be surprisingly entertaining - the cinematic equivalent of a really good page-turner (Dan Brown rather than Dostoyevsky).  We should be grateful that Die Spinnen exists at all - it was only in the 1970s that it was rediscovered, having been thought lost for many decades.

After making the first film in the series, The Golden Sea (Der goldene See), Lang was geared up to direct another thriller film entitled The Cabinet of Dr Caligari.  Such was the immense popularity of the first Spinnen instalment that its producers at Decla were in haste to rush out a sequel, and so Lang was reassigned to direct The Spiders Part 2: The Diamond Ship (Das Brillantenschiff).  The Caligari gig went to another director, Robert Wiene, who delivered what was to become one of the great landmarks of German expressionistic cinema.  By the time Lang had completed work on the second Spinnen film his producers had lost interest in the series and so plans to make another two films were quickly abandoned.  Lang's subsequent Das Wandernde Bild (1920) and Frau im Mond (1929) both have echoes of Die Spinnen's comicbook excesses, but it is in Dr Mabuse, der Spieler (1922) and Spione (1928) that Lang managed to take the essence of the 'sensation serial' and work this into something more substantial and far more sinister - modern thrillers that powerfully evoked very real anxieties about criminal and political power in Weimar Germany.

Film Synopsis

The American millionaire socialite Kay Hoog has a thirst for adventure, so when he comes across a mysterious message in a bottle revealing the location of a lost Inca civilisation and a fabulous treasure he is overtaken by excitement.  No sooner has Kay set out for South America than a rival expedition is dispatched by a powerful crime syndicate known as The Spiders, led by the beautiful but deadly Lio Sha.  Arriving at the Golden Lake, Kay comes to the rescue of the Inca princess Naela, and she, in turn, prevents him from being sacrificed by her people to their gods.  Misfortune rains down on both expeditions: the Spiders fail to recover the lost treasure and Kay narrowly escapes with Naela.  A short time later, Lio Sha visits Kay at his home in San Francisco.  When the adventurer rejects her amorous advances, Lio Sha is so incensed that she kills Naela out of spite.  Hoog swears to avenge his beloved's death and gets the chance to do just that when he becomes embroiled in the Spiders' next criminal exploit: the theft of a priceless diamond...