Vier um die Frau (1921)
Directed by Fritz Lang

Film Review

Fritz Lang's second collaboration with screenwriter (and wife-to-be) Thea von Harbou is this frenetically paced thriller-melodrama.  With its narrative complexity, moody cinematography and razor-sharp editing. Vier um die Frau (a.k.a. Four Around a Woman) presages Lang's later crime masterpieces  Dr Mabuse, der Spieler (1922), Spione (1928) and M (1930) but is an impressive work in its own right.

Far more sophisticated than Lang's previous film, Das Wandernde Bild (1920), Vier um die Frau is a scurrilous piece of social satire, in which uncomfortable parallels are drawn between Germany's upper classes and the unsavoury figures of the underworld, blackmailers, forgers and jewel thieves.  Indeed, the demarcation between these two strata of German society appears hardly to exist at all, a point of view which many of Lang's compatriots would have shared.

The lightning pace of this film and the torturous plot place great demands on the spectator's concentration, and you probably have to watch it a second time just to make sense of it.  However, no one can fail to be impressed by the quality of Fritz Lang's mise-en-scène, which squeezes every last scintilla of dramatic tension and irony from Thea von Harbou's labyrinthine screenplay.

An important milestone in Lang's career, Vier um die Frau was believed to have been lost until a poor quality print was unearthed in 1986 from Cinemateca de Sâo Paulo in Brazil.  Now that the film has been beautifully restored, devotees of early German cinema can appreciate one of Lang's lesser known achievements, a film that offers tantalising glimpses of his subsequent masterworks.

Film Synopsis

Harry Yquem is a rich stockbroker who intends giving his wife Florence a present that will leave her in no doubt as to his devotion to her.  Naturally, being careful with his money, he doesn't want to spend a fortune, so he sets out to find himself a bargain in a dubious jewel market that is serviced by the criminal class.  As he does so, he cannot help noticing a man that he feel he half-recognises.  Harry becomes convinced that he is the exact likeness of a man he has seen in one of Florence's photographs.  Within no time, Harry is certain that this man - William Krafft - is his wife's lover, and in the hope of confirming his suspicions he begins to trail the unsuspecting stranger.

Harry then lures Krafft to his house by writing to him a letter in his wife's handwriting.  How is he to know that he is pursuing the wrong man?  Unbeknown to him, William Krafft has a twin brother, Werner, and this is the man whom Florence once lost her heart to.  As Harry makes preparations to extort a confession from one brother, the other is back in town, hoping to pick up where he left off with Florence.  Only one person knows the truth of Werner Kraffts's erstwhile romance with Harry's wife - Meunier - and he plans to use this knowledge for his own wicked ends...