Des­tiny (1921)

It seems that the Fritz Lang we all know and love from expres­sion­ist extrav­a­gan­zas such as Metrop­o­lis and Dr Mabuse was ply­ing his expert trade years before those canon­i­cal pil­lars of the silent film era. 1921’s Des­tiny crams more ideas, more sto­ry, more tricks and more emo­tion into its sur­pris­ing­ly curt 99 minute run­time than most direc­tors man­age across an entire career.

A hap­py cou­ple, just mar­ried, ride togeth­er in a car­riage across the coun­try­side. So pure is their devo­tion to one anoth­er that they cov­er the eyes of an on-look­ing duck being held by a fel­low pas­sen­ger while they canoo­dle. En route to their des­ti­na­tion, a strange trav­eller hails a ride: Death. Just as Metrop­o­lis laid down its cen­tral pur­pose in a rous­ing quo­ta­tion – ​“the medi­a­tor between head and hands must be the heart” – so too does Destiny.

This time it is the notion that ​“love is stronger than death,” and the film plays out vari­a­tions on this theme. The cou­ple are seen drink­ing in a bar with the stranger, and when she briefly leaves the room, her hus­band dis­ap­pears. Even­tu­al­ly, she finds Death and begs for the return of her spouse, but is instead offered a chal­lenge: prove that love can pre­vent a per­son from dying, and he shall be yours once more.

From the ear­ly shot of Death appear­ing in an omi­nous wood­land glade pre­ced­ed by a wisp of wind run­ning through the under­growth, Lang’s per­fec­tion­ism, as well as his will­ing­ness to push the young medi­um to its very out­er lim­its, is pal­pa­ble and excit­ing. The effects that he achieves are round­ly aston­ish­ing, and there’s some­thing about their obvi­ous arti­fice that makes them even more real and more mag­i­cal. Even the extrav­a­gant set designs, such as Death’s par­lour filled with can­dles at dif­fer­ent lengths, or the giant wall he erects to retain his pri­va­cy, are jaw-drop­ping in their scale and detail.

It’s an epic split into six chap­ters, and it con­tains with­in it three minia­ture (and fan­ci­ful) sub-plots. Yet this is no port­man­teau, as these short tales illus­trate the woman’s time-and-space hop­ping adven­tures to save her hus­band from obliv­ion. The first takes in a mid­dle-east­ern enclave dur­ing Ramadan and her attempts to pro­tect her secret lover from a bar­barous king. The sec­ond heads to Venice where court intrigues lead to a rapi­er fight to the death. While the third (and most incred­i­ble) takes us to ancient Chi­na as a cor­pu­lent emper­or demands that magi­cians enter­tain him, but those who do not sat­is­fy him will lose their head.

It’s a spec­ta­cle like no oth­er, and a film which gets to the heart of the idea that, as humans, we find new ways to fight against the spec­tre of death every sin­gle day.