Fritz Lang: Moral Integrity and Bad Girls

Fritz Lang at Home

In Jacques Rivette: The Night Watchman, a film by Claire Denis, Rivette speaks of meeting Fritz Lang. "He spoke only of morals," he describes. Below are excerpts from a 1959 Cahiers du cinéma interview that Rivette and Jean Domarchi conducted with Lang:

Lang: M and Fury are, I believe, the films I prefer. There are others as well, which I made in America, Scarlet Street, The Woman in the Window, While the City Sleeps. These are all films based on a social critique. Naturally I prefer that, because I believe that critique is something fundamental for a director.

Rivette and Domarchi: What exactly do you mean by social critique, that of the system or that of civilization?

Lang: One can't really differentiate. It is the critique of our "environment," of our laws or our conventions. I will admit to a project. I must make a film where I put all my heart. It is a film which shows modern man as he is: he has forgotten the true meaning of life, he works only for things, for money, not to enrich his soul, but to gain material advantages. And because he has forgotten the meaning of life, he is already dead. He is afraid of love, he simply wants to go to bed, make love, but he doesn't want any responsibilities. He only wants to satisfy his desire. I think it is important to make this film now. While the City Sleeps shows the hard competition of four men inside a newspaper office at the beginning. My personality refuses the personal satisfaction of being a man. Because each of us, these days, is looking for position, power, money, but never anything inside. You see, it is very difficult to say, “I like this or that.” When one begins a film, maybe one doesn't even know exactly what one is doing. There are always people to explain what I want to do, and I say to them, “You know more than I.” When I undertake a work, I try to translate emotion.


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Rivette and Domarchi: You told us earlier that the director's goal was to critique. Couldn't that be the definition of mise-en-scene?

Lang: All art, I believe, should critique something. It isn't enough to say it's good, it's enticing, it's marvelous. In any case, what can one say of a woman who is good? She's a good mother, a good wife. But what can one recount about a bad woman? One can speak for hours about her, she is interesting [Laughs]. Yes or no? You say about one that she is good, but the other. ... The question is, “Why is she bad?”, “Is she really bad?”, “What right has she?”, “What were the circumstances?”, “Weren't men responsible?” One could talk all night. And we could talk all night with her. [Laughs]



• Lang's favorites Scarlet Street and The Woman in the Window play today at Film Forum in New York as part of the FRITZ LANG IN HOLLYWOOD series.

How to Be Attractive by Joan Bennett

Whenever I hear Joan Bennett speak, I hear her throaty voice saying, as she supposedly did when her husband Walter Wanger shot the man he suspected to be her lover: "Oh for CHRIST'S sake Walter, he's ONLY an Agent!"



From HOW TO BE ATTRACTIVE by Joan Bennett (1951)

Some of our ancestors made a virtue of ugliness. I have a sneaking suspicion that it was a few hags who were neglected on the Mayflower boat trip. Today ministers to the spirit, body, and mind all agree that the woman who has stopped trying to be attractive is a sick woman.



Time for Headwork
A beautiful face, figure, and clothes do not necessarily add up to an attractive woman. Rather than delving into history or the world at large, suppose I just quote my own business. Look at the woman movie stars who have had great followings for the last ten or twenty years. Most of them have some claim to beauty--but frequently they have less beauty than other near stars have never made the grade. Now look around at your own friends. Oh, it's personality, is it?

Fastidiousness and vitality are parts of that "quality of the person." That's why much of this book has been devoted to sane and simple care.



How is Your Heart?
I don't remember how I got hold of the yardstick of kindness. Certainly it drops from my hands too frequently. My critics and friends will testify that I'm impatient, quick-tempered, and caustic. I have even been guilty of ugly generalizations. But cruel and unfair as I have been and probably will be, I have lost the knack of effective, damaging cruelty. It didn't disappear by any reasoning process or abstract philosophy. I won't even tell you the actual turning-point. But it was typically woman-fashion. You see, it is easy to love babies...



It is selfishness in the highest degree. I have children of my own. I want their world to be clean and free. If I help rob other children of that world, what possible assurance have I that my own won't live in the hopeless one of discrimination, poverty, sorrow?

I grow a little embarrassed, knowing I am not qualified to discuss these things glibly or as a personification of them. But it had to be mentioned--even in a none too serious book on beauty, by a far from great, gentle or wise woman.



Films: SUSPIRIA (Argento, 1977), SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR (Lang, 1948), SCARLET STREET (Lang, 1945), THE WOMAN ON THE BEACH (Renoir, 1947), THERE'S ALWAYS TOMORROW (Sirk, 1956)