Fritz Lang - Legendary Director

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* NAME: FRITZ LANG 
 * BIRTH NAME: FRIEDRICH CHRISTIAN ANTON LANG * BORN: 5 DECEMBER 1890 * BIRTH PLACE: VIENNA, AUSTRIA * DIED: 2 AUGUST 1976, BEVERLY HILLS, LOS ANGELES, USA * SPOUSE: 0 LISA ROSENTHAL (? - 1921) (HER DEATH) 1 THEA VON HARBOU (1922 - 1933) Austrian-born American Fritz Lang (1890-1976) was one of the world's great film directors. He played a major role in shaping two influential film industries: the German during the 1920s and early 1930s with films such as Metropolis and M, and the American during the 1940s and 1950s with films such as You Only Live Once. HIS BEGINNINGS: * Born in Vienna, Austria, on December 5, 1890, to Anton and Paula (née Schlesinger) Lang, Fritz grew up in middle-class comfort. * He soon left home altogether to study his real interest, painting, and to see the world. * By 1913 he was in Paris, supporting himself through fashion design, painting postcards, and drawing cartoons. * At the outbreak of World War I he returned to Vienna where he was soon called up to join the Austrian army. While recuperating from wounds that cost him the sight of one eye, he began to write film scripts and to act in the theater. * In 1918 an invitation from Decla, the leading German film studio, brought him to Berlin. HIS FIRST WORK: * Lang's first major film was Der müde Tod (Destiny) (1921). * Its theme, man's fight against fate, was to become central to all of his work. * In 1922, Lang directed Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler (The Gambler), the first of three films he was to make about this legendary master criminal. * Then came two very ambitious and very different projects, Die Nibelungen, a powerful rendition of an old Germanic myth, and Metropolis (1926), a striking vision of the city of the future. * These films showed Lang in full

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