Is Love stronger than Death? DESTINY provides a unique answer that has haunted moviegoers for over 80 years. Fritz Lang, one of the world’s great directors, launched his career with this 1921 German silent epic known in Germany as DER MUDE TOD (Weary Death). It’s one of the most important silent films influencing future movies from THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (1924) to TALES FROM THE CRYPT (1972).
In this allegorical story, Death is growing weary of Man’s animosity towards him for doing his job of carrying out God’s will. As a travelling stranger he purchases a garden in a small German village, builds a high wall around it, and then retreats behind it. A young couple visits the village where the young man is taken by Death. Distraught, the young woman is permitted to enter Death’s domain. If she can alter the fate of one of three lives, hence the English title DESTINY, Death will restore her beloved to her.
By using allegory, Lang and scenario writer Thea von Harbou (Lang’s wife and frequent collaborator) are able to set the three lives in different periods of history. The first is 19th century Persia, the second in Renaissance Venice at Carnival time, and finally in ancient China. This allows them to feature exotic settings, nifty special effects, and lots of extras.
The film’s origins are rooted in a dream that Fritz Lang had as a child. Sick with fever, he envisioned a tall, dark stranger with a broad black hat standing before and staring down at him. This image for Death has reappeared many times in movies since then most notably in Ingmar Bergman’s THE SEVENTH SEAL
Ranging from the realistic to the abstract, the film’s awesome settings are a bridge from the harsh expressionism of THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI to the more realistic later films of G.W. Pabst and E.A. Dupont such as PANDORA’S BOX and VARIETY. One of the most remarkable images in DESTINY is Death’s realm which is depicted as a vast area of Gothic arches, filled with burning candles. Each candle represents a human life. When a candle goes out then someone dies.
Lil Dagover, best remembered today for CALIGARI, stars as the fiance’ who believes that Love is stronger than Death and she sets about to prove it. How she goes about it and whether she achieves it is what gives DESTINY its emotional power. Walter Janssen is her intended whom Death snatches away. They also play the lovers in the three interior stories. Dagover’s enormous eyes and marvelous facial expressions make her the embodiment of Romantic determination.
Death is played by Bernhard Goetzke, a stage actor who appeared in German films throughout the 1920s and 30s including several of Fritz Lang’s during this period. His striking, gaunt appearance is impossible to forget just as it was as the supernatural swami in Joe May’s THE INDIAN TOMB which was also made in 1921.
The film was stunningly photographed by Fritz Arno Wagner who would shoot F.W, Murnau’s NOSFERATU one year later. He would go on to become one of Germany’s greatest early cinematographers and would work with Lang until 1933 when Lang left Germany (and Thea von Harbou who remained and joined the Nazi party) after Hitler came to power. By that time Lang had made 14 films in Germany. He would make one film in France before moving to Hollywood where he would direct 22 movies between 1936 and 1956.
The Capsule Critic 