Fritz Lang

An animated version of Lang appeared in the Japanese animated movie "Full Metal Alchemist: Conquerors of Shamballa" (Fullmetal Alchemist the Movie: Conqueror of Shamballa (2005)). Originally mistaken by Edward Elric as being one of the Homonculi from his own world, this animated Lang aided Edward in his quest to return home. He was voiced by Hidekatsu Shibata.

Interviewed in Peter Bogdanovich's "Who the Devil Made It: Conversations With Robert Aldrich, George Cukor, Allan Dwan, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, Chuck Jones, Fritz Lang, Joseph H. Lewis, Sidney Lumet, Leo McCarey, Otto Preminger, Don Siegel, Josef von Sternberg, Frank Tashlin, Edgar G. Ulmer, Raoul Walsh." NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997.

Before his death in 1976, he planned to make a film about the hippie culture.

An extensive interview with Peter Bogdanovich resulted in a book, "Fritz Lang in America" published by Praesger in 1967.

In 1964, nearly blind, he was chosen to be president of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival. He was an avid collector of primitive art and habitually wore a monocle, an affectation he picked up during his early days in Vienna.

In the 1950s, in part because the film industry was in economic decline and also because of Lang's long-standing reputation for being difficult with, and abusive to, actors, he found it increasingly hard to get work.

At the end of the 1950s, he traveled to Germany and made what turned out to be his final three films there, none of which were well received.

He has directed two films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: Fury (1936) and The Big Heat (1953).

After about a year in Paris, Lang moved to the United States in mid-1934, initially under contract to MGM. Over the next 20 years, he directed numerous American films.

According to Lang himself, on 25 March 1933, two days after The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933) had been banned, he was summoned to the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda to meet with Joseph Goebbels himself. Goebbels explained the reason for the ban (the Nazi party slogans are fed into the mouth of the villain at the film's conclusion) and apologized to Lang. He then shocked Lang by offering him the position of production supervisor at the UFA studios, where his first film would be a biography of Wilhelm Tell. Lang claims he suspected a trap and attempted to throw off Goebbels by telling him, "My mother had Jewish parents," to which Goebbels responded, "We'll decide who's Jewish!" Lang then expressed interest in the position and said he needed some time to think it over. He describes how he looked at a clock and how during the entire meeting all he could think about was leaving as soon as possible so he could get to the bank and flee with all of his money. Lang says he didn't get there in time so he sold his wife's jewelry, boarded a train to Paris that same evening, leaving most of his money and personal possessions behind, along with his wife, Thea von Harbou, who divorced him later that year and went on to write and direct films for the Nazi propaganda machine. This story is possibly exaggerated by Lang for dramatic effect because there is evidence he left weeks after that.

His second wife, Thea von Harbou, divorced him after finding some evidence of his intimate relationship with Lily Latte, who was his contact in Paris during his visits and then his stay in France. Lilly was also married, and also divorced shortly after, having lived with Lang and serving as his personal assistant, from 1931-71, when they were married.

Was voted the 30th Greatest Director of all time by Entertainment Weekly.

He claims to have invented "the countdown" for dramatic purposes in his film Woman in the Moon (1929). His use of countdown is the first ever recorded, inspiring real life rocket launch sequences.

After a journey to America Lang returned to Germany to make what is probably his most famous work, Metropolis (1927). It was on this film that Lang acquired the reputation for being a "tyrant" on the set (even in the 1940s, long after he had settled in the US, many actors and actresses in Hollywood would refuse to work for him because of his abusive behavior on set).

Mabuse, der Spieler (1922), Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (1924), Metropolis (1927) and M (1931) (credited to von Harbou alone).

They married in 1922 and divorced in 1933. In that year, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels offered Lang the job of head of the German Cinema Institute. Lang--who was an anti-Nazi mainly because of his Catholic background--did not accept the position (it was later offered to and accepted by filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl) and, after secretly sending most of his money out of the country, fled Germany to Paris.

In 1920, he began a relationship with actress and writer Thea von Harbou (1889-1954), who wrote with him the scripts for his most celebrated films: Dr.

In early 1918, he was sent home shell-shocked and acted briefly in Viennese theater before accepting a job as a writer at Erich Pommer's production company in Berlin, Decla. In Berlin, Lang worked briefly as a writer and then as a director, at Ufa and then for Nero-Film, owned by the American Seymour Nebenzal.

After the outbreak of World War I he volunteered for the Austro-Hungarian army and was sent to the front of Russia, Romania and Italy, where he was wounded several times. He was awarded several medals for bravery. During his time in the military hospital he wrote his first scripts and one of them was very probably realized for the Stuart-Webbs serial of director Joe May. After 1917 May adapted several of Lang's scripts for Das rollende Hotel (1918), the follow-up to the successful "Joe Deebs" serial Sein schwierigster Fall (1915).

Severely wounded in June 1916, he wrote some scenarios for films while convalescing.

At the start of World War I, he returned to Vienna, enlisting in the army in January 1915.

He studied painting in Paris from 1913-14.

From 1910 to 1914, he traveled in Europe, and he would later claim, also in Asia and North Africa.

Fritz Lang was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1890. His father managed a construction company. His mother, Pauline Schlesinger, was Jewish but converted to Catholicism when Lang was ten. After high school, he enrolled briefly at the Technische Hochschule Wien and then started to train as a painter.