Fritz Lang grew up in fin de siècle Vienna, during the Golden Autumn of the AustroHungarian Empire, and he carried its intellectual and artistic heritage with him for the rest of his days. The son of a welltodo construction magnate and his fervently Catholic and formerly Jewish wife, Fritz attended art school before World War I, imbibing the sensuous decadence of Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele. He also studied the explosive theories of Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud, gleaning from them ideas about amoral übermenschen and unconscious drives which would animate his work for decades to come.Langs artistic ambitions met with resistance from his stern father, so he abandoned painting and, after distinguishing himself in the Austrian army during WWI, joined the vibrant German film industry. By the end of his first year under Erich Pommer at Decla, he had written seven screenplays and directed two features. His early efforts, typified by the first film that bears his distinctive mark The Spiders Die Spinnen 1919, were actionadventure exercises that offered the thenpopular thrills of Perils of Pauline cliffhangers. Only with the allegorical Destiny Die Müde Tod 1921 did Lang transcend the pulpy genres of his day and herald the brilliant career that would follow. A central tale of a young woman bargaining with Death for the life of her beloved unfolds into three lavishly costumed episodes of tragic and forbidden love. Death will return her beau if she can save one of the lovers fated to die in each historical setting.The success of Destiny was far surpassed by the sensation created by Dr Mabuse, the Gambler Doktor Mabuse, Der Spieler 1922. A sprawling and lurid gangster serial inspired by Al Capone and foreshadowing the rise of Adolph Hitler, Mabuse was one of cinemas first supercriminals, an evil genius with the power to mesmerize his victims into doing his bidding. Shown in two parts over successive nights, it electrified audiences and made Langs reputation as a showman of the first rank.

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