14 great films by Fritz Lang

Fritz Lang was born in Vienna 130 years ago, on December 5, 1890. Despite losing sight in one eye after being wounded during the First World War, he was a man with a great cinematic vision and is still considered one of the most influential German-language film directors in the world.

Fritz Lang directed his first films before the invention of cinema with sound. He learned to tell his stories using only the power of images. According to many critics, he foresaw Nazi evil in his "Dr. Mabuse" series, which he started in 1922.

Through the epic "Die Nibelungen" series, made up of two parts — "Siegfried" and "Kriemhild's Revenge" — Fritz Lang brought Germany's national myth to the silver screen. It is considered one of the first major fantasy films in the history of cinema.

The most expensive film ever released at the time of its making, the pioneering science-fiction epic "Metropolis" inspired many other filmmakers afterwards, especially in Hollywood. The 1927 original negative of the movie went through extensive restoration and was shown on a giant screen right by Brandenburg Gate in Berlin in 2010.

Fritz Lang was a very resourceful and imaginative director. On the set of his movies, as here while shooting "Woman in the Moon," he experimented with camera angles and lighting effects — and later on with sound, too.

"M" is a masterpiece in the oeuvre of the director. In the director's first sound film from 1931, actor Peter Lorre depicts a hauntingly memorable child murderer. The scenes showing the hunted criminal on the run remain among the most impressive Fritz Lang has ever directed.

After the Nazis came to power, Fritz Lang left Germany and directed a film in France and then moved on to Hollywood. He established himself quickly in the US: The first film he shot there was "Fury," with Spencer Tracy (left) and Silvia Sidney.

Fritz Lang told the tragic and seemingly hopeless story of a couple in his second Hollywood film, "You Only Live Once" (1937). With his cinematographer Leon Shamroy, the director created fascinating black-and-white images for this film.

Fritz Lang adapted to the American studio system and started working continuously from the mid-1930s on. He successfully directed films in different genres — such as here with the western "The Return of Frank James" with Henry Fonda (right).

The director, who had fled from the Nazis, dealt with the situation in Germany in the film "Hangmen Also Die!," recounting the events surrounding the assassination of the Nazi governor Reinhard Heydrich in Prague.

Fritz Lang created some of the most impressive works of film noir, a genre characterized by a dramatic black-and-white visual style and experimental camera angles. They were often crime films with desperate characters, as here in "The Woman in the Window."

While many of the famous silent films Fritz Lang directed in Germany are still known by cinephiles, some of those he produced in the US are not. The 1948 film "Secret Beyond the Door" is one of the more obscure works of the master.

Others remain popular, such as this film "The Blue Gardenia" (1953), which is still regularly aired on German television. The title of the film comes from a song by Nat King Cole.

"The Big Heat" is another undervalued, nevertheless very important film noir by Fritz Lang which influenced several other filmmakers afterwards. Glenn Ford (left) and Lee Marvin (center) star in this crime thriller.

Fritz Lang returned to Europe in 1956. He directed three more films in Germany, among them "The Tiger of Eschnapur," which was recently part of a retrospective in Brazil. Fritz Lang remains one the most important German cultural exports worldwide.