Customer Ratings & Reviews

This is the last movie of Fritz Lang, a pioneer in the movie industry. I really should say, this is the last two movies of the director who gave us the silent spectacular Metropolis. It seems that Lang sent two movies to the US but an eager editor cut the four hours of material down to a little over one-and-one half hours and released it as a single movie. (This print is 91 minutes according to my DVD player. **Contains Spoilers**. An architect and a beautiful dancing girl are traveling to the land of a Maharaja. On the way the dancing girl is saved by the architect from a man-eating (and evidentially woman-eating) tiger. The maharaja is very grateful to the architect as he desires the dancing girl to take the place of his long-deceased wife. Unfortunately for the ruler, the visitors are developing feelings for each other. Meanwhile, the maharaja's brother, while pretending to be his loyal subject, is plotting to seize the throne for himself. He tries to get a neighboring ruler and the majaraja's former brother-in-law to attack on the grounds that the desire for the dancing girl is an insult to the memory of his late sister. The neighbor maharaja sees what the brother is planning. The sister has been dead and long time, and if our maharaja wishes a sexy plaything-that's really natural. The loving couple attempt to escape but are captured. The maharaja decides to force a marriage between himself and the dancing girl. Now his former bother-in-law is really angry. It is one thing to have a mistress and another for a common dancing girl to take the place of his late sister on the throne. He attacks with his military which has little difficulty is capturing the maharaja and his court as the disloyal brother has stationed his troops far from the city. The troops do find out in time, return and kill the former brother-in-law and his troops. The humbled and wiser maharaja sends the loving couple on their way. This is not a great movie but in one I would enjoy watching on a slow day. My major criticism is not with the movie itself but with the condition of the print. The color is faded and the the print is so blurred in places, one would think that some scenes were shot out of focus. I actually paused the movie at one point because I though my glasses were so smudged that they were causing the problem. I would recommend his movie to a friend but would warn him about the quality of the print.