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knows better. They go ashore. The girl becomes still more excited. They quarrel and separate, and the barge goes on. Realism wins, and they come together again.
It is all very simple but true. The only possible criticism is that Vigo makes the coming together more sentimental than it need have been. The girl wanders overmuch on desolate bridges looking for the " Atalante," when any good proletarian would have had the sense to use the police. The issue would not have appeared any less desperate.
The chief thing about the film is the quality of Vigo as a director. He tells the right story; he tells it in a style peculiar to himself. It is an exciting style. At the base of it is a sense of documentary realism which makes the barge a real barge — so exact in its topography that one could find one's way on it blindfold and dead drunk on a windy night. This is important in barges as in all ships, and sea films never seem to realize it. But on top of the realism is a crazy Vigo world of symbols and images. The mate forward has his cabin stuffed with bric-a-brac from junk shops and from deep sea voyages. He too, more monstrously, represents romance: with shells, sword fish, pictures of harlots, musical boxes, and the pickled hands of a departed shipmate. He is tattooed — as he proudly demonstrates to the eager skipperess — to the nines. The trip ashore is similarly rendered. Here romance is not described but imaged in the crazy antics of a colporteur or ribbon man, who cycles down high hills, is a first rate sleight of hand merchant, and, for no reason at all, appears occasionally with a one man band. It is a novel and fascinating way of story-telling, and Vigo is clearly one of the most imaginative young directors in Europe.
John Grierson.
DR MABUSE
Production : JVeroJilm. Script: Thea van Harbou. Direction: Fritz Lang. Photography: Fritz Arno Wagner. Sets: Karl Volbrecht. Distribution: A. Fried. With Gustav Diessl, Rudolph Klein-Rogge, Otto Wernicke, Oscar Beregi, Vera Liessem, Camilla Spira. Length: 10,620 feet.
This is the last film made by Fritz Lang in Germany, produced by Nebenzahl's Nero company which sponsored Kameradschaft, Ariane, M. and Atlantide. Much celluloid has been spoiled since the original crazy exploits of the hypnotist Mabuse were shown in part form in England but even now, in days of sound, Lang remains unchanged. Perhaps the literary use of noise assists the building of the suspense of which he is so fond, as in the opening of this picture; probably the American gang films have loaned an idea or two, as in the car murder; but the formula remains essentially the same. Incredible robberies, the unseen master-criminal, the sub-sect
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