The Indian Tomb

Fritz Lang - 1959 - Germany

• Penultimate film by the great German auteur Fritz Lang, followed closely by The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse.

• An exotic, epic parable about fate, doom and culture clash, (common Lang themes).

• Released in two parts as The Tiger of Eschnapur and The Indian Tomb, and also re-edited into a 90-minute version called Journey to the Lost City.

• Based on a script Lang wrote with his ex-partner (and ex-wife) Thea von Harbou forty years earlier, which was also made into the 1921 version not directed by Lang.

• A work of formalism, its old-fashioned style is misread as camp by some critics, but it is actually an architectural design - like Hitchcock's or Ozu's - that is meant to mirror the themes of the film; in this case a maharaja's project to build a tomb for his (still living) unrequited love.

• Lang's style is infinitely seductive, making viewers feel that they are in the hands of a true master and that the film's composition and structure are based on Lang's command of a core secret in the art of cinema that very few others have ever attained.