Mabuse Returns: Fritz Lang, 1950s Berlin, and the Afterlife of Nazi Television

Abstract

Fritz Lang’s film The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (1960) stands out among West German cinema of the Adenauer years for its attention to urban space and the afterlife of Nazism in the postwar era. This article rereads the film as an incisive representation of the new mobilities and historically layered spaces and infrastructure of 1950s Berlin, a representation informed by Lang’s exile experience and Hollywood film noir. By newly contextualizing the film in relation to the history of Nazi television, as well as Siegfried Kracauer’s and Theodor W. Adorno’s early postwar writings, the article reconstructs the film’s interconnections with critical discourses on the afterlife of fascist terror, authoritarianism, and irrationality in postwar urban space, media, and astrology. It demonstrates further the importance of rereading Lang, and cinema in general, in close relation to other media like television.