Manus ludens. Mabuse’s playful hands

Abstract

The opening shots of Fritz Lang’s Dr Mabuse, Der Spieler/Dr Mabuse, the Gambler (1922) perfectly set the tone for the film to come. Before revealing what will turn out to be the most unreliable element of this cinematic masterpiece – Mabuse’s face – the camera lingers on a close-up of his hands as they mix a number of cartes de visite from which he is about to choose his next fake identity. Without a doubt, the allure of the master criminal Mabuse relies primarily on the power of his hypnotizing gaze. Taking a slightly different route from the classical emphasis on Mabuse’s enchanting eyes, however, I would like to suggest that the very first frame in fact reveals a different, secret protagonist, namely Mabuse’s hands. The scene presents the choosing of a particular character as analogous to a move in a casual card game. The notion of playfulness, the synchronous cunning and nonchalance of Mabuse as homo ludens, propels the plotline and subverts a framing of the main character as simply a criminal. The display of various photographic portraits itself suggests a double meaning; as Tom Gunning writes, ‘The stack of cards blends two realms of reference: gambling and role-playing’.1 What can be read in the cards is thus an ability to switch identities as one pleases, a characteristic that clearly evokes the all-encompassing and overpowering dream factory that is cinema.2 The careful dissection and assembly fabricated in this film pertains to a pattern typical of Lang, and could be described as a ‘cinematography of hand pic(k)s’. The film certainly highlights images of hands, but in addition it bestows these hands with a constitutive agency in the twists and turns of a crime thriller.