Nick M
This is director Fritz Lang's earliest surviving film (and only his third overall). Quite simply, most modern audiences will find little of worth here. The pacing is awful, the plot development haphazard, and the acting is amateurish at best. Carl de Vogt in the lead role is fine, but the rest are fairly painful to watch. None of the intended emotional beats land because it's all put together so shoddily. There was an attempt at dramatic tinting, but I found that it detracted rather than added to the quality of the picture because its inconsistency was confusing and the rapidity of the shifts back to standard tint were distracting. Speaking of jarring, the transitions between scenes are so disorienting that they gave me mental whiplash. Consequently, a fairly straightforward plot comes off feeling convoluted because of the way it is presented. Lang seems to think that directing amounts to ticking off a checklist at this point in his career. As long as each element is included, that's all that matters; there's no need to make things feel cohesive. The people want variety, that's all! Saloon shoot-out, check. Chase scene, check. Damsel in distress, check. Wait - better include a handful of those. Temple shoot-out, check. Italian-style epic destruction scene, check. It was like he wanted to include elements from every action-oriented movie he'd ever seen and try to jam them all into one hour-long picture. I want to give more grace since Germany is just emerging from World War I, which caused its entire film industry to grind to a virtual halt, but Ernst Lubitsch is over there polishing gems in 1919 (The Oyster Princess and Madame DuBarry) with excellent acting to boot. Despite its flaws, the picture was evidently an enormous box office success. It was certainly providing spectacle and adventure, which would have been a welcome distraction from the profound political, economic, and social turmoil the country was experiencing at the time. 21st century viewers interested in German cinema from this period are probably better off sticking to Lubitsch. I am looking forward to seeing his future work once his talent has had time to marinate.
Rated 1.5/5 Stars •
Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars
09/29/24
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Audience Member
Fun Fritz Lang frolic is better than the second part.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
02/27/23
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Audience Member
I liked this well..It's old but really captivating and keeps you intrest thoughtout the film. I will see part 2 soon, it's very old at least to say but It's LANG!
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
01/26/23
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Audience Member
Early Fritz Lang action epic was meant to be a four part serial, and too bad the final two parts never materialized, because Carl de Vogt as Kay Hoog is a genuine action star, suave and indefatigable, and these first two parts aren't short on suspense. Sure the editing is choppy, partly due to the fact that the film was lost for years, and only resurfaced fifty years later in bad shape, but Lang had probably seen enough Griffith by 1919 to know how to string together action and intrigue (and some cringe-worthy Asian stereotyping) to make it a smooth two-plus hours.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
02/01/23
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Audience Member
I'd love to give this film its proper credit in cinematic history (like some of my fellow movie lovers have done) as being one of Fritz Lang's lesser known masterpieces and the obvious progenitor of the action/adventure genre that led to Indiana Jones. I say I'd like to, but I can't; the flick is an umitigated mess. Given..not all of this is Lang's fault. Movies were still quite new at the time. A reliable body of cinematic tricks and stylistic editing choices had not yet been established. The Spiders is so full of non-sequitur transitions that, despite its novel attempt to control the story's flow, the editing renders the plot confusing at best, incomprehensible at worst.
Lang also chose to use colored filters to tint nearly every scene in the flick. At first, I thought there was a reason behind the hues...say bad guys were always filmed in greens and blues and good guys in yellows and reds. Not so. Then I thought that maybe the colors differentiated the exotic locations in the story. Nope. Scene transitions? Night and day? Flashbacks? No, no, and no. The one thing Lang's color filtered panoply did elicit from me was an emotional response...I began to hate Fritz Lang for his arbitrary and non-sensical use of colored filters. And as far as editing savvy goes, Chaplin and Lloyd's film companies had already produced a series of very satisfying - and far more comprehensible - short films. If you want to see Lang at his best, avoid The Spiders and watch Metropolis instead.
Rated 1/5 Stars •
Rated 1 out of 5 stars
01/16/23
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Audience Member
The Indiana Jones of the silent era! Really amazing score, with a lot of pipe organ.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
02/19/23
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