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ERIK BUTLEREmory University

Dr. Mabuse:Terror and Deception of the Image

In his classic study of Weimar cinema, From Caligari to Hitler, SiegfriedKracauer presented an interpretation of Dr. Mabuse that has become a criticalcanon: the villain belongs among a procession of tyrants (79) of the Germanscreen that prefigures the ascendancy of Hitler. More recently, Tom Gunninghas examined Mabuses place in Fritz Langs oeuvre and argued that thedoctor is the grand enunciator (87) of the impersonal forces of destiny thatpervade the directors work. This essay seeks to strike a balance betweenKracauers psycho-sociological analysis and Gunnings immanent critique inorder to examine Mabuse as a refraction of climates of fear throughout the20th century. Germany, where Mabuse enjoys iconic status, provides theimmediate frame of reference, but this framework has material support thatextends beyond national borders and strict historical periodization.

Norbert Jacques invented Dr. Mabuse in a novel originally published inserialized form, Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler (19211922). Almost immediately,Fritz Lang transformed the literary material into a two-part film with thesame title (1922). Both versions of Mabuse enjoyed tremendous commercialsuccess and created a villain whose career reached new heights ten years laterin another film, Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (on which Jacques, Lang, andThea von Harbou collaborated). The story does not end there: Jacques wrotethree more Mabuse books (Ingenieur Mars [1923], Mabuses Kolonie [a frag-ment] and Chemiker Null [1934]), and Lang made another Mabuse film, Die1000 Augen des Dr. Mabuse (1960). The doctor quickly became a German andeven an international Kulturgut, the subject of numerous other books andfilms. In a recent study, David Kalat cites a poll finding that 95 percent ofGerman teenagers in the mid-1980s recognized the name Mabuse (282). Thedoctor is not only a bona fide pop culture phenomenon (6); he is a modernmyth.1

This essay concentrates on Langs 1922 and 1932 films against the back-drop of Mabuses sinister and giant profile in German culture. The firstsection explores the differences between the literary and film versions of Dr.Mabuse, der Spieler to show how Langs treatment exploits the properties ofthe cinematic medium to create an adversary of singular stature. A paradox

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runs throughout the film. Mabuse is a hypnotist and a master of the Evil Eye,but despite his ability to mesmerize others, his criminal ambitions flourishprecisely to the extent that he avoids direct personal involvement in hisschemes. The second section of the essay examines how the villains seemingubiquity, which the 1922 film establishes, develops in the 1932 sequel. InTestament, Mabuse does not himself appear where he intends harm. He draftsa document outlining a campaign to be executed by others, and this programcan be carried out even after its authors death. Consequently, Mabuse takeson a supernatural aspect that further refines the impression that he is every-where and nowhere. Testament, which Kracauers authoritative opiniondeems the lesser of the two films (cf. 24850), is in fact the more significantwork because it describes a simple mechanism of terror that possesses apotentially limitless scope and extends far beyond the historical moment inwhich the film was conceived. A concluding section reads 1000 Augen as alogical development of the dynamics outlined in Testament and argues thatMabuse, a name that points more toward alterity than identity,2 refers21st-century viewers not so much to 1930s Germany, but to opacities in theirown world.

The instant success of Mabuse in print and on-screen in the early 1920sowed much to the fact that the villain embodied the turbulence of the politi-cal and social situation in Germany. Jacquess novel and Langs film tookwidespread fears of armed threats to the young republics stability from theright and the left, the persistence of war-time traumas, and concerns abouteconomic chaos and ascribed them to a single agent. Bernd Widdig, whostresses Mabuses connection to the runaway inflation of the period, ob-serves that the villain respond[ed] to [the] contemporary audiences anxi-eties and fantasies of omnipotence that were triggered by a widely felt lossof control over their lives (133), and he argues that Mabuse, who incarnatesreckless individualism, provided unconscious wish-fulfillment to a publicthat dreamed of regaining power over its destiny. Mabuses celebritystemmed from the fact that he allowed readers and viewers to confront theirworries and desires indirectly, but with a measure of focus. Through the dis-tance of aesthetic contemplation, the nervousness of everyday life becameentertainment. Actual historical situations of complex origin, nature, andoutcome possessed clarity in the space of art, where a narrative trajectorythat led from confusion to order ultimately sorted out the good guys and thebad guys.

That is the Mabuse-phenomenon of 1922 viewed from the perspective ofconsumption. On another levelone that takes the formal features of theworks into accountthe two early incarnations of Mabuse differ radically, asdo the lessons to be learned from their analysis. Indeed, though they workwith the same characters and basic storyline, the literary and cinematic ver-sions of Spieler are in many ways opposites.

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Jacquess novel presents a villain full of blood and bilea presence thatdrips overheated desire and rage. Numerous characters in the book liken thedoctor to a lycanthrope, and Mabuse himself makes the equation explicitly:Ich bin ein Werwolf. Ich sauge Menschenblut in mich! Jeden Tag brennt derHa alles Blut auf, das mir in den Adern luft, und jede Nacht sauge ich sie miteinem neuen Menschenblut voll (Spieler 183). His heat is contagious; thepolice describe him as a Seuche [, die] die Stadt fiebern macht (Spieler 25).Jacquess Mabuse is also hot in a sexual sense. One of his female admirersdescribes him to a rapt interlocutor:

er ist doch eine Welt fr sich. Er ist ein Dschungel und ein Urwald. Mir ist,als habe er Tiger und Schlangen in sich. Alles, was stark ist in der Natur. Und gan-ze riesenhafte Bume und weite undurchdringliche Schilfwlder! Weit du, mankann sich in ihm verlieren! Kommt an kein Ende und ist doch in ihm!(Spieler 131)

Mabuse has traveled to the tropics, where he tasted power and even ownedslaves. Now, the narrow predictability of life in Europe oppresses him, and helongs for nothing more than to leave it forever and found Eitopomar, apersonal Kaiserreich in den Urwldern Brasiliens (Spieler 59). Mabuse radi-ates the tempestuous vitality of new and uncharted lands. The combustion oflarge quantities of alcohol fuels his ambitions and operations (e.g., er trankund feuerte seinen bsen, starken Geist an [Spieler 72]), and he makes hisunderworld associates participate in his excesses. Subordinates who burn outare conscripted into the foreign legion, where they wither and die under thescorching African sun. In Munich, Mabuse preys on his victims both as acrooked gambler and as a crooked doctor. His magnetic force hits them like aHitzstrahl (Spieler 143).

Jacquess novel is character-based and character-driven. As the fiery imag-ery shows, Mabuse presents a determinate, marked presence in the book. Thepicture Jacques paints of Mabuses nemesis, Staatsanwalt von Wenk, offersanother strongly delineated (if more conventional) personality: the officer ofthe law is a war hero, possesses unimpeachable professional integrity, and issingle-minded in his prosecution of justice. A third personage, just as clearlydrawn, completes the central cast. The Countess Told is so unfazed by eventsaround her that she acts as a magnet for villain and hero alike. Wenk ulti-mately defeats Mabuse because the phlegmatic aristocrat, nicknamed dieUnaktive (Spieler 126), fascinates both men. Mabuses passion makes himsloppy, and Wenks infatuation with the statuesque beauty puts him in theright place at the right time.

In the novel, the sluggish nobility lifts a finger, and the cat-and-mousegames promptly end. The traditional form of the narrative corresponds to itsideological content inasmuch as it transmits conservative cultural values.Mabuse displays all the characteristics of an outlaw who stands in opposition

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to law and order. Wenk, even if he is a civil servant (and therefore a potentialobject of mistrust for a public wary of governmental authority), is noble inpurpose and, as the preposition von before his name indicates, of high birth.Countess Told is a far more ambivalent figure, but she has class and pedigreegoing for her. Style and substance agree: the established way of doing things isbest.

Whereas Jacquess novel looks back to literary and cultural tradition,Langs version of the story embraces the modern. The silent film omits anexpository narrative framework and uses intertitles sparingly. Instead ofwords and psychology, it trades in images and surfaces. As a result, a dizzyingarray of ever-changing appearances substitutes for the in-depth explora-tions of personality and motivation that comprise the novel. The intensivebecomes extensive, and Mabuse turns into a more diffuse and more threaten-ing villain with an even greater reach. At the same time, Wenk, CountessTold, and the other, lesser characters flatten out into thin stage masks. Sincethe impersonal and aggressively superficial new medium shows Mabusesnew features to be larger-than-life while it erases the traits that personalizehis antagonists, the film implies a highly equivocal moral message, if it is at allappropriate to employ such terminology in reference to a cinematic parade ofvice. Everyone is caught up in the same game of illusion and deceit; Mabusesimply plays it better than others.

The cinematic Mabuse is a villain in a different league than his literarycounterpart. He operates in an unnamed city (generally understood to beBerlin) whose bright lights and tall buildings dwarf Munich, Mabuses baseof operations in the novel.3 This metropolis represents the 20th century inmicrocosm. The film performs a whirlwind tour through societys varioussectors, and it presents them in a uniform state of disarray. Mabuse bothorchestrates and embodies broad-scale disorder. As the title suggestsDr.Mabuse, der Spielerhe is not just a gambler, but also an actor. The film showsMabuse in action and thereby magnifies and multiplies him.

Langs Mabuse has diversified his criminal portfolio beyond smugglingstolen goods and forays in disguise into unlicensed gambling establishments.He employs agents to assassinate couriers traveling with important commer-cial contracts in order to provoke spells of madness in the stock market; hebuys cheap, then, after the documents have arrived safely at their destinationwith a delay decisive for his speculation, he sells high. In a memorabledepiction of the alienation of labor, the film shows how Mabuse has orga-nized a counterfeiting operation staffed with blind workers whose conditionprevents them from identifying their exploitative boss. Across the board,Mabuse traffics in images that substitute fake objects for real ones. As NolBurch observes, Mabuse uses real bank-notes for writing paper, and counter-feit notes for money. Writing on the bank-notes sets the Doctor outside thesocial order at least as much as any counterfeiting (210). The misleading


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signs Mabuse spreads throughout the city break the mirror of representation:appearances correlate with reality, but they reflect it only in distorted form.Mabuse disguises himself at various points as a stockbroker, a drunken sailor,a man of science, and a political radical. Any crime could potentially originatewith him; at a given moment, he could be anywhere or anyone.

Mabuse makes use of the codes of dress and comportment that are opera-tive in his environment, but he uses them for his own purposes. This Mabuse,unlike the one in the novel, has no past and harbors no dreams of an imperialget-away in foreign lands. He is at home in the modern world and its cre-ationthe demonic likeness of his parent. Perfect timing and a preternaturalknack for meeting the demands of the situation at hand distinguish him. AsGunning notes, Langs Mabuse operates like a parasite dependent on thesystematic nature of modernity (98). The villain works with the structuresand rhythms that already command everyday lifetechnologies of repro-duction, impersonal civic spaces, train schedules, etc.and perverts them tohis own ends. He is an endemic evil indistinguishable from the society onwhich he preys.

Thus, Langs Spieler displays an ambivalence lacking in Jacquess novel.The film foregrounds an antagonist who is effectively present even whenabsent and whose power stems from the control he wields over appearances,virtual realities, and signs. Mabuse thrives in the flow of money and desirethat others let loose when they gamble with their fortunes and fate. Thoughhe feeds off the energy that this exchange releases, the victims are equally toblame for their troubles, for they embrace the falsehood that ruins them. Thefilm version of Spieler offers a sweeping indictment, but it does not pass judg-ment.

Langs Spieler showcases the myriad illusions that prepare society fordisintegration. Mabuse manipulates appearances to empower himself. He isultimately undone only because he is too involved personally in the pursuitsof his contemporaries. Mabuse could elude capture indefinitely if only hewere content to let others execute his schemes. The Doctors well-being andthe success of his enterprise depend on whether relays, stand-ins, and surro-gates carry out the crimes he plots. His network of agents and collaboratorswould allow him, in principle, to remain entirely invisible while preservinghis seeming ubiquity. However, instead of eliminating Wenk early on (as hecould have done with ease countless times), Mabuse keeps the Staatsanwaltaround as a plaything. When the Doctor finally decides to kill Wenk, he plansa spectacular and ridiculously elaborate end for him. In the guise of SandorWeltmann, psychoanalyst and showman extraordinaire, Mabuse hypno-tizes Wenk before an audience and gives him instructions to drive his car off acliff. Because others are not in a mesmerized state, Wenks actions arousesuspicion, and he is saved from involuntary self-destruction. Exposed, Ma-buse flees to his subterranean money forgery. There, he hallucinates that


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those whose lives he has taken return; the victims appear one by one, holdingwinning hands in a game that has careered out of the Doctors control.Mabuse looks upon the money presses and sees monstrous, fire-breathingdemons that hunger after him. When the police finally find him, he is staringvacantly into empty space, surrounded by his worthless, counterfeit cur-rency.

The visions that overwhelm Mabuse at the end of Spieler seem to present amoral: What goes around comes around, or, Crime doesnt pay. However,upon further reflection, the film belies this pat lesson. The sight of Mabuse inthe thralls of the spectral likenesses of his victims represents just anotherinstance of a dissolute party intoxicated by the flickering images producedby his overheated desires. The film has shown the ways of the citys popu-lace in general; even with the parasite removed, the host remains perilouslyunhealthy. Even more importantly, if Mabuse meets with punishment of onekind, he escapes the ultimate penalty when he succumbs to madness. Ma-buses downfall is also his salvation; indeed, since he ends up in an insaneasylum, it paves the way for his return.

Intertextuallythat is, when we view Spieler in relation to the later Testa-mentthe films final scene does not present a conclusion at all. The card-players who confront Mabuse are his victims; they are dead, yet they appearto him as if they were still living. The machinery that comes alive and snaps atMabuse likewise represents an uncanny form of animation; Spieler ends byshowing how disembodied images overwhelm the villain. When Mabusereturns to the screen in Testament, he commands these powers.

The later work presents a more perfect system of terror because its opera-tion does not necessarily require anyone to oversee it. Indeed, Testamenthardly features the corporeal Mabuse. The villain sits in an asylum cell forhalf the movie, then he dies without any fanfare: an extremely brief sequenceshows only his foot and not the more identifiable and personal face as it istagged for the mortuary. The only scene in which a living Mabuse appears in away that resembles his former presence occurs just before he expires; hisbeaked nose, wide brow, and clenched jaw fill the screen, and an attendantcomments: Er sitzt da wie ein lebendig Toter und die Augen, dieAugendie lhmen einen ja frmlich!4

In a manner consistent with the logic already at work in Spieler, deathmakes Mabuse more powerful than ever. Instead of changing disguises, henow changes bodiesat least, he seems to. At the center of the films intriguestands the titular testament, a surrogate self for Mabuse. Professor Baum, thehead of the asylum where the villain has spent the last years of his life,immerses himself in the study of this document and is transformed intoanother Mabusethe coordinator of the criminal schemes outlined in thewill. Through the scattered pages of his testament, Mabuse manifests him-self as a creature that does not exist at all in a conventional sense and is as such


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a tribute to the power of the image to act upon the world. He no longer needsto be alive at all in order to perpetuate crime; his diffuse wickedness exceedsthe power of a single gaze.

And just as Mabuse cannot be limited to one viewpoint, he also con-founds the other sense mobilized in the film: hearing. Testament plays withthe difference between silence and sound, coding them at alternate momentsboth as carriers of information and as obstacles to communication. In amanner that befits the play of doubles it thematizes, the film brings not onlyits villain, but also its hero to the screen for the second time. The officialcharged with maintaining order in the polity is Inspector Lohmann, whomade his screen debut in Langs first talkie, M (1931). Lohmann could notbe more down-to-earth or a fuller on-screen presence. His corpulence, cigarsmoking, and world-weary but good-natured cynicism round out his char-acter into a perfect whole. Mabuse, in contrast, is split into scattered visualand acoustic images that occasionally meet up but never produce a unifiedsubject or object.

The title of the film spells out everything about Mabuses new reign ofterror: a body of enigmatic signs that spring to life in unexpected ways orga-nizes the spreading chaos. This corpus mirrors the mechanics of the cine-matic medium itself. Film operates by means of sequentially-arranged visualand aural signs that complement each other and together yield a simulationof life and action. Mabuses disembodied set of commands suspends thismeeting of the parts that form a whole.5

Testament ups the ante of semiotic inflation begun in Spieler and therebydeepens the mystery evoked by the title figure. The film conjures up anotheruniverse behind the scenes by overlaying the relatively straightforward nar-rative of detection with hints of a metaphysical drama in which disjointedsigns hold open the borders between the realms of the living and the dead. Atthe beginning of Testament, Lohmanns secretary announces to him a callfrom a former agent named Hofmeistera man who has been kicked off theforce for corruption. The inspector is on his way to see a production ofWagners Walkre and tells his assistant, Leider bin ich tot, by which heindicates his unwillingness to speak to the man at the other end of the line.The caller desperately insists that he be put through, and the secretary relaysthe panicked petition. Lohmann, after grudgingly agreeing to speak to Hof-meister, greets him with a curt dismissal: Scheren Sie sich zum Teufel!Before Hofmeister can pass on the information he possesses, he lets loose ascream into the void and falls silent. Lohmann stays on the line, but all hehears from the other end is a man singing to himself, his nerves unstrung.6

In the space of a few frames, the film sets up a discursive framework inwhich life, death, heaven, and hell provide the operative terms. Wagnersopera concerns supernatural beings that take fallen warriors to the nextworld. Lohmann describes the Valkyries to his secretary: Das sind die M-


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dels, die die toten Kriminalkommissare direkt in den Himmel [bringen].The commissioner refers to his former agent as das Aas. Finally, whenHofmeister implores the secretary to put him through, he protests, [e]s gehtum Tod und Leben. Lohmann is on his way to heaven, Hofmeister is going tohell, and something has unhinged the gateways separating the mortal andimmortal realms.

The ending of Testament reinforces the metaphysical openness. The com-plex storyline eventually reveals that a certain Professor Baum has beenfollowing his patients written directives and transmitting plans for thesystematic terrorization of society to a network of agents. Discovered by acombination of accident and ingenuity on the part of Lohmann and a defec-tor from the criminal associations ranks, Baum winds up an inmate in hisown madhouse, where an insane Hofmeister has been locked awayin thedeceased Mabuses cell, no less. Lohmann and his ex-con associate arrive justas Hofmeister cedes his place to Baum. The closing shot in the film shows theprofessor sitting in an asylum bed, like Mabuse, surrounded by scatteredsheets of paper. Hier hat ein kleiner Kriminalkommissar nichts mehr zusuchen, Lohmann says. The door closes, and the film ends. Lohmann admitsdefeat, sensing that a full explanation of events goes beyond the secular scopeof detective work.

Testament parodies the tidy explanations in which detective stories typi-cally culminate. Lohmann never really gets behind the mystery of Mabuse.The film unfolds as a series of ingenious maneuvers that draw closer andcloser to an adversary who escapes in the end because he is all accident, withno essence. Clues reveal movement in a field of darkness, but the gloom is toothick to allow the figure to be tracked successfully. A series of substitutionsand ciphers disrupt and delay the disclosure of the truth indefinitely. Theaggregate opacity of Mabuse points toward the capacity of the image in itswritten, visual, and acoustic forms to instill terror.

The embarrassment of the police is patent. Hofmeister s attempt totransmit a message conveys little more than confusion to his interlocutor.When Lohmann has his secretary trace the call, he finds another cryptic com-munication in a different medium. Lohmann recognizes that his informant,in terror before a mysterious assailant and in an effort to flee, had backed upagainst a window. On the transparent surface, the commissioner spots ascratched pattern. Evidently, Hofmeister meant to say something by makingthis hurried engraving: Donnerwetter ja! Buchstaben im Glas! [] Obdas wohl ein Name sein soll? Lohmann exclaims. At the crime lab where thepane is analyzed, the technician informs him that the glyphs do in fact yield aname: Es heisst Mabuse. Was heisst Mabuse? Lohmann asks; the shotshows him reflected in the glass bearing the markings. The name does notconnect positively with an identity. Its value is purely negative, impugningLohmanns professional competence.


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The police are not the only organization to face ill-omened signs of uncer-tain reference. A second strand of the story intercut with the first follows themembers of a versatile criminal association that robs banks, traffics in drugs,and manufactures bogus currency. Sections and commandos, none of whichhave any permanent or direct contact with any other, make up the operation.When their boss issues his directives, he employs only telegrams and the tele-phonemodern forms of communication that allow him to call the shotsentirely from behind the scenes. The closest the gangsters ever get to findingout his identity occurs when he occasionally summons them in small groupsto a nondescript room. But even under these circumstances, he does notreveal who he is. The Man Behind the Curtain sits behind a screen, visibleonly as a silhouette. The criminals questions about their employer and thesense of his terse commands (which appear senseless from an individualviewpoint) mirror Lohmanns mystification about Hofmeister s strangemarkings on the window. In each case, fully or partially incomprehensiblesigns substitute for a missing body and an explanation of what is going on.

The scenes of puzzled lawmen and criminals amount to a question markwithout a clearly formulated question. Something is happening, but what? Athird subplot, which contains the missing pieces of the puzzle, compoundsthe mystery. The aforementioned Professor Baum occupies an ambivalentposition in the story. On the one hand, he is the Man Behind the Curtain,and therefore responsible for the wave of corruption, drugs, and counterfeit-ing that plagues the city. On the other hand, he is a decoy who conceals a farmore sinister evil. Testament equivocates about the precise degree of Baumsresponsibility; the professor does not devise the plans whose execution headministrates, and it is not clear to what extent he is truly aware of his ownrole in the events that transpire.

However, even though the story told in the film is vague about the causal-ity at work, Testament obsessively draws the viewers attention to imagesthat seem innocuous or appear to lack substance but in fact exercise a de-naturing influence. Mabuses case history, which Baum relates in a momentof lucidity, is illustrative:

[A]nfangs [bedeckte Mabuse das Papier] mit vllig sinnlosen Kritzeleien. Vorzwei Jahren jedoch tauchten in dem Gekritzel einzelne Worte auf. Dann bildetensich Stzezunchst noch sinnlos verworren, spter immer zusammenhngen-der und logischerund gaben uns endlich Einblick in das einmalige Phnomendieses Gehirns. (Das Testament)

The patients writings entrance the professor, and Baums intensive reading ofthem opens the door to his transformation into a second Mabuse. Like themysterious text that the archivist Lindhorst uses to induct Anselmus into themagical kingdom of the Salamander in E.T.A. Hoffmans Der goldene Topf (cf.Kittler 10717), Mabuses writing radiates fascination. Yet Baums study of


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the documents affords him no real knowledge. Despite his assertion that thetext lays bare the workings of Mabuses mind, the document in fact containsno data for psychopathological analysis:

Seine Gedanken bewegen sich im gleichen kriminellen Ideenkreis wie frher.Was Mabuse schreibt, ist eine auf unanfechtbarer Logik aufgebaute Anleitungzur Ausbung von Verbrechen, bis ins kleinste Detail ausgearbeitet.(Das Testament)

Everything about the madman is right there, on the surface: he is evil, and hewishes to spread his evil to others. There are no secrets about Mabuse tounlock no unhappy childhood, no problem with sexual identity, no deep-rooted feeling of personal inadequacy, etc.; the insight which his Testamentpromises is in fact a lure.

In a move that continues the equation between Mabuse and corruptingappearances begun in Spieler, Testament makes the Doctor nothing but a perni-cious, corrosive image. A scene in Baums office shows how contact with thetestament transforms the doctor into his patients double. The words outlin-ing the details of a criminal plan bend and curve to form a ghostlike face onthe page. The professor focuses on a sheet inscribed, HERRSCHAFT DESVERBRECHENS. This phrase, which promises power to Baum, in fact exer-cises power over him. As the professor immerses himself in the text, he entersa realm where he loses all control. Mabuse appears before him in a monstrousform. His eyeballs are huge, but his pupils are concentrated into pinpricks.The shock of white hair on his head has vanished, and the reticulations of hismighty criminal brain are exposed. Mabuse sits at the opposite side of thedesk and transfixes Baum with his gaze. The film shifts between frontal shotsof the two doctors: Mabuse throws back to Baum a reflection of himself. Wethen see a second image of Mabuse emerge from the first. One likeness of theevil doctor continues to sit opposite Baum. The other appears behind him,standing, then turns the page in front of the professor and takes a seat in thechair in which he is sitting. Mabuse blends into Baum on the screen, and hissway over the guileless reader is patent. The page now before Baum reads:ATTENTATE AUF EISENBAHNLINIEN, GASOMETER UND CHEMI-SCHE FABRIKEN. In the following scene, we see agents of the Man Behindthe Curtain receiving instructions to carry out attacks on these very sites.

As Elisabeth Bronfen rightly observes, die Verschriftung von Mabusesdmonischem Geist gewinnt volle Autoritt und Wirkungskraft erst, nach-dem [sie] auf [Baums] Leib bergesprungen ist (32829). However, despitethe fact that he acts as Mabuses mouthpiece, Baum is wholly disposable andreplaceable. Anyone else who occupied himself with the patients writingscould take his place and play his part. When the professor reads the testa-ment, he becomes an automatona zombie taken over by the blind ambitionof the all-seeing Mabuse (the oxymoron is justified, for Mabuse is not really


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there) and an unthinking puppet of evil like the countless agents instructedto pursue pointless crimes. Thus, Testament presents the terrorist quintes-sence of Spieler. In the 1922 film, Mabuse himself served as the linchpin forcriminal operations. His individualistic drive fueled his organization, but italso limited its potential. In the 1932 film, an entirely impersonal forceanimates the empire of crime. The document Mabuse has produced forms aself-perpetuating machine that (re)creates its author in its reader. Mabusedoubles himself, and the text that makes this duplication possible leads a lifeof its own; the doctors testament acts both as a means of spreading evil andas a way of obscuring its source. Though Baum eventually suffers a nervouscollapse (like the original Mabuse), the inorganic testament has no suchstructural weakness. Like a bomb, it cannot detonate itself, but anyone canthrow the switch.

Langs Mabuse films testify to the power of the image as a reagent, not arepresentation, especially the underappreciated masterpiece of 1932. In con-trast to the literary version of the villain, the screen incarnations of Mabuseoperate through a mediated presence that consists in equal measure of factualabsence, virtual presence, and imminent threats of violence. The films showthat Mabuse is at his most powerful qua imagewhen he operates bymeans of broken series of signs, decentralized chains of command, constantlyshifting spheres of activity, and innumerable changes in appearance. Thisdecisive aspect of the cinematic Mabuse seems to have escaped Lang himself,who in interviews throughout his career stated repeatedly that he intendedhis master criminal in Testament, if not in Spieler, to be a parody of Hitler, theascendant demagogue when the 1932 film was in production (McGilligan16585). The directors untenable self-aggrandizementLang liked to por-tray himself as a more principled man than he really wasobscures the truenature of the real-world menace that the fictional personage refracts. Mabuserepresents a threat not through his charisma, but through his near-invisibil-ity; he embodies pernicious forces of modernity that cannot be reduced to asingle explanation.

The final film of Langs career, Die 1000 Augen des Dr. Mabuse acknowl-edges this fact (again, perhaps despite the directors intentions) by taking theimpersonal terrorism to the next level. The title sequence shows a metropoli-tan skyline, above which roving eyes traverse the open space like searchlightslooking down on the city. Nothing escapes surveillance. The Luxor Hotel,which contains an elaborate closed-circuit video network used to spy onguests, provides the site of intrigue where no less than four separate im-postors try to get behind the others acts. The two figures who seem to be theheroes throughout the better part of the filmthe American nuclear indus-trialist Henry Travers (registered under a false name) and Marion Menil, thedamsel-in-distress whom he rescues from what turns out to be a fakesuicide attemptare in fact pawns in a game played by characters who seem


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relatively marginal until the last minute. An Interpol agent has assumed themask of a bumbling insurance salesman, and the hotel manager is in realitynone other than a false soothsayer named Cornelius, who intends to obtainweapons to destroy the world. This is their showdown. The love story in themiddle is all a sham, and the film keeps the police around only to mock theirineptitude; the name of Lohmanns successor, Kras, underscores theheavy-handed, flat-footed resourcelessness of traditional lawmen and theirreceived notions of right and wrong, good and evil.

And Mabuse himself? The film shows only his grave. Another person hastaken the place that Dr. Baum occupied decades earlier; now that party usesthe evil geniuss plans. Jonathan Crary makes an excellent point when heobserves:

the name Mabuse does not designate a fictional character that Langreturned to several times . Rather Mabuse is the name of a systema systemof spectacular power whose strategies are continually changing but whose aimof producing docile subjects remains constant. (271)

In all three films, a network of morally apathetic and compliant operativesenables monstrous schemes. In 1000 Augen, Mabuse in fact has a decoy selfin the form of a clubfoot agent who under the assumed name issues com-mands to others, who are under constant observation. The 1960 Mabuse,like Baum, is also not really Mabuse: he owes his plans to the testament ofthe original engineer of doom, which he has somehow unearthed. However,Crary oversimplifies the mode of control to which Mabuse refers when hereduces it to surveillance. Regimes of spectacular power may change fromhypnosis to video technology, but the most spectacular feature of the Mabusephenomenon is, ironically, the self-effacement and retreat into anonymitythat conceal the workings of evil. The fact that the villain himself does notexist leaves the question of blame floating uncomfortably in the air. The sub-jects of manipulation make themselves docile through their exchange of glancesinmutual suspicion.Theywatch, too, and lose themselves inwhat theysee.

Mabuse, fittingly enough, has a double legacy. On the one hand, he is anexample of the commonplace evil genius bent on world domination. Afterbuying the rights to the name Mabuse from Jacques in 1953 and eventuallypersuading Fritz Lang to make 1000 Augen, Artur Brauner, Germanys biggestpost-war producer, enlisted lesser talents to capitalize on the famous name ofthe master criminal. In less than five years, Im Stahlnetz des Dr. Mabuse(directed by Harald Reinl, 1961), Die unsichtbaren Krallen des Dr. Mabuse(again by Reinl, 1962), a vastly different remake of Das Testament des Dr.Mabuse (Werner Klingler, 1962), Scotland Yard jagt Dr. Mabuse (Paul May,1963), and Die Todesstrahlen des Dr. Mabuse (Hugo Fregonese, 1964) appearedunder the banner of Brauners CCC-Filmkunst. These articulations of theMabuse myth profit from the fact that almost anyone can play the doctors


part, and they tend to show a madman bent on creating an army of drones toexecute his will. Variously, Mabuse possesses a mind-control drug (Stahl-netz), an apparatus that modifies the vibrations of matter to confer invisi-bility (Krallen), an insanity-inducing contraption (Testament), a device thatpermits mind-control (Scotland Yard), and a death star satellite that canproject a laser beam (Todesstrahlen). Needless to say, these films are not nearlyas interesting or sophisticated as Langs. They show a cartoon-like super-villain who owes his power to fantastic substances and mad-scientist gim-mickry. His victims are simply victims, not the compromised individualswhose faults have opened the way for true evilan aspect which stands outespecially in the remake of the Testament.

On the other hand, as this essay has shown, the oddly resonant nameMabuse evokes a host of spectral images without distinctive traitsimages whose coloration is modern and, indeed, postmodern. It is misleadingto speak of this entity in the singular, inasmuch as his constituent parts donot add up to a unified whole, but exert their power through diffracted multi-plicity. In this guise, Mabuse does not embody the charismatic traits of an egoideal such as Hitler, but rather the parade of simulacra that Jean Baudrillardsees as characteristic of the (post-) modern society of consumption. The bodypolitic of post-World War II Western culture does not resemble HobbessLeviathan so much as another monster, the hydra. The heads that springfrom the same trunk and act in concert possess a great deal of autonomy; tofocus attention on one entails the risk of failing to notice the others. Theinterrelated but more or less self-regulating systems of manufacture, ad-vertising, brokering, and technological communication create a beast withtoo many necks for a single leash and too much movement for a single gaze tocompass. Mabuse unites the shadows thrown by material realities into animaginary whole. The very hollowness of this formation make up his sub-stance: a corrosive power that undoes social stability and cultural order.

In the trajectory described by Langs three films, Mabuse himself becomes little more than a name: Spieler shows a villain whose physical fea-tures and activities change constantly, who has a network of criminals tostand in for him and fulfill his bidding; Testament kills Mabuse off entirely andsubstitutes a text for his body, which in turn creates another devilish doctorwhose purposes are identical; and 1000 Augen does not feature the realMabuse at all. Each phase of the villains disembodiment reflects, darkly, anew climate of anxiety: the political and economic turbulence of 1920s Ger-many; the prospect, in the 1930s, of the future bringing a worsened form ofthe chaos only recently vanquished; and Cold War-era fears of internationalintrigue involving weapons of mass destruction. However, the villains nearor complete nonexistence in the fictions points toward the real economic,political, and media structures that enable complicity in evilstructuresthat now, in an era of globalization, do not respect established frontiers.


Today, when a temporally and geographically boundless War on Terrorcultivates anxiety and aggression indistinguishable from what it is supposedto combat, it is likely that Mabuses career is, alas, far from over.

Notes


1 See Grob for additional discussion of Mabuses relationship to contemporaryserial fiction and film (8792), as well as remarks on the villains mythic status(10105).

2 In a 1928 essay, Jacques reveals that he chose the name of his master criminalbecause it steht so merkwrdig eigentlich zwischen den Sprachen, klingt deutsch undhat doch in sich den Tonanflug anderer ganz fremder Sprachen (Dr. Mabuse 264).The name Mabuseevokes the foreign, whileat thesame timebelongingtothe familiar.

3 In the novel, Mabuse moves to Berlin from Munich as his terror grows in scopeand he comes closer to realizing his final plans of escape to South America.

4 Citations from Testament follow the soundtrack of the film.5 Burch argues that a series of rhymes tie together the narration of Testament

(and, to a lesser extent, Spieler); because these visual and acoustic images are only tan-gentially related to one another, they foreground the power of the camera and sound-track to forge relations and fabricate meaning.

6 Chion analyzes this scene in detail (6669). Drawing attention to the wayHofmeister hems and haws instead of providing Lohmann with the data outright,Chion argues that the turncoats main concern is to maintain another human beings(virtual) presence and thereby to ward off the terror he faces.

Works Cited

Bronfen, Elisabeth. Die tdliche Schrift des Dr. Mabuse: Ein Spiel mit der Tiefe, demDouble, der Abwesenheit. Dr. Mabuse: Medium des Bsen. 3 vols. Michael Farin andGnter Scholdt. Hamburg: Rogner and Bernhard, 1994. 3: 32334.

Burch, Nol. In and Out of Synch: The Awakening of the Cine-Dreamer. Aldershot: Scolar Press,1991.

Chion, Michel. The Voice in Cinema. Trans. Claudia Gorbman. New York: Columbia UP,1999.

Crary, Jonathan. Dr. Mabuse and Mr. Edison. Art and Film since 1945: Hall of Mirrors. LosAngeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1996. 26279.

Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler. Dir. Fritz Lang. Perf. Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Bernhard Goetzke, andGertrud Welcker. Decla-Bioscop, 1922.

Gay, Peter. Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider. New York: Norton, 1968.Grob, Norbert. Fritz Lang and His Early Dr. Mabuse Films. Expressionist FilmNew Per-

spectives. Ed. Dietrich Scheunemann. Suffolk: Camden House, 2003. 87110.Gunning, Tom. The Films of Fritz Lang: Allegories of Vision and Modernity. London: British

Film Institute, 2000.


Im Stahlnetz des Dr. Mabuse. Dir. Harald Reinl. Perf. Wolfgang Preiss, Karin Dor, and Sieg-fried Lowitz. CCC Filmkunst, 1961.

Jacques, Norbert. Dr. Mabuse. Dr. Mabuse: Medium des Bsen. 3 vols. Ed. Michael Farinand Gnter Scholdt. Hamburg: Rogner and Bernhard, 1994. 1: 26472.

Kalat, David. The Strange Case of Dr. Mabuse: A Study of the Twelve Films and Five Novels. Jef-ferson, NC: McFarland, 2001.

Kittler, Friedrich. Aufschreibesysteme 1800/1900. Mnchen: Fink, 1995.Kracauer, Siegfried. From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of German Film. Princeton:

Princeton UP, 1974.McGilligan, Patrick. Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast. New York: St. Martins Press, 1997.Scotland Yard jagt Dr. Mabuse. Dir. Paul May. Perf. Wolfgang Preiss, Walter Rilla, and Peter

van Eyck. CCC Filmkunst, 1963.Die 1000 Augen des Dr. Mabuse. Dir. Fritz Lang. Perf. Wolfgang Preiss, Gert Frbe, Peter van

Eyck, and Dawn Addams. CCC Filmkunst, 1960.Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse. Dir. Fritz Lang. Perf. Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Otto Wernicke, and

Karl Meixner. Nero Film, 1932.. Dir. Werner Klingler. Per. Wolfgang Preiss, Gert Frbe, and Walter Rilla. CCC

Filmkunst, 1961.Die Todestrahlen des Dr. Mabuse. Dir. Hugo Fregonese. Perf. Peter van Eyck, Walter Rilla, and

Yvonne Furneaux. CCC Filmkunst, 1964.Widdig, Bernd. Culture and Inflation in Weimar Germany. Berkeley: U of California P, 2001.

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