The son of an architect, Fritz Lang grew up in a fertile intellectual and artistic milieu. He abandoned his own architectural studies and chose instead to travel. Although living in Paris at the time, at the age of 23 he was called up at the beginning of the First World War and returned to Vienna. After being wounded and hospitalized for several months, he started to write screenplays. In Berlin, in the early 1920s, he became a director of silent film and worked with the producer Erich Pommer. His first wife, Thea von Harbou, helped him write several German films. In 1919, he directed his first work, now lost, Half-blood, on a theme that was dear to him: destructive love. He then
signed M, his first talking picture, Destiny and Metropolis, a futuristic drama. In 1933, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, a film denouncing Nazi behaviour, was censored by the German government. He was summoned by Goebbels who offered him the role of director of the Nazi cinema studio but he refused. He lived in exile in Paris and in 1934 filmed Liliom. After moving to the United States he directed Fury, westerns such as The Return of Frank James and the anti-Nazi film Hangmen Also Die! He returned to Germany and in 1959 the cosmopolitan filmmaker directed his final three works: The Tiger of Eschnapur, The Indian Tomb and The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse, a character inspired by Norbert Jacques's novel.
