★★★
In this second writing
collaboration between Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou, the two again overreach. As in The Wandering Woman, we’re not given
enough background to understand who the many characters are and why they are
acting the way they do, and we have another pair of twins to complicate our
understanding of the story. We also have
a minor character, Meunier, who suddenly becomes important and acts with little
motivation, while another character, one of the Krafft brothers, should be more important than he is. And the
story has some large holes. How, for
examples, do the jewelry thieves know that Yqeum has paid them with
counterfeit money when he was in disguise when he bought it?
But as in
The Wandering Woman,
viewers who don’t give up on the film eventually learn most of the information
they need to make sense of things. After
a long beginning of confusing information, the film goes to a flashback that explains
the origin of all these relationships and the motivations animating the primary
characters. It’s the same device the
writing team uses in
The Wandering Woman, but it’s done earlier and more neatly
here. In addition,
Four around the Woman
sees Lang and Harbou experiment with a new, complicated, suspenseful ending as four
storylines in the film converge on 47 Tiergarten at the climax of the
film. Since the writers were clearly
aiming at this ending, it’s not hard to imagine that Lang and Harbou needed both Meunier’s
sudden, unmotivated interest in Florence and the thieves’ knowledge of Yquem’s trick so the story would have two of the four ending narrative threads. While the addition of these lines damages the
film’s continuity, the weaving of four stories and the intercutting that brings
them along is more sure than in much of Lang’s previous work after
The Golden Sea. The complicated climax is overly drawn out
and has lost its steam by the time it ends, it’s still more complex and surely-executed
than Lang’s work to date.
Four around
the Woman represents a strong step forward in storytelling if not yet the
narrative mastery of a complex plot that was to develop later.
And the film has some classic Lang
elements. There are psychological cuts that
show us what is in a character’s mind, as when the film cuts to an image of the working husband of one of Florence's society friends. There’s also the strong low key interior
lighting that figures in so many of Lang’s later films. And Lang continues to use depth of
field intentionally, both for narrative purposes and to keep his viewer’s eyes on the
screen. For example, a foregrounded
Florence spots her husband changing disguise in the mid-ground in a shot whose
composition spares Lang a cut. One of
the more interesting elements here is the hefty presence of a poor, criminal
underworld. From an early scene with a
blind beggar that calls to mind
M,
Four around the Woman features a collection
of thieves, drunkards, pimps and prostitutes.
And a similarly libertine upper class.
These are characters who make many appearances in Lang’s later work. From
The Wandering Woman, Lang uses close-ups for character development and to highlight the sinister and macabre among his more sinister figures. And there’s even a pan in the opening of the film
as Lang’s camera surveys the faces ranged along a bar.
Four around the Woman shows Lang’s
increasing cinematic control. It
only remains for him and Harbou to get a firmer grasp on a narrative form that
works well in film for their collaboration is soar.
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