While the exact origins of coating noir are impossible to pinpoint, no cicerone worked within the character more consistently or more brilliantly than Fritz Lang. Bringing to the screen an obsessive and fatalistic world populated by a rogues' gallery of unaccountable and twisted characters, Lang staked completely a uniquely against corner of the cinematic universe; disheartenment, isolation, helplessness -- all found refuge in the shadows of his work. A product of German Expressionist ... thought, he explored humanity at its lowest go out, with a distinctively rich and bold visual sensibility which nearly defined film noir great before the term was despite that smooth coined.

Born Friedrich Christian Anton Lang in Vienna, Austria, on December 5, 1890, he initially studied to turn an artist and architect, later serving in the Austrian army during War I and earning an honorable disburdening after being wounded four times. He first entered the German skin industry as a writer, penning a series of alarm movies and thrillers creation with 1917's Hilde Warren Und Der Tod. In 1919, he and chief honcho Robert Wiene teamed on the script of The Cupboard of Dr. Caligari, and although Lang exited in the pre-production stages to begin work on another project, his major contribution to the detective story -- a framing design ultimately revealing the story direction to get been a illusion -- went on to rank among the most imitated structural techniques in history. As a foreman, Lang debuted in 1919 with the now-fallen Halbblut. Upon completing 1920's two-large The Spiders, his early rise to fame culminated with 1922's Doktor Mabuse der Spieler, which pronounced the full development of his striking Expressionist aesthetic and introduced his popular Mabuse character. Another two-part epic, Perish Nibelungen, followed two years later, and in 1927 he filmed the body of knowledge fiction major Metropolis. Lang's transition from the silents to sound began with his magnum opus M (1931).

Written through old lady Thea von Harbou, as were most of his principal films of the era, M documented the crimes of a cracked serial killer (Peter Lorre) preying on the children of Berlin. The photograph went on to appropriate for a tremendous influence on the on the dole of filmmakers including Alfred Hitchcock, Michael Powell, and Jacques Tourneur. The success of M positioned Lang as a unrivalled pattern of the German film industry, but its power may drink been too great -- Nazi propagandist Josef Goebbels offered Lang the opportunity to appoint films for Adolf Hitler, unaware of the director's own Jewish heritage. According to key, Lang -- already stinging from a government ban on his just out Die Testament des Dr. Mabuse -- fled the country that same evening, leaving without the pro-Nazi von Harbou. After briefly stopping in France to shoot Liliom, he landed in Hollywood, earning immediate acclaim with 1936's Spitfire, a stinging indictment of mob mentality. Lang dead beat the next several decades in America working in a diversification of styles and genres, including the Western (among his more extraordinary efforts being 1940's The Offer of Forthright James and 1952's Rancho Notorious). But, his greatest achievement during the period was a series of unbending thrillers which went far in defining the look and texture of pic noir; pictures like 1944's Ministry of Qualms and The Woman in the Window, 1945's Scarlet In someone's bailiwick, 1953's The Big Warm up excite, and 1956's While the City Sleeps offered bleak, gripping depictions of life on the escarpment's virulence of desperation, exploring recurring themes of thing, vengeance, and persecution in haunting detail.

However, through the mid-'50s, Lang had grace disillusioned with the Hollywood practice, and after completing 1956's superb Beyond a Sensible Suspicion, he tersely stopped in India to blur 1958's Die Tiger von Eschnapur before returning to Germany after an absence of decades. Upon completing 1959's Indische Grabmal, he directed one last Mabuse picture, Tausend Augen des Dr. Mabuse, to come announcing his retirement from filmmaking. After appearing in Jean-Luc Godard's 1963 drawn in Odium as himself, Lang returned to America to live in sight his remaining years.

He died in Los Angeles on August 2, 1976.