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Definition: Lang, Fritz from Philip's Encyclopedia

Austrian director of silent and early sound films. His debut feature was Halbblut (1919). His first major success was the two-part crime thriller Dr Mabuse (1922). Metropolis (1926), is a science-fiction classic. Perhaps his greatest film was his first sound feature, M (1931), an expressionist, psychological thriller. Fleeing Nazism, Lang moved to the USA. His first film in Hollywood was Fury (1936). Later films include The Big Heat (1953).


Lang, Fritz

From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
(born Dec. 5, 1890, Vienna, Austria-Hungary—died Aug. 2, 1976, Los Angeles, Calif., U.S.) Austrian-born U.S. film director. He studied architecture in Vienna and served in the Austrian army in World War I. While recovering from war wounds, he began to write screenplays. He found work at a movie studio in Berlin, where he later directed successful films such as Between Two Worlds (1921), Dr. Mabuse (1922), the two-part The Nibelungen (1924), the expressionistic Metropolis (1926), and M (1931). After making the anti-Nazi film The Last Will of Dr. Mabuse (1933), he left Germany for Paris and later Hollywood. His U.S. films, which equal his German films in their intensity, pessimism, and visual mastery, include Fury (1936), You Only Live Once (1937), Ministry of Fear (1944), Rancho Notorious (1952), and The Big Heat (1953). Many of his films deal with fate and man’s inevitable working out of his destiny. Birth Place: Vienna, national capital, Austria Death Place: Los Angeles, California, …
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Austrian, born in Vienna. The son of an architect, he studied engineering and travelled extensively before serving in World War I. He then worked as a screenwriter, and made his directorial debut with The Halfbreed (1919). Fascinated by violence, cruelty and the criminal mind, he produced memorable…
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Full text Article Lang

From Merriam-Webster's Collegiate(R) Dictionary Full text Article Biographical Names
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Full text Article Expression

From Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
A disparate movement in modern art in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the unifying feature of which was the showing of raw and sometimes violent human emotion through the medium of painting and sculpture, rather than making a precise representation of external reality. Its beginnings can be…
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Aldrich, Robert (1918-83) Allen, Woody (Allen Stewart Konigsberg) (1935- ) Almodóvar, Pedro (Pedro Almodóvar Caballero) (1951- ) Altman, Robert (1925- ) Angelopoulos, Theo (1935- ) Antonioni, Michelangelo (1912- ) Arzner, Dorothy (1900-79) Ashby, William Hal (1929-88) …
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From Useful Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins
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Full text Article Lang, Fritz

From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
(born Dec. 5, 1890, Vienna, Austria-Hungary—died Aug. 2, 1976, Los Angeles, Calif., U.S.) Austrian-born U.S. film director. He studied architecture in Vienna and served in the Austrian army in World War I. While recovering from war wounds, he began to write screenplays. He found work at a movie…
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Full text Article Lang, Fritz

From Chambers Biographical Dictionary
1890-1976 US film director Born in Vienna, Austria, he was educated there at the College of Technical Sciences and the Academy of Graphic Arts, intending to become a painter. Instead he joined the Decla Film Company (1919). Moving to Berlin, he combined German Expressionist art techniques with a…
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Full text Article Lang, Fritz

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
(läng), 1890–1976, German-American film director, b. Vienna. His silent and early sound films, notably the iconic masterpiece Metropolis (1926) with its dystopian vision of the future, are marked by brilliant expressionist technique. The film premiered (1927) in Berlin and shortly thereafter was…
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(b. Dec. 5, 1890, Vienna, Austria-Hungary—d. Aug. 2, 1976, Los Angeles, Calif., U.S.) Fritz Lang was an Austrian-born American motion-picture director whose films, dealing with fate and man’s inevitable working out of his destiny, are considered masterpieces of visual composition and expressionistic…
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