Fritz Lang was one of the more successful film pioneers of the 1920's in Germany, most notably M and Metropolis. He served in WW1 but then refused to work for the Nazi's and left Germany for America before World War 2 and produced a number of good films during the 1940's in Hollywood. Metropolis stands as one of the great Sci-fi films with its uptopian vision of the future that has been the inspiration for countless film since. He brought early German experimental cinema to a mainstream audience. His career had two halves his early German films and then his later Amican films. His first surviving film is The Spiders from 1919.With Harakiri he brought Japan to the cinema for the first time. With Die Nibelungen: Siegfried he brought the German fantasy epic to the screen. Metropolis is arguably the defining work of Fritz Lang and a seminal science fiction film. M was his first sound film and uses sound effects to to good effect. In 1936 he moved to MGM in Hollywood and his first film Fury. The Return Of Frank James was his first colour film. The Woman In The Window saw him move into filmnoir. With Clash By Night he brought Marilyn Monroe to centre stage. The Big Heat is seen as the best of his film noir films and possibly the peak of the second half of his career.
