Sunday, Oct. 8, 2017 @ 9.00 PM

Newly restored digital restoration of this silent classic Fritz Lang film: DESTINY (Restauration by the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation, making it available again with its typical 1920s coloration.)

DESTINY was filmed shortly after the First World War and is regarded as a reflection on the traumas of the war. Images as gloomy as they are fantastical tell the story of a young woman who must pass tests to reclaim her lover from Death. This haunting work established Fritz Lang as one of Germany’s leading directors and earned him international acclaim.

DESTINY (Der müde Tod)
Germany 1921, 97 min

Directed: Fritz Lang
Cast : Lil Dagover, Bernhard Götzke

A young woman asks Death to bring her deceased lover back to life. He leads her into a room full of candles: the life-lights of people, which burn here and go out whenever a life comes to an end. Three are already well burned down, and if she succeeds in preventing just one of them from going out, he says she will get her lover back. In three visionary episodes — set in different places and at different times: in the Orient, in Renaissance Italy, and in imperial China — the girl experiences the fate and failure of her love. And once again Death gives her a chance…

Fritz Lang was born in 1890 in Vienna and passed away in Los Angeles in 1976. One of the most important directors in the history of cinema, he shaped Weimar cinema with masterpieces such as the DR. MABUSE films, DIE NIBELUNGEN and METROPOLIS. After 1933, he continued his career in Hollywood, where he moved to avoid having to make films for the Nazis. He became a legend in his own lifetime thanks to the veneration of filmmakers like Godard and Truffaut.