Life        

Friedrich Christian Anton Lang was born on December 5, 1890 in Vienna. He studied art while traveling the world during his college years. He was drafted into World War I in 1914 and by 1918 he was ranked a lieutenant in the military at the time of his release (2). Lang wrote scripts for a short time when he got a job with a German film company. He soon became a director for Nero-Film during the Expressionist movement.

Lang co-wrote many of the scripts for his movie with actress and script-writer Thea von Harbou (1). Lang married Harbou in 1924 and they made movies together up until 1933 when the Third Reich moved in. Lang thought that they were tyrants and escaped to America. Lang and Harbou were later divorced in 1934. Harbou stayed in Germany and continued to write and direct movies for the Third Reich. In 1936 Lang was in Hollywood where he continued to make movies for 20 years (2).

Film 

Lang had a habit of trying to make all of his films incredibly visually satisfying, which he usually succeeded, and they were usually pure fantasy or had a fantasy type plot (1). Lang started his film career shortly after WWI when he began writing for a film company called Decla. He wasn't there long before he got a job at Ufa. Later he directed for Nero-Film where he directed Die Spinnen (spiders) (2).Many of Lang's silent films were epics, including his famous film Metropolis, released in 1927. Metropolis actually bankrupt the studio, coming in at a cost of over 5 million marks (which is approximately 3.8 million dollars USD) (1). Metropolis is a great example of Lang's fantasy worlds and his incredible visually appealing films.

(clip of robot scene maybe to show fantasy)

In 1936 Lang was in Hollywood and was employed by MGM. The first film that he directed was a crime drama for MGM called Fury. For 21 years Lang continued to make 21 more films. While he was working for MGM Lang also created several independent films. These films were dismissed at first because people thought that they didn't compare to his earlier films. Now these films are being looked at again and are now being seen as an important part in the development of genres like film-noir.

Works Consulted 

(1). "Fritz Lang Information." Colocation | Broadband Wireless | Dedicated Servers | DocSTAR | DSL | Web Hosting | Web Design & Development - Infinity Internet.                Web. 13 Oct. 2009. <http://www.nwlink.com/~erick/silentera/Lang/FLang.html>. (picture also)

(2). "Fritz Lang -." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Web. 13 Oct. 2009. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Lang>.