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Spies (1928, Germany) (aka Spione)
In writer-director Fritz Lang's suspenseful and expressionistic
espionage thriller:
- the suspenseful and quick-moving opening prologue
sequence of a safe robbery of secret documents (by a set of gloved
hands), the canted angle of a fleeing motorcycle rider, a radio
broadcast tower's transmissions of newspaper headlines (flying
at the screen as text), and the assassination of the Minister of
Trade in an open-topped vehicle (and the stealing of his bag on
the seat)
- the plot: a romance that developed between defecting
Russian spy Sonja Barranikowa (Gerda Maurus) - a femme fatale - and
a handsome young government SS agent known only as Number 326 (Willy
Fritsch), who was disguised as a dirty, bearded, scruffy vagrant
named Hans Pockzerwinski; Sonja was employed by wheelchair-bound
criminal espionage mastermind Haghi (Rudolf Klein-Rogge), a prestigious
bank director-president
- the interlude bath preparation scene for the agent-hero
(Fritsch), beginning with a close-up of two hands of his servant-valet
Chauffeur Franz (Paul Horbiger); he turned on a bathtub spigot, and
then placed a new soap bar on a soap dish; in addition, a fresh towel
was draped over a towel rack, and a thermometer reading was taken
of the bath water's temperature; bath salts were also sprinkled into
the water - this scene occurred during an action sequence when Sonja
ran into the agent's hotel suite and pretended (in a seductive ruse)
to be fleeing from a man that she claimed she shot in the next room
for making sexual advances toward her; after the room was searched,
and while the hero was bathing (his actual bathing scene was never
on-screen), she stole documents from his desk
- the many set-pieces, including a ritualistic Japanese
sepuku suicide, a train collision, and the simultaneous poison-gassing
of a multi-storied building while a fight occurred in a hidden room
- the brilliant, climactic ending scene - the clown
music-hall stage performance of criminal mastermind Haghi as Nemo
(his disguise as double-agent 719), who realized he was about to
be caught with government counter-agents in the stage's wings; he
suicidally shot himself in the head and collapsed dead, as the audience
applauded - believing the clown's death was part of his act
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