The figure of the femme fatale, appearing as early as Die Spinnen, turns up again and again as a constant motif in [Lang's] work; thus the career girl [as portrayed in his unfilmed scenario Death of a Career Girl] is less an outgrowth of [a] chance encounter at Cannes than of previous portraits of women. Kriemhild, one of the earlier versions, also pursued a goal to its logical, destructive end, shedding all human emotions save that of revenge (a form, after all, of ambition), leaving more than one dead man behind her, and finally destroying herself in the process. Indeed, Kriemhild is perhaps Lang's most deadly, self-deadening and archetypally powerful female figure. She too rejects maternal feelings and romantic love; to remain indifferent to Etzel the Hun required, after all, such icy determination as even the career girl might be incapable of achieving. The most immediate antecedent of...