The first thing to strike the casual observer about Fritz Lang's recent films is his apparent interest in returning to his own sources and going over his own past. His latest film, The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse, takes up a line previously represented in his work by The Testament of Dr. Mabuse in 1933 and Doctor Mabuse the Gambler, one of his earliest works … dating right back to 1922. (p. 43)

Certain themes run inescapably through his career from the beginning right up to date, and of them all that represented by Dr. Mabuse, which reaches its apotheosis and logical conclusion in the latest episode, is the most persistent and pervasive. It can be traced back, in a rudimentary state, to one of Lang's very earliest films, Die Spinnen (1919), a series meant to be in four parts, though only two were actually made, about an organisation of international criminals bent...