Fritz on Fridays: Four Around the Woman
As confusing as its title situation.
On the first Friday of every month, this column by critic Joshua Polanski will feature a short review or essay on a film directed by Fritz Lang (1890-1976), the great Austrian “Master of Darkness.” Occasionally (but not too occasionally), Fritz on Fridays will also feature interviews and conversations with relevant critics, scholars and filmmakers about Lang’s influence and filmography.
Four Around the Woman — also known as Four Around a Woman and by the alternative title Struggling Hearts or by its two German titles of Kämpfende Herzen and Vier um die Frau — is as confusing as its title situation.
Harry Yquem (Ludwig Hartau), a very rich broker, dresses up in weird clothes and disguises to purchase stolen jewelry at an underworld pawn shop. It’s there where he spots a man he believes to be his wife’s former lover, Werner Krafft (Anton Edthofer). Werner has a twin brother who looks just like him (also played by Edthofer) and is involved in some pretty shady stuff. The broker’s friend Meunier (Robert Forster-Larrinaga) also lacks self-control when it comes to keeping his eyes (and more) off his friend’s wife. To make matters worse, the two brothers keep getting confused with each other. Seeing the man whom he believes to be Werner sends Harry into a memory spiral that brings him back to the night of his engagement to Florence (Carola Toelle) and what Werner may have been doing in her room.
The doppelgängers, forgery, eavesdropping, criminal underworld, paranoia and mistaken guilt tease the following year’s Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler, one of Lang’s most notable crime films. But they are also important in that, depending on how one counts things, this was the great Master of Darkness’s first foray into film noir, the genre for which he is often cited as the custodian to credibility.The two Spiders films certainly have elements of the crime films Lang would become most known for, as well as the themes that stretch across his work in various genres like fidelity and false accusations, but they are more safely labeled as early adventure films than anything else.
Continue reading at the Midwest Film Journal.