A Film Canon

The prototypical espionage thriller, Spies forms a bridge between Lang's serially-inflected and feature-length work, as well as between the embodied and disembodied villain, encapsulated in ringleader Haghi's (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) status as a semi-mechanised body. Confined to an extravagant wheelchair, and rarely straying from his contaption-filled desk, Haghi is eminently placed to subversively integrate himself into technological networks, to the extent that any component of these networks and, ultimately, any kind of mechanised object, evokes his presence. This is particularly true of the camera, whose forensic agency is undermined by Lang's use of architectural framing devices (doors, windows, mirrors) to evoke an invisible, hostile eye, as if Haghi is always just across the threshold. In the same way, Lang models many of his compositions on photographic portraiture, mobilising the tableaux and typage requisite of the serial, while questioning the straightforward gaze upon which they are predicated. This all contributes to a starker, less baroque aesthetic than Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler, whose characteristic deep focus is replaced by something closer to cerebral space; a collapse of the physical and psychological that explains the clinical overtones of Haghi's headquarters, suggesting nothing so much as a rogue insane asylum.