Film Forum

(1921) In a vaguely 19th-century German village, a tall, sepulchral stranger builds a high wall around his property sans doors or windows, then Lil Dagover’s lover disappears — could the stranger be D...? (The German title translates as The Weary Death). So, is “love stronger than death?” The stranger gives Dagover visions of lovers at bay in an Arabian Nights Bagdad, in a Renaissance Vienna at Carnival, and in a highly stylized China, complete with special effects admired —
and copied — by Douglas Fairbanks. But there is one final test. Acclaim abroad reverberated back to make this Lang’s first smash hit: both Alfred Hitchcock and Luis Buñuel got the movie bug after seeing it. DCP. Approx. 98 mins.

Restored by Anke Wilkening on behalf of the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung, this definitive presentation of Destiny preserves the original German intertitles and simulates the historic color tinting and toning. Accompanying the film is a newly-composed score by Cornelius Schwehr as a commissioned composition by ZDF / ARTE performed by the 70-member Berlin Rundfunk Symphony Orchestra under the direction of conductor Frank Strobel.

Reviews

“FANTASTIC AND DREAM LIKE! The sets are magnificent and the shots and special effects are stunning (beyond 1921 state-of-the-art). A major work in [Lang’s] canon.” 
– Eric Monder, Film Journal International

“LANG’S EARLIEST EXTANT GREAT FILM! This new digital restoration of Destiny returns the film’s cool greens, pensive blues, and fiery reds, thus aiding the emotional immediacy of a story whose characters all merit sympathy. The restoration work honors the intentions of a tale that itself treats on the theme of resurrection, one in which Death finds ways to bring lovers together across time and, by doing so, gives them second life.”
– Aaron Cutler, Brooklyn Magazine

“Harnesses compassion for Death itself. Lang reserves room for his usual obsessions, among them looming clocks that fill the screen and swarming crowds caught up in the contagion of violence. Despite how it may sound, Destiny actually showcases Lang’s lighter side... Lang also unleashes high-suspense sword-fights, cartoonishly obnoxious leaders, and flying carpets — a special-effects coup that would serve as the inspiration for Douglas Fairbanks’s The Thief of Bagdad. If this movie about the grip of the next life has a mantra, it’s this: ‘Love is stronger than death’!”
– Danny King, The Village Voice 

“Takes a calculated delight in frequent switches of style from naturalism to melodramatic stylization or broad comedy, adding gleeful trick effects, social satire and comic business throughout.”
– Tony Rayns, Time Out (London)

“Lang soon realized what the judicious handling of light could bring to an atmosphere. He opens up a wall and erects a steep staircase whose steps compose a ladder of light in an arch; a bamboo thicket with its smooth shafts bathed in a swirl of phosphorescent light… Extraordinary oddness of appearance is found in the laboratory of the little apothecary. A real chemist’s laboratory this, with bottles and innumerable utensils glimmering mysteriously; skeletons and stuffed animals jut out from the darkness like phosphorescent phantoms.”
– Lotte Eisner

“When I saw Destiny, I suddenly knew that I wanted to make movies. Something about this film spoke to something deep in me; it clarified my life and my vision of the world.”
– Luis Buñuel