When Joseph Goebbels offered him the chance to become head of film-making in Nazi Germany, director Fritz Lang wondered if it might be time to leave. How quickly Lang left Germany after the Goebbels meeting – indeed whether he really met Goebbels at all – has recently been disputed. But by 1935 the eye-patched visionary behind Metropolis and M had fled Europe and reached Hollywood, MGM contract secured.
By the war’s end, Lang had produced three anti-Nazi films attacking his former would-be employers. He was now experimenting with American genre material. In 1944, his sly noir The Woman in the Window played elliptically with dream states and temporality. The following year came his second attempt at the genre: Scarlet Street.
