Now, a man walks into this club, and stops in the middle of it. A waiter, equally spotless and cultivated, walks up to him, in order to seat this gentleman. But our man utters just one word: "Pineapple". The waiter, without waiting even a few seconds, and while keeping a straight face, responds: "Cocaine or gambling?".
This scene, as any cinematic aficionado probably knows, is from the movie "Doctor Mabuse" by Fritz Lang (based on the eponymous book, or rather series of books). It's a vivid clash between the clean, upper-class world of the depicted restaurant, and the trip to the seedy underworld, that lurks below, and that we are going to see in the next few scenes.
But, no, no, we were mistaken! There is no clash at all. The seeds of decay and disease, gambling, drugs, sensuality and crime do not lie "below" this world of luxury and sophisticated behavior. It's one and the same, it's the same coin, as it always has been, throughout all history. Morality and vice are always friends in bed, political power nurture the forces of rebellion that will eventually overturn it, and "property [and wealth, editor's note] is theft" indeed, just like dear old Proudhon stated.
But let's get back to our man, or to the man behind this whole scene, setting, and movie. Fritz Lang was a master of showing us fictional and not-so fictional worlds, where this clash, this rhizome, this labyrinth is unraveled before our very eyes. The rift between morality and evil, wealth and poverty, law and crime, high and low; and how maybe, just maybe, there is no such rift at all, and these things are very very close to each other...
So in Metropolis we not only have the rich and powerful that live in their own heaven "on top" of the city, there also is an elevator (and later, a "middle man") that connects this to the hadal and Moloch-like underworld of impoverished and underpowered workers...
While in "M", we see lengthy, haunting, but also respectful and beautiful scenes, of how it's the Berlin underground - criminals, mobsters, do-no-goods, beggars, cripples, the homeless - that team up, organize themselves, in order to hunt down a real devil of a man, apprehend him, and then have their very own trial about this case - when the forces of order, the lawmen, the cops, the good citizens, completely failed at this task so far.
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Let's stop at Fritz' list of movies now.
He was a director, an artist, a person, that had an eye for the "underworld" which lies below everyday life and society. He depicted it more frequently than most of his peers, and he did so in all its gloom and glory. He never painted one side or the other as entirely evil - but as connected. The world was neither black or white for him, nor a shade of grey, but more as a chaotic pattern on a chess board.
We adore all of this, and hence we are giving him our honorary doom award.
Doomcore Records: https://doomcorerecords.bandcamp.com/