Jonathan Rosenbaum: Fritz Lang "Spione"

Lang shares with Orson Welles a taste for using powerful authoritarian figures to forge a kind of autocritique of his own artistic practice and its will to power. He differs in using actors other than himself to play these roles and in his emphasis on sadomasochism — as well as his curious interest in tyrants figuring as pimps and erotic matchmakers, which is particularly pronounced here.