DESTINY (1921)
(a.k.a. DER MUDE TOD)
Article #400 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 4-19-2002
Posting date: 9-12-2002

When Death steals away with the fiance of a young woman, she kills herself in order to enter his domain and win him back from him.

It might be interesting to sit down someday and review the ways Death as a character has been portrayed in the movies. Here he is weary, hoping that the woman will prove her assertion that “Love is stronger than Death” to take some of the sadness and hardness out of his job. Her test is to attempt to save any one of three people doomed to die, and what unfolds are three very different stories on the same theme (Love Vs. Death, a theme Woody Allen would no doubt find interesting); the last one is the most comic and the most enjoyable. The ending is touching, powerful, logical and sad, and is both a victory and a loss. It’s not the best of Fritz Lang’s movies, but it’s memorable and worthwhile.