The Wandering Image

“Das wandernde Bild” (“The Wandering Image”) is considered one of Fritz Lang's first collaborations with screenwriter Thea von Harbou, with whom he would later create such classics as “Metropolis”, “Woman in the Moon”, “M” and “The Testament of Dr. Mabuse”. At the centre of the story is Irmgard (Mia May), who loves a man (Hans Marr) who rejects marriage on principle. Their relationship produces a child. Social ostracism, guilt and the advances of a relative eventually drive Irmgard into the solitude of the high mountains. There her fate becomes entwined with a statue of the Madonna that, according to legend, wanders. The film ends in a redemption that remains suspended between faith in miracles and earthly chance. Released in the same year as “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari”, the film shows Lang in transition: still indebted to the star-driven melodrama of the post-war years, yet already revealing a keen sense of space, light and symbolic imagery. Its location shooting in the mountains anticipates elements of the mountain film, which Arnold Fanck (“The White Hell of Pitz Palu”, “The Great Leap”) would soon develop into a genre of its own. At the same time, it sounds themes that shape Lang's later work, such as “Destiny”, “Die Nibelungen” and “Metropolis”: fate and sacrifice, and the tension between reason and myth.