The Tiger of Eschnapur / Der Tiger von Eschnapur (1959) [The Masters of Cinema Series #107] [REPOST]

The Tiger of Eschnapur first strikes one as being breathtakingly exotic, and then remarkably juvenile. Dashing hero Harald Berger bops two troublesome Gurkha soldiers together like sticks of wood, and charms the beautiful Seetha with schoolboy manners and other pure-of-heart gestures. The action is hearty and direct. There are beautiful scenes shot in India with real tigers, matched with wonderfully naive shots of men in tiger costumes!

Director: Fritz Lang
Cast: Debra Paget, Paul Hubschmid, Walter Reyer, Claus Holm, Luciana Paluzzi, Valery Inkijinoff, Sabine Bethmann, Angela Portaluri, Rene Deltgen, Guido Celano, Jochen Brockmann, Richard Lauffen, Jochen Blume, Helmut Hildebrand, Victor Francen, Panos Papadopulos

Fritz Lang returned to Germany on the eve of the 1960s to direct this enchanted penultimate work, a redraft of the diptych form pioneered in such silent Lang classics as Die Spinnen; Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler.; and Die Nibelungen. Although no encapsulating title was lent at the time of release to what is, effectively, a single 3-hour-plus film split in two, the work that has come to be referred to in modern times as “the Indian epic” (consisting of Der Tiger von Eschnapur and Das indische Grabmal) proved to be one of the legendary director’s most adventurous achievements. It was also one of the most popular successes Lang was to experience in his native land.
A German architect (Paul Hubschmid) is commissioned by an Indian maharaja (Walter Reyer) to construct a temple on his palatial grounds. After saving the life of a bewitching dancer (Debra Paget) on whom the maharaja has spousal designs, the hero is pulled ever deeper into a hazardous maze of traps, perhaps the purest realisation of Lang’s obsession with a labyrinthine ‘house of death’ – that is, Man challenging Fate.
Like Lang’s following final work Die 1000 Augen des Dr. Mabuse, the Indian epic charts new territory for the director, as it strikes out into the uber-melodramatic tenor of his early silents while inciting the colours of the emulsion into adopting a lurid, sometimes gaseous palette. Arriving in the wake of The River (Renoir), India matri bhumi (Rossellini), and Black Narcissus (Powell & Pressburger), Lang’s Indian epic stands among the remarkable mid-century contributions of Western filmmakers who have contemplated India. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Lang’s films on DVD in the UK for the first time.

Special Features
- Beautiful, newly restored transfers of the films in their original 1.37:1 aspect ratio
- Two soundtracks: the native German-language track, and the English-language dubtrack made for overseas distribution
- Newly translated optional English subtitles
- New and exclusive feature-length audio commentaries by film scholar David Kalat
- 20-minute documentary on the making of the Indian epic
- Three minutes of vintage 8mm footage shot on location by actress Sabine Bethmann
- The original French trailers



IMDb

Eureka Video

Fritz Lang returned to Germany on the eve of the 1960s to direct this enchanted penultimate work, a redraft of the diptych form pioneered in such silent Lang classics as Die Spinnen; Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler.; and Die Nibelungen. Although no encapsulating title was lent at the time of release to what is, effectively, a single 3-hour-plus film split in two, the work that has come to be referred to in modern times as “the Indian epic” (consisting of Der Tiger von Eschnapur and Das indische Grabmal) proved to be one of the legendary director’s most adventurous achievements. It was also one of the most popular successes Lang was to experience in his native land.

A German architect (Paul Hubschmid) is commissioned by an Indian maharaja (Walter Reyer) to construct a temple on his palatial grounds. After saving the life of a bewitching dancer (Debra Paget) on whom the maharaja has spousal designs, the hero is pulled ever deeper into a hazardous maze of traps, perhaps the purest realisation of Lang’s obsession with a labyrinthine ‘house of death’ – that is, Man challenging Fate.

Like Lang’s following final work Die 1000 Augen des Dr. Mabuse, the Indian epic charts new territory for the director, as it strikes out into the uber-melodramatic tenor of his early silents while inciting the colours of the emulsion into adopting a lurid, sometimes gaseous palette. Arriving in the wake of The River (Renoir), India matri bhumi (Rossellini), and Black Narcissus (Powell & Pressburger), Lang’s Indian epic stands among the remarkable mid-century contributions of Western filmmakers who have contemplated India. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Lang’s films on DVD in the UK for the first time.

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