A small town, 19th century. A young couple arrive with a carriage at a tavern. While the woman is distracted, Death, in the form of a man in a black robe, takes away her fiance. She goes to the underworld and asks Death if he can bring back her lover. Death then tells her three stories about lovers with tragic endings: in a Middle Eastern city, a Caliph does not want his daughter to fall in love with a Christian man, and thus has him executed... In Venice, Monna is engaged to the wealthy Girolamo, but is secretly in love with the ordinary merchant, Gianfrancesco. Girolamo thus tricks Monna into attacking Gianfrancesco while they are both wearing masks, while a Moor kills Gianfrancesco by stabbing him in the back... In a Chinese village, a magician is summoned by the Emperor to entertain him through some magic tricks. However, the Emperor falls in love with the magician's assistant, Tiao Tsien, and wants to separate her from her lover, Liang. Tiao Tsien takes the magician's wand to escape, but the Emperor's guard kills her lover... Back in present, Death gives the woman until midnight to find someone to replace her lover's demise. She tries, but cannot find anyone and thus decides to die herself and be reunited with her lover in death.
Widely thought to be director Fritz Lang's breakthrough film, "Destiny" is an unusual and allegorical tale about fatalism and the inability of people to escape from tragedy, not even when they are happily in love. Lang takes a lot of inspiration from Griffith's "Intolerance" since the main story is just a framing device for three more stories set in the past (a city in the Middle East; Venice; a Chinese town), except that here the reoccurring theme of selfishness of other people who prevent the love of a young couple is underlined by having the two lead actors, Lil Dagover and Walter Janssen, play lovers in each epoch, symbolizing the endless cycle of their fate, which in turn inspired later allegorical films, including Aronofsky's "The Fountain". Strictly speaking, these three stories are rather superfluous and have little to do to contribute to the main one in the end, which makes the movie not that impressive anymore. The best one is arguably the Chinese story, since it had several opulent set designs combined with the technique of double exposure to conjure up the feeling of the magician's magic tricks (flying on a magic carpet; a miniature army walking beneath his feet; a flying horse) featuring several bizarre characters (the Emperor, for some reason, has extremely long fingernails). However, despite the fantasy concept, the storyline is presented in a rather standard, routine edition, not managing to ignite on a higher level. For instance, there is only scene that illustrates the love of the couple: the one where they are in a carriage, and the man is so shy that he has to throw a blanket over a goose inside in order to properly kiss the woman. Lang was not in his full element quite yet, yet even in this rudimentary edition, he managed to inspire several directors to craft several similar surreal movies.
Grade:++
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