Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast

Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast by Patrick McGilligan, a thorough, deferential biography of the Vienna-born film auteur responsible for such moody classics as M, Metropolis, Rancho Notorious, and The Big Heat asks all the right questions. Did Lang shoot his first wife — with a revolver, not a camera — in 1920? (He and his scriptwriter mistress claimed it was a suicide.) Did the director, who was half Jewish, immediately flee the Nazis in 1933, or did he first ponder Goebbels' job offer to run the German movie biz? Did he ever marry the mysterious, devoted woman who guarded him in the final decades of his life? Although McGilligan never provides definitive answers, he does mine Lang's dark celluloid legacy for some tantalizing clues — despite the director's assertions that ''my private life has nothing to do with my films.'' B+