Inclubabu
Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.
Dorathen
Better Late Then Never
Voxitype
Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.
Lidia Draper
Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.
talula1060
This movie should have been so much better. Lang is capable of a lot more. Unfortunately, it did not live up to its creator's abilities. The writing was stilted and awkward with unrealistic dialogue. Whenever anyone spoke, they basically said whatever they needed to advance the plot regardless if it was believable. There were a few lines about the gods thrown in to remind us we are in India. There is absolutely no subtlety here at all.
The worst part about this film was the acting. Not one of these actors was believable or natural. I realize acting styles have changed over the years. The prince with his bad Indian makeup and phony looking jewelry had two moods: bland or outraged. He marched in front of cages of tigers for no apparent reason other than that he's a prince who controls everything and because this movie has tiger in the title. Some of the other actors were caricatures of what they thought Indians should be like. Dark brown makeup with blue eyes and Nordic features? What was Lang thinking? Then we've got the two leads: the dancer and the German architect. Paget the dancer was beautiful to look at, but that's where her talent ended. If she's sad, she's sitting there with a huge frown. If scared, an exaggerated wide eyed look. It's ridiculous how badly she acts in this movie. Reminds me of acting from the 20s. At least then they had no dialogue to work with, so movement was everything. Another thing that is bound to make the acting awful is that the lead actress is not speaking the same language as her paramour... Literally. This makes it impossible for them to relate to and respond to one another. Her lines were overdubbed in German while she spoke them in English in the scene. Her lover spoke German throughout. I'm not sure why Lang chose to cast someone who didn't speak German. Finally, we come to the love interest for our dancer. He's not only creepy, but he's got zero charisma and is unpleasant to watch. At times he's yelling his lines just to inject some emotion into his scenes. It's the work of an amateur. Again, no subtlety. They all are behaving like a bunch of people who have never acted a day in their lives. Considering they are all experienced, i can only lay these errors at the director's feet. Even the costumes and props looked unrealistic and poorly constructed. Perhaps Lang was past it or maybe he just wasn't able to change with the times. Either way, it made for a very poorly constructed picture.
joenook
Fritz Lang's two part Indian Epic made up of the films The Tiger of Bengal and The Tomb of Love is, to put it lightly, a cinematic enigma. While Lang is no stranger to both pulp fiction and long films, he oddly fails at both in this two-part travesty.Watching a film like Lang's Metropolis or his five hour epic of Die Nibelungen is a magical experience. The films flow at such a brilliant pace, drawing in the viewer and creating a world of high drama and excitement amidst some of the most lavish and beautiful sets of the silent era. Yet, somehow, this magic is lost in his Indian Epic, as the nearly three and a half hours that comprise both films drags for what seems like an eternity. While the first film, The Tiger of Bengal, starts off like a pleasing, pulpy adventure story, it soon peters off nearly halfway through, setting the pace for what will be the rest of the first and the entire second film.Production was evidently a very expensive and impressive one, complete with jewel-studded clothing, immense and desolate dungeons, and large and grandiose palaces, stocked with every little intricate detailed imagined; yet, these impressive settings are hardly utilized in to making this the film(s) it could have been, for they remain nothing more than eye-candy in what is ultimately a theatrical play of the most dire sort. Stilted, bland dialogue and scenes that drag and repeat play out almost cyclically: Where is the princess? She's over there. Where is the foreigner? He's over there. What should we do? We should do this... and so on, ad nauseam, until nearly three and a half hours of a film still unrealized is completed.Even in some of Lang's previous minor failings he never achieved such a monotony as this. In his canceled pulp-adventure project, The Spiders, Lang was able to pull off an exhilarating tale of adventure in a foreign land for the first film, which would be canceled shortly after just the second Admittedly, the second and last entry of The Spiders almost seems to set a precedent for what would go wrong with both The Tiger of Bengal and The Tomb of Love: hardly anything happens.I simply just don't understand what Lang went in to this project imagining. After reading this was a remake of the Indian Epic that he originally produced earlier on in his career I was so excited to finally sit and view what I imagined would be a wonderful adventure. I assumed it was one of his last, final great works; a tale of intrigue and adventure and lavish sets, and a film I could rely on for years to come to go back to and relieve the magic all again. Such a disappointment on so many levels, both as an adventure film, and arguably one of Lang's worst.
michael autin
This is a Lush production. The costumes and extravagance of the exterior sets for the various parades is intoxicating. This film captures the allure that India held for many decades. The story is clear cut, and there are many simplistic plot motivations. The film is the premier example of the Cliffhanger style, as the story unfolds from peril to peril. While some effects are of grade A cheese (a poor tiger in the beginning) The dance scenes Really do open the eyes. Of Star Trek note... the second dance scene MUST have been the inspiration for Vina, the Orion Slave dancer of "The Cage" fame... many of the same exotica is there. Fritz Lang was indeed a crafty teller of tales.
vostf
Der Tiger von Eschnapur looks like a silent movie with dialogue. The settings are magnificent and the story telling comes close to Der Müde Tod. Unfortunately the characters will speak and that breaks the magic in it. Especially for the lead actor playing architect Harald Berger: he is awful and it's even worse with the dubbing in the French version. I wonder why Fritz Lang had to make do with him. Perhaps his eyesight was starting to decline. Perhaps he was just not able to shoot his great tragedies of the 20s with dialogue although he prided himself on being a good script doctor. Well, he had to adapt to the American Motion Picture Industry then his Art would be stemmed, obstructed.The pity is Fritz Lang never topped himself after his marvelous silent works of the 20s. Metropolis is overrated but despite all the wooden sentimentalism in it we have insights of the German director at his best. With M he gave us the best out of the silent era but he never again reach the magic of his previous work. While it took twenty years to Hitchcock to come to the masterpieces he shot in the 50s Lang did not improve his visual mastering. And worst of all the scripts he was handed in Hollywood hardly appealed to his deepest talent whereas he closely engaged in the making of Thea von Harbou's screenplays.