Dr Mabuse is the master criminal to end them all. A master of disguise and mind control, he is behind all the biggest crimes of decadent 1920s Berlin-robbing trains, kidnapping young women, inflating the deutschmark. In fact, he is the prototype evil-genius super-villain, setting the template to be followed by everyone from Goldfinger to Lex Luther. Running at approximately 2½ hours, Dr Mabuse, The Gambler was first shown to German audiences over consecutive nights-the first part, The Great Gambler: A Picture of Our Time, and the second, Inferno: A Story of Men in Our Time. Considered one of the masterpieces of German Expressionist cinema, Fritz Lang's Nietzschean tale of power and greed is set in the hazy cabarets, the coke dens and the back-room casinos of Weimar Berlin.