Fritz Lang Trivia
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49 free Fritz Lang trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Fritz Lang built the first great science-fiction city, invented the rocket-launch countdown, and gave the serial-killer movie its blueprint, all before he fled Nazi Germany. This Fritz Lang trivia quiz spans his whole five-decade career: the Viennese engineering student wounded in the First World War, the Weimar epics written with Thea von Harbou, Peter Lorre whistling Grieg in M, the banned Testament of Dr. Mabuse, and the Hollywood years that produced Fury, Scarlet Street and The Big Heat. Expect the famous stories (the Goebbels meeting, the flooded workers' city, the Buenos Aires print of Metropolis) alongside details only serious film buffs know. Questions range from easy to expert, and every answer is verified and cited to its reference page. If you enjoy this quiz, try our other classic cinema and director quizzes.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Lang made his name in Berlin, but which other capital was his birthplace?
Vienna
Vienna was where Lang briefly studied civil engineering before dropping it for art; by his own account he then roamed Europe, North Africa and Asia.
Q 02Lang said his first sight of which city's skyscrapers inspired Metropolis?
New York
New York. Lang always credited the glaring lights and tall buildings of that first visit, but the idea for the film was already months old when he arrived.
Q 03In Lang's 1921 fantasy Destiny, a young woman pleads for her lover's life with which figure?
Death
Death. Weary himself, he lets her try to save one of three doomed lives, in the Middle East, Venice and China, and every one of the three candles still burns out.
Q 04Which Lang film pioneered the rocket-launch countdown?
Woman in the Moon
Woman in the Moon swapped the count-ups of earlier rocket stories for a countdown to build suspense before liftoff, and real mission controls later did the same.
Q 05Where did Lang, an army officer in World War I, start writing his first film scenarios?
In a military hospital
In a military hospital: wounded several times and left blind in his right eye, Lang filled his convalescence with scripts and had sold some to a film producer before the war ended.
Q 06How do the rioting workers of Metropolis punish the false Maria, exposing the robot underneath?
Burn her at the stake
They burn her at the stake, and the fire strips away the human disguise. Lang insisted on real flames around his lead actress for the scene.
Q 07Lang's 1943 anti-Nazi thriller Hangmen Also Die! was written with which exiled German writer?
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht wrote the story with Lang, turning the 1942 assassination of Nazi governor Reinhard Heydrich in Prague into a manhunt thriller that reached cinemas within a year of the killing.
Q 08In Lang's two-part crime epic of 1922, which power does the master criminal Dr. Mabuse use on his victims?
Hypnosis
Hypnosis. Mabuse wills rich gamblers into throwing away fortunes at the card table, and the man who controls every mind ends the film by losing his own.
Q 09Lang's first hit as a director, a 1919 adventure serial, was named after which creatures?
Spiders
Spiders. Die Spinnen pits an adventurer against a crime syndicate of that name in a race for Inca gold, and it sold so well that a second part was rushed into production.
Q 10Lang's 1944 spy thriller Ministry of Fear was adapted from a novel by which British author?
Graham Greene
Graham Greene. In Lang's version a man just released from an asylum wins a cake at a village fête, and the Nazi spies who meant it for someone else hunt him across wartime London.
Q 11Which actor played the child killer in M, his first starring role?
Peter Lorre
Peter Lorre was a Berlin stage actor when this role made him famous worldwide; three years later Alfred Hitchcock cast him, and Hollywood kept him playing villains for decades.
Q 12Which piece does the killer in M compulsively whistle?
In the Hall of the Mountain King
In the Hall of the Mountain King, from Grieg's Peer Gynt, warns the audience that the killer is near before he is seen. The star could not whistle, so Lang dubbed the tune himself.
Q 13In Lang's M, what does the letter chalked onto the hunted man's coat stand for?
Mörder, meaning murderer
Q 21Which star played a man nearly lynched in Lang's first Hollywood film, Fury (1936)?
Spencer Tracy
Spencer Tracy plays an innocent man jailed on thin evidence for a kidnapping. A mob burns the jail, he secretly survives, and he lets his attackers stand trial for killing him.
Q 22In Lang's 1941 Man Hunt, which leader does a British hunter get in his sights?
Hitler
Hitler. Caught as he takes aim, the hunter insists it was only a sporting stalk, and spends the film on the run from Nazi agents; it opened six months before America entered the war.
Q 23Which pair starred in Lang's noirs The Woman in the Window and Scarlet Street?
Edward G. Robinson and Joan Bennett
Mörder, meaning murderer. A beggar chalks the M on his own palm and slaps it onto the man's back so he can be followed through the streets, and the mark gave the film its title.
Q 14In M, who catches the child killer before the police?
The city's criminals
The city's criminals. Constant police raids were ruining business for thieves and safecrackers, so they set the beggars to watch every street and put the killer on trial themselves.
Q 15Which star played the saloon singer who runs an outlaw hideout in Lang's 1952 western Rancho Notorious?
Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich. Her ranch, Chuck-a-Luck, hides any outlaw who can pay and asks no questions, until a cowboy hunting his fiancée's killer talks his way inside.
Q 16Which Lang film did the Nazi regime ban in March 1933?
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse has a madman running a crime ring from his asylum cell. Lang later said he had put Nazi slogans in the villain's mouth; Goebbels stopped the film before its Berlin premiere.
Q 17According to Lang, what did Goebbels offer him at their 1933 meeting?
Head of the UFA studio
Head of the UFA studio, the top job in German film, is Lang's own story. He said he fled the country that same night, but his passport shows him coming and going for months afterwards.
Q 18Lang's You Only Live Once drew on which real-life outlaws?
Bonnie and Clyde
Bonnie and Clyde became an ex-convict wrongly condemned for murder and the wife who goes on the run with him; the famous film about the real pair came thirty years later.
Q 19Lang's French film Liliom came from a play that later became which Broadway musical?
Carousel
Carousel. Rodgers and Hammerstein moved Molnár's fairground barker from Budapest to the coast of Maine in 1945, eleven years after Lang filmed the play with Charles Boyer.
Q 20Who played Frank in Lang's The Return of Frank James?
Henry Fonda
Henry Fonda had already played Frank in Jesse James a year earlier; Lang's Technicolor sequel picks up after Jesse is shot and sends his brother out to settle the score.
Edward G. Robinson and Joan Bennett first played a professor undone by the woman from a portrait. Lang reunited them within a year, casting him as a meek cashier she and her lover fleece.
Q 24Which future superstar took a supporting role in Lang's 1952 drama Clash by Night?
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was billed fourth here, behind Barbara Stanwyck, Paul Douglas and Robert Ryan. By the next year, with Niagara, she was the name above the title.
Q 25Who plays Detective Dave Bannion in The Big Heat?
Glenn Ford
Glenn Ford plays a family man turned avenger: when a car bomb meant for him kills his wife, Bannion hands in his badge and goes after the mob alone.
Q 26What does Lee Marvin's gangster throw in Gloria Grahame's face in The Big Heat?
Boiling coffee
Boiling coffee, straight from the pot, scars half her face. Near the end she returns to his penthouse and throws a scalding potful back at him.
Q 27Lang's 1954 noir Human Desire was based on La Bête humaine, a novel by which French writer?
Émile Zola
Émile Zola. Lang moved his 1890 story of a train driver drawn into a married couple's crime to an American railroad town, and reunited the two leads of The Big Heat to play it.
Q 28Lang's late-1950s comeback for a West German producer was a two-part adventure set in which country?
India
India. The Tiger of Eschnapur and The Indian Tomb retold a story Lang had helped write in the early 1920s, only to see another director film it; he waited nearly forty years to make it himself.
Q 29What was Lang's final film as director?
The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse
The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse revived his 1922 master criminal in a hotel wired to spy on every room. It was a big enough hit to launch a run of sequels, but Lang left those to others and retired to California.
Q 30In which 1963 Jean-Luc Godard film did Lang appear as himself?
Contempt
Contempt has Lang playing himself as the director of a film of Homer's Odyssey, at odds with a crude American producer over how to tell it. Godard had never worked on so large a scale.