Fritz Lang's best-known film is 1927's Metropolis, and at the time he made it, he was dismissive of Hollywood and everything it represented. He was a major figure in German filmmaking throughout the silent era, with films like Destiny, Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler, and Spies, and his films reflected his particularly German sensibility, characterized by a connection to German Romanticism, expressionism, and, as Fernando F. Croce writes in an article for Slant Magazine, "a veritable flowchart of the Weimar Republic’s heady, increasingly ominous elements."
By the time he directed what many critics consider to be his best work, M, Lang was growing disillusioned with his home country, especially as his films were beginning to get noticed by the Nazi party, and his status as a half-Jewish artist was beginning to jeopardize his well-being. He fled the country in 1933 and wound up in Hollywood. Of his years there, Noel Murray writes for The Dissolve, "The job became more difficult the longer Lang stayed in America, but he soldiered on, making Westerns, mysteries, war movies, and melodramas that nearly all show at least some sophistication and sting." His perspective was a somewhat cynical one, and he often directed films that reflected his disillusionment with government and his conviction that power inevitably corrupts.
His Hollywood films fit into classic American genres, but retained Lang's salty artistic and political perspective. They include Fury, a political conspiracy film starring Spencer Tracy, Scarlet Street, a film noir, The Big Heat, perhaps his most famous film noir, While the City Sleeps and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. While he became a beloved Hollywood fixture, he always maintained a somewhat antagonistic relationship with its structures and strictures. He was once quoted as saying, "I was something that is always hated in Hollywood—a perfectionist; nobody likes a perfectionist, you know."
