Spies

Agent Number 326 goes after an organisation run by Haghi, who appears to be a respectable bank director. Into it come the theft of a peace treaty between the Japanese and British sides and a romance with the Soviet agent Sonja. Fritz Lang directed and wrote it with his wife Thea von Harbou. It was the first film for his own production company and his penultimate silent. Rudolf Klein-Rogge plays the villain Haghi. Klein-Rogge was Thea von Harbou's former husband. Much of what became the template for the spy genre is already here; the most cited passage is the train sequence where 326 barely escapes death in a tunnel. Rotten Tomatoes has it at 95 percent from 16 reviews with a 9.3 average. Critics single out the opening as a marvel of narrative economy in montage. No original negatives survive. Between 2003 and 2004 the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation assembled a 143-minute restoration from archive prints held in several countries. Who it is for: viewers who can watch silent film and are curious where the spy genre came from. Who it is not for: anyone looking for character depth. This is almost entirely mechanism, trap and tempo.