Spies · reception & legacy
1928 · Fritz Lang
How Spies has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
A solid hit in 1928 — it put Lang back on commercial footing after Metropolis's ruinous budget — Spione then spent decades in Metropolis's shadow before restorations recast it as the blueprint of the entire spy-thriller genre.
What's debated
The perennial Letterboxd fight: is this Lang's most underrated masterpiece or a brilliant 90-minute thriller trapped in a 150-minute runtime?
Its footprint
Every trope of the spy movie — the master villain running a secret empire, numbered agents, seductive double agents, tradecraft gadgets — is already here, three decades before Bond, and fans love pointing out how little the genre has added since.
Where it stands
A deep-cut Lang for people who've done Metropolis and M — the silent film cinephiles hand you when you say you like spy movies.