Although i know that Lang filmed three diferent endings for this movie (an UK version, a German version and a Italian version) i have only seen the Italian.
Does anyone seen these endings or knows the differences among them?
I am in the proces of watching the Belgian/Dutch DVD release. Can you tell me what the Italian ending is, so that I can compare.
shareIn the version I saw which was english subbed german, Dr. Mabuse drives his car off a bridge and into a river.
"No man is just a number"
AS far as I know, there were three endings: one for the german prints, another one for the english ones and, finally, one for the italian ones. The difference among them is subtle but important: a shot of Marion in the last scene which in the Italian prints indicates that she survives (she open her eyes and moves), in the German prints shows her unconscious (so it can be asumed that she dies). In the English prints, however, the scene fades too quickly, so we are left without the chance of guessing whether she lives or dies; we simply don't know.
Hope this helps. Best.
For whatever it might be worth, IMDb gives the runtimes as Germany 98 min, USA and UK 103 min, and Italy 104 min. There's no entry for alternate versions under FAQ. The American DVD release from Allday Entertainment - the only one I know - has an actual total runtime of 99' 16" in NTSC (presumably converted from PAL), but the first 8" of this are completely blank. Probably none of this is very meaningful.
Following Mabuse driving off the bridge into the river, the scene fades to Travers sitting at Marion's bedside; her head is straight on her pillow, eyes closed, and hand across her stomach. Her hand creeps over to her side, Travers takes it in his; she moves her head toward him, slowly opening her eyes, and silently mouths something. He bends over and they kiss, with her eyes closed; she opens her eyes to look at him, then lets her head fall to the side away from him with her eyes closing. The camera pans over to Travers holding her apparently lifeless wrist, and fades to black with FIN (rather than ENDE, FINE, etc). This final scene lasts exactly 44" from fadein to fadeout.
There's no doubt Marion is supposed to be dead at the end, in this version.
A review of this Allday Entertainment DVD release (Mark Zimmer, July 15 2000, digitallyobsessed.com) specifies "... the disc was mastered from PAL video, meaning that even though it is complete, the running time is nearly six minutes shorter than it should have been. Other than knowing that the running time is off, I didn't notice any difference."
I should have mentioned in my earlier post that this disc comes with three soundtracks: the original German, what is apparently the original (theatrical) English dub, and a commentary track added specially for the DVD release.
(And of course this DVD is now out of print and hard to find.)
The Eureka DVD from 2009 has the ending as the kiss and fade out.
It also has in the features an alternative ending of the kiss then, I assume, her death as described earlier.
It mentions that it's not known which one Lang preferred or wanted.