Out of the Inkwell

Do you ever forget what you have? And why you have it? I stumbled across a copy of "The Penguin Film Review," a slight paperback book from 1948. I think I picked it up at a tag sale and I had forgotten about it. When I found it I realized why I have bought it.

It has an essay by Fritz Lang, a director I much admire, about happy endings and it reveal interesting things about him. I was hooked when he admitted he didn't know how to create suspense.

He said that out his successes and failures he had "developed a kind of automatic reflex device that guides my work."

I thought my fellow film fans would appreciate the chance of reading what Lang thought about story construction and how a story ends. He was one of the greats.