The story is very long-winded and even an ingenious director like Fritz Lang could not prevent its being rather slow-moving in places.

By 1932, the character had become rather more than just king villain of the serials: Testament finds him mouthing undisguised Nazi slogans from his asylum prison.

It is a hallucinating and horrifying story, depicted with great power and the extraordinary beauty of photography that Lang has led his admirers to expect.

Maybe it’s fitting that Lang’s most dictatorially stylized film is, in fact, about a power-hungry "dictator."