Friedrich Christian Anton "Fritz" Lang (December 5, 1890 -- August 2, 1976) was an Austrian-German-American film director, screenwriter and occasional film producer. One of the best known émigrés from Germany's school of Expressionism, he was dubbed the "Master of Darkness" by the BFI. His most famous films are the groundbreaking Metropolis (the world's most expensive silent film at the time of its release) and M, made before he moved to the United States.After finishing high school, Lang briefly attended the Technical University of Vienna, where he studied civil engineering and eventually switched to art. In 1910 he left Vienna to see the world, traveling throughout Europe and Africa and later Asia and the Pacific area. In 1913, he studied painting in Paris, France. The next year, he returned home to Vienna at the outbreak of the First World War. In January of 1914, he was drafted into service in the Austrian army and fought in Russia and Romania during World War I, where he was wounded three times.While recovering from his injuries and shell shock in 1916, he wrote some scenarios and ideas for films. He was discharged from the army with the rank of lieutenant in 1918 and did some acting in the Viennese theater circuit for a short time before being hired as a writer at Decla, Erich Pommer's Berlin-based production company. His writing stint was brief, as Lang soon started to work as a director at the German film studio Ufa, and later Nero-Film, just as the Expressionist <b>...</b>