As for the stories of his life, those are notoriously difficult to verify. Many of the stories of his life cannot be checked. The evidence we find contradicts other stories. One such contested story is the story of Lang’s meeting with Josef Goebbels and Lang’s subsequent exodus from Germany in 1933.

 Lang established the common myths about this time in his life through an interview that he gave in 1942. The story goes that, in 1934, Goebbels called a meeting with Lang to let him know that his most recent film, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933) had been banned by the Nazi party. Yet, Goebbels recognized that Lang was a highly skilled filmmaker and offered Lang a position running the Nazi controlled German film studio UFA. Supposedly, before the meeting, Lang was already planning to move to Paris. He left Germany that night and, it was long believed, did not return until long after the war.

However, none of the evidence in any of Goebbels’ writings confirm that he ever contemplated offering Lang the position at UFA. When Goebbels refers to the meeting, he only mentions banning Lang’s new film. Lang did go to Paris and filmed the only French language film that he ever made, Florenc (1934) and then he immigrated to the United States, leaving his wife Thea von Harbou behind. She had joined the Nazi party in 1932, which eventually led to the couple’s divorce.

Von Harbou had been the principle writer of most of his films in the 1920s and early 1930s, including Metropolis and M, considered by himself and others to be his best works. Complicating Lang’s Goebbels story further, he made several trips back to Germany from France and the United States after his initial flight, despite what he had said in 1942 about never returning to Germany. It is possible that these trips happened because his relationship with his wife was dissolving, but it will be hard to ever know the truth.