Destiny

Fritz Lang's breathtaking early masterpiece — the film that made him famous and directly inspired the young Luis Buñuel to become a filmmaker. A young couple stops at a village inn, where the man is spirited away by a towering, cloaked figure: Death himself. The grief-stricken woman bargains for her beloved's life, and Death offers her three chances, each set in a different exotic time and place — Baghdad, Renaissance Venice, and Imperial China. Lang fills every frame with stunning architectural sets, pioneering special effects (including some of cinema's earliest convincing double exposures), and a poetic fatalism that would define his career. A ravishing fable about love, loss, and whether fate can ever be cheated.