Subtitled “a german folktale in Six Parts,” this atmospheric, Expressionist-influenced work employs elaborate set design, lighting, and special effects that prefigure the brilliant architectural flare of Lang’s later films. Combining historical spectacle, melodrama, and fantasy, the story follows a young woman’s attempts to save her lover from the clutches of Death by traveling in time to three alternative “destinies”: the Arabian nights of ninth-century Baghdad, a carnival in seventeenth-century Venice, and a mythical Chinese imperial court. Ultimately, she is unable to trump destiny when a moral dilemma intercedes. Far from a success in its original release, Destiny became one of the first German films to gain an international audience and is said to have had such an effect on the young Alfred Hitchcock that it persuaded him to become a director.