The first in a celebrated cycle of films about the evil machinations of a maniacal criminal, Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler is presented in two parts: The Great Gambler–A Picture of Time and Inferno: A Play about the People of Our Times. In a world of depravity and anarchy, Dr. Mabuse is a master criminal with psychic powers who employs disguises and uses hypnosis to make people do his bidding as he plays havoc with the stock market, steals, and kills. Made at a time of political turmoil in Germany, the film is imbued with vivid impressions of Weimar-era decadence, while its famous finale, the police attack on Mabuse’s home, powerfully conjures the postwar street clashes in which war minister Gustav Noske’s Freikorps, forerunners of the Nazi storm troops, put down the communist Spartacus uprising by murdering its leaders, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg.