Epidemic Element of Crime

Von Trier himself plays a double role in Epidemic (1988), previously unreleased in the U.S. His auspicious feature debut, Element of Crime (1984), spins a cinephile's murder mystery. Critic J. Hoberman calls Epidemic, von Trier's second feature, "among his better and most revealing" works. In its postmodern film-within-a-film story, a director (played by von Trier) loses his screenplay and is forced to write another one on the fly. The resulting script, about a doctor (von Trier again) inadvertently spreading a disease while trying to cure it, becomes the bulk of the film and a metaphor for the creative process. (1988; 106 mins.)

A cult hit on its initial release, Element of Crime fuses German expressionism, Hitchcock, and sci-fi dystopia in a murder mystery that could only have been dreamed up by a true cinephile. (1984; 104 mins.)