- After the war he first realised some documentaries as a cinematographer before he returned to the cinema for the DEFA.
- In 1910, while still attending the University of Leipzig, he managed to secure a job as a clerk at the Pathé film company. In 1912, he became both secretary and chef at the Pathé offices in Vienna and later in Berlin.
- He collaborated with Fritz Lang on four films.
- After the Nazis took over in 1933, causing many of the country's leading film directors to flee Germany for the U.S. (including his main collaborators: Murnau, Pabst and Lang) Wagner's career began to decline. To make ends meet he abandoned his unique style and turned to making glossy costume epics and musicals for The Ministry of Propaganda at Universum Film AG [Ufa] where he had once worked under Erich Pommer.
- Along with Karl Freund, Wagner became Germany's leading cinematographer of the 1920s and 1930s, a master of the dark, moody lighting that characterized the expressionist movement.
- Interested in cinematography he became a newsreel cameraman in 1913 and was stationed in New York for Pathé Weekly where he reported on the Mexican Revolution.
- He underscored his leading role of the past years impressively in the sound film era of the 30s and he took part again in some important film productions. To these works belong "Westfront 1918" (1930),"Die 3-Groschen-Oper" (1931), "M - Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder" (1931), "Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse" (1933), "Amphitryon" (1935) and "Der Mann, der Sherlock Holmes war" (1937).
- He made an education at the Academy of Beaux Arts in Paris and in 1912 he joined Pathé in Paris as a clerk. He already made first cinematical experiences as a cinematographer for documentaries and newscasts - among others also about the Mexican Revolution. Moreover he also was active as a war correspondent during World War I.
- In Shadow of the Vampire, a fictional film about the making of Nosferatu, Wagner is portrayed by Cary Elwes, who also played Lord Arthur Holmwood in the 1992 adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula.
- The cinematographer Fritz Arno Wagner belonged to the most important cinematographers of the German silent film.
- He is buried at the Waldfriedhof Dahlem am Hüttenweg cemetery in Berlin.
- Fritz Arno Wagner remained professional active till to his death.
- He worked with some of Germany most prominent directors, including Ernst Lubitsch, F.W. Murnau on The Haunted Castle (1921), The Burning Soil (1922) and his classic Nosferatu (1922), and G.W. Pabst on four features.
- He continued his film career during World War II with "Robert Koch, der Bekämpfer des Todes" (1939), "Der Fuchs von Glenarvon" (1940), "Friedrich Schiller" (1940) and "Ohm Krüger" (1941).
- At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, he returned to Germany to enlist in his country's elite Hussar cavalry whilst still filming war reports. However, after being wounded, he decided to take the job of stills photographer and then 2nd cameraman at Projektions-AG Union PAGU. In 1919, he went to work as a primary cameraman for Decla-Bioscop.
- During the shooting for his last movie "Wehe, wenn sie losgelassen" (1958) Fritz Arno Wagner fell from a dolly in such an unfortunate way that he died from the fall.
- He was able to enter the film business in 1919, first as a cinematographer assistant for "Madame DuBarry" (1919).
- He played a key role in the Expressionist film movement during the Weimar period and is perhaps best known for excelling "in the portrayal of horror" according to noted film critic Lotte H. Eisner.
- The influence of Wagner's camera can seen notably in American film noir with its fascination with blackness (lack of light, the obsession with night), the visual influence and use of modernist architecture in film, and the persistent depiction and glorification of vice and sin.
- Fritz Arno Wagner transferred impressive pictures to the big screen for numerous important film productions of the 20s.
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