I mentioned this on Facebook a couple weeks ago: I finally watched, all the way through, Metropolis.<\/p>\n
\nTonight I watched the 1927 silent film Metropolis, for the first time all the way through. (I watched the first 45 minutes or so a couple times before.) A fascinating film, of course, for its futuristic dystopia, its vision of an enormous city ruled by elites and powered by underground workers — but also because, in its last half hour or, it’s an action-adventure disaster film! The first, long before movies about the Titanic or earthquakes or burning skyscrapers?\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
And in a comment to comments about that post:<\/p>\n
\nI never saw the Moroder version. What I just watched was a restored version using footage found in Argentina, of all places, in 2008, grainy bits edited back to recreate the original release. Somehow they smoothed out the music (re-recorded it? not sure) so everything fits. The music is pretty good, very expressive in a Wagner\/Strauss sort of way.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Here are some specific notes.<\/p>\n
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- First: years ago I had a very old DVD of this film which didn\u2019t play on my current DVD\/Blu-Ray players, so I ordered a newer version. The one I got was a \u2018restored\u2019 version that includes footage that was cut after the film\u2019s premiere \u2013 rather as Kubrick cut 20 minutes from 2001 after initial showings \u2013 footage that was found, in all places, in Argentina, in 2008. (Perhaps they didn\u2019t get the memo about cutting too long a film.)<\/li>\n
- It\u2019s a silent movie, with lots of music \u2013 pretty good music, as mentioned above \u2013 but otherwise we only see actors speaking without hearing them; in the convention of the day, we see occasional title cards displaying lines of dialogue, when it\u2019s really important for us to know what the characters are saying. But most of the time, the film \u2013 as did most silent films \u2013 assume you can deduce, from context, what the characters are saying to each other, from context.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
The film begins.<\/p>\n
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- We see credits for director and screenplay, etc.; and the cast. And then an epigram: \u201cThe mediator between brain and hands must be the heart!\u201d<\/li>\n
- And then we see a huge city, an imaginary, futuristic version of New York City. Then: images of huge pumps going up and down; a clock, with a 1 to 10 scale reaches zero and whistles blow; and the shift changes, with side-by-side lifts, one row of workers marching to leave, another to enter, all very robotic, all in black dungarees. \u201cDeep below,\u201d the title card reads, \u201cthe earth\u2019s surface\u2026lay the workers\u2019 city.\u201d The city is an underground cavern, with squared building rising several floors toward the ceiling. The workers march off the elevator, literally looking downward. Very stylized.<\/li>\n
- And then we see the land above, the \u201cClub of the Sons,\u201d we are told, \u201cwith lecture halls and libraries, stadiums and theaters.\u201d\n
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- We see an open-air track field, with many rather skimpy white men [not physically fit by any modern standard] racing around it, in white shorts.<\/li>\n
- And then we see the \u201cEternal Gardens,\u201d a place with huge plant-like structures, and a man dressed like a foppish orchestra conductor trying to corral a number of young women in outlandish garb. He is, we gather, choosing a companion for Master Freder, Joh Frederson\u2019s son. The ladies curtsy and turn. Freder runs in, quickly chooses one woman to chase around the fountains and pheasants. Freder wears all white, shirt and tie and odd pants that billow at the top, as if dressed like a boy; he\u2019s not an adult. He grabs one the women and they speak\u2014<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
- But then a door opens, and a plainly dressed women enters leading a group of children, all poorly dressed. They look around tentatively; the music is plaintive. \u201cLook, These are your brothers\u201d she tells the children. Freder stares at her. She stares back, as other men arrive to guide them back into the elevators. Freder asks the \u2018conductor\u2019. \u201cWho\u2014was that?\u201d and he rushes out to follow her. Title card: \u201cBut this is what happened to Freder \u2013 son of Joh Fredersen, master of Metropolis \u2013 when he went to search of the girl:\u201d\n
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- [Oddly, the son here is named Freder, while the father is named Fredersen; generally, it\u2019s the other way around.]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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- We then see Freder down among the huge machines, where men work at banks of dials and levers. The direction is very stylized: the workers bend back, and forth, in unison. There\u2019s a huge machine with central stairs. Then there\u2019s an accident: steam erupts. The worker there can\u2019t reach the lever; he struggles, fails. The temperature rises; steam hisses\u2014men collapse, Freder falls back.\n
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- Freder has a vision: the machine is a monster, Moloch, a huge head with an open mouth, the stairs leading up the mouth, where priests lead slaves up the stairs to throw them into the fire.<\/li>\n
- The illusion fades; Freder sees injured or dead workers being taken away on stretchers.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
- Freder runs outside and commands a taxi to take him \u201cTo the new Tower of Babel \u2013 to my father–!\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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- Now we see the grand city shot with bridges of motorways and trains among the skyscrapers, and biplanes (!) flying between [banking oddly in tight turns]; a shot of three highways full of cars; then the grand building in middle distances, traffic in front and below. Also dirigibles.<\/li>\n
- And then we are inside a huge office, on a high floor in one of those skyscrapers, with enormous windows giving a view of the city. Fredersen, a distinguished older man, walks back and forth giving orders to minions. On a wall creep numbers, like stock tickers. Nervous underlings write everything down.\n
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- His son, Freder, rushes in, crying expressively to another man, and then his father [about the accident in the underground, we understand]. The father responds by turning to this other man: \u201cWhy is it, Josaphat, that I learn of the explosion from my son, and not from you–?\u201d \u201cThe details\u2014\u201d<\/li>\n
- The son pleads with his father, worried about those \u201cin the depths\u201d who might rise up against him.<\/li>\n
- Another crisis: the chief foreman of the Heart Machine arrives with two more plans, diagrams of some kind, found on the men involved in today\u2019s accident. Didn\u2019t Josaphat know about this?<\/li>\n
- Father fires Josaphat.<\/li>\n
- Freder follows Josaphat out, offering assistance.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
- Freder returns to the factory, offering to trade lives with one of the workers, to tend the machine.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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- Frederson, the father, visits a \u201cstrange house\u201d in the middle of Metropolis, where lives Rotwang, an inventor. Rotwang shows Frederson a female robot. It stands, walks, to delicate music. Rotwang promises that soon no one will be able to tell it\u2019s a robot.\n
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- Frederson asks Rotwang for advice\u2014what to do about these secret plans that the workers have?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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- M\/w Freder finishes his shift and follows other men down into the catacombs, where a woman, Maria \u2013 the same woman he saw earlier, with the children \u2013 stands before several tall crosses and speaks to the crowd, to tell them the legend of \u201cTHE TOWER OF BABEL.\u201d\n
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- We see the story told, the tower rising, then collapsing; the men could not understand one another.<\/li>\n
- \u201cHead and hands need a mediator\u2026 the heart.\u201d Who could the mediator be? She looks at Freder. He offers himself. They kiss.<\/li>\n
- But Fredersen and Grot, the foreman of the Machine, are spying on them; Frederson tells Grot to make the machine into an image of Maria.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
And that\u2019s just the end of the \u2018prelude,\u2019 about a third of the way in.<\/p>\n
The \u2018intermezzo\u2019 and \u2018furioso\u2019 show the transformation of the robot into Maria, and the infiltration of this robot into the workers\u2019 underground to foment, or quell, revolution. Workers panic, attack the machines, and the city begins to crumble. In particular, flood water pours into the underground city. This becomes a disaster film, as actors, including many children, are washed away, and miniature building sets crumble.<\/p>\n
Eventually the mobs catch up to Maria, who they think is a witch, and burn her on a pillar of fire\u2026 only to see she is really a robot.<\/p>\n
The real Maria survives. The film ends with workers meeting with Fredersen, Freder, and Maria, and the offering of a handshake. And the epigram: \u201cThe mediator between brain and hands must be the heart.\u201d<\/p>\n
Comments:<\/p>\n
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- The takeaways from this film are the visuals: of the vast cityscape, with enormous buildings and levels of different modes of transportation; of the stylized humanoid robot Maria; of the monstrous underground machine and the robotic human workers; of the aerie-like office of Fredersen, the Master of Metropolis.<\/li>\n
- The plot is both simplistic, in its contrast between the elites above and the workers below, and muddled, with a confusing subplot about Fredersen and the scientist Rotwang and their past \u2013 the original reason for the robot, you see, was to recreate the daughter lost by something something. Soap opera. The central theme is pure science fiction in its dystopian depiction of the dangerous of industrialization and the way mass production would dehumanize workers, but the film doesn\u2019t offer any solution to this problem except for the shaking of hands.<\/li>\n
- As noted I was surprised that the last quarter or so of the film was an extended, disaster movie-like action sequence, with riots and cascading waters and collapsing buildings.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I mentioned this on Facebook a couple weeks ago: I finally watched, all the way through, Metropolis. Tonight I watched the 1927 silent film Metropolis, for the first time all the way through. (I watched the first 45 minutes or … Continue reading