I watched Metropolis for the first time last night. It's hard for me to analyze it just like any other movie cuz 1) it's from 1927, a "silent" movie which, in this version's case, had the original orchestral score, 2) I had so many ideas over the years of what it would look and be like...sometimes, you can set up a movie for failure if you're expecting something weirder, 3) it is partially lost to the ages. The producers' intro notes that some 1/4 of the film is lost forever. They made up this version from as much footage as they could find. Missing scenes are described verbally, leaving you with uneasy things like reading about a fight between two characters.
So...it's good. Yeah, it's good. And you should see it. I was expecting something weirder, but for my money this is nonetheless way better than...say..L'age d Or or whatever that Bunuel film is called. It's more umm Christian than I expected, and there's less resounding contrast than I expected between the workers' places and "the Club of the Sons" (which is...um, underwhelming. They have track meets and a fountain. Am I supposed to be impressed???) but it is good.
My favorite character would have to be...Rotwang, the mad scientist. Boy, did he look like a mad scientist! Why, if he doesn't look like Richard Lynch and Toecutter from Mad Max then I'm a penguin dipped in cocoa butter.
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evening ps -
Well, I promised Tunnelslats Id look it up.um, weeks ago, but here it is-- some comments on seeing the original release of Metropolis, and the night almost 50 years later that he improvised a score for it on piano, from none other than Anthony Burgess (from his first autobio, Little Wilson and Big God). As I told TS, Burgess originally wanted to compose music (his father played piano for a living) and only came to write books when he was told by a doctor, in 1959, that he had a year to live. Needing to kill time and make money for his wife, he started writing novels.
I hope some literary folks care enough to read this excerpt! vaj? Sorcha? Harold Bloom?:
This was the great film of 1927, already seen in Germany the year before. It and the end of the world excited me about equally. Thea von Harbous book of the film was on sale for sixpence in Woolworths (it opened with Now the gigantic organ rose to a mighty roar), and there were publicity leaflets and coming posters around. These showed a robot with a background of strictly European skyscrapers. UFA had spent a lot of money on the film and come to near-ruin with Langs extravagance; they were determined that everybody should see it. Seeing it at the age of ten remains one of the major artistic experiences of my life; I still list Metropolis among the best dozen films ever made. Its expressionism has dated, and it has a feeble political message; the futuristic dcor is clearly of lath and glue; there is too much melodrama. But remove its faults and you kill its essence. The performance of Brigitte Helms, evangelist to the enslaved workers and later the outward shape of Rotwangs robot, remains a great one. The work itself has an oceanic quality; It touched depths in an age which was awaiting some apocalyptic revelationthe end of the world or the rise of the Nazi party. Weird snakes were waiting to slither up from the sewers and chew the fancy garters
Jakie Innerfield [a cinema owner] called on my father to play the piano for the Saturday matinee of Metropolis. The regular pianist was ill, and he knew my father had performed the thankless work before. My father agreed and chainsmoked over the noisy keys. He improvised and tried to meet the challenge of the rapid film cuts. The evening orchestra [of the cinema]fiddle, cello, piano, and percussionhad, as even I knew, been inadequate with its Midsummer Nights Dream overture and selections from grand opera. My father, undoubtedly half-slewed, gave a performance alternately grim and rollicking, full of dissonant Stravinsky effects. In 1975, when I was at the University of Iowa, there was a film festival organized by the students and Metropolis was shown. I offered to accompany it on the piano as a kind of memorial to my father and I sat down to two hours and more of extemporization. It was difficult and exhaustinga more than Mahler symphony on the hoofbut it was worth doing. I was a ten-year-old again, though now equipped with muscularity and a certain musical skill. Impressed students rewarded me with marijuana.
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I doubt Anthony took the pot, but he n father hit the bottle pretty good. Half-slewed, in case ya couldnt figure from context, meant drunk. Dad played in bars for a living; no doubt he played the matinee cuz he was in a bar during the late shows.
So...it's good. Yeah, it's good. And you should see it. I was expecting something weirder, but for my money this is nonetheless way better than...say..L'age d Or or whatever that Bunuel film is called. It's more umm Christian than I expected, and there's less resounding contrast than I expected between the workers' places and "the Club of the Sons" (which is...um, underwhelming. They have track meets and a fountain. Am I supposed to be impressed???) but it is good.
My favorite character would have to be...Rotwang, the mad scientist. Boy, did he look like a mad scientist! Why, if he doesn't look like Richard Lynch and Toecutter from Mad Max then I'm a penguin dipped in cocoa butter.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
evening ps -
Well, I promised Tunnelslats Id look it up.um, weeks ago, but here it is-- some comments on seeing the original release of Metropolis, and the night almost 50 years later that he improvised a score for it on piano, from none other than Anthony Burgess (from his first autobio, Little Wilson and Big God). As I told TS, Burgess originally wanted to compose music (his father played piano for a living) and only came to write books when he was told by a doctor, in 1959, that he had a year to live. Needing to kill time and make money for his wife, he started writing novels.
I hope some literary folks care enough to read this excerpt! vaj? Sorcha? Harold Bloom?:
This was the great film of 1927, already seen in Germany the year before. It and the end of the world excited me about equally. Thea von Harbous book of the film was on sale for sixpence in Woolworths (it opened with Now the gigantic organ rose to a mighty roar), and there were publicity leaflets and coming posters around. These showed a robot with a background of strictly European skyscrapers. UFA had spent a lot of money on the film and come to near-ruin with Langs extravagance; they were determined that everybody should see it. Seeing it at the age of ten remains one of the major artistic experiences of my life; I still list Metropolis among the best dozen films ever made. Its expressionism has dated, and it has a feeble political message; the futuristic dcor is clearly of lath and glue; there is too much melodrama. But remove its faults and you kill its essence. The performance of Brigitte Helms, evangelist to the enslaved workers and later the outward shape of Rotwangs robot, remains a great one. The work itself has an oceanic quality; It touched depths in an age which was awaiting some apocalyptic revelationthe end of the world or the rise of the Nazi party. Weird snakes were waiting to slither up from the sewers and chew the fancy garters
Jakie Innerfield [a cinema owner] called on my father to play the piano for the Saturday matinee of Metropolis. The regular pianist was ill, and he knew my father had performed the thankless work before. My father agreed and chainsmoked over the noisy keys. He improvised and tried to meet the challenge of the rapid film cuts. The evening orchestra [of the cinema]fiddle, cello, piano, and percussionhad, as even I knew, been inadequate with its Midsummer Nights Dream overture and selections from grand opera. My father, undoubtedly half-slewed, gave a performance alternately grim and rollicking, full of dissonant Stravinsky effects. In 1975, when I was at the University of Iowa, there was a film festival organized by the students and Metropolis was shown. I offered to accompany it on the piano as a kind of memorial to my father and I sat down to two hours and more of extemporization. It was difficult and exhaustinga more than Mahler symphony on the hoofbut it was worth doing. I was a ten-year-old again, though now equipped with muscularity and a certain musical skill. Impressed students rewarded me with marijuana.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
I doubt Anthony took the pot, but he n father hit the bottle pretty good. Half-slewed, in case ya couldnt figure from context, meant drunk. Dad played in bars for a living; no doubt he played the matinee cuz he was in a bar during the late shows.
VIEW 4 of 4 COMMENTS
minsc_and_boo:
hey i am half-slewed all the time 
kurtz:
i've got metropolis on dvd...... never put that much thought into it though...... more like a late night get drunk and p[hase out movie to me...... groundbreaking, yet uniformly facist..... spooky.....