Okay, people, time for a history lesson! This is really Stormy Pinkness’ area, but I’ll give it a whirl. At the place where I work, there’s this guy named Dave. He’s 25, like me, but he was born about 80 years too late. He wears a golfer’s cap, smokes pipes, likes 30’s jazz, and has an infinite store of knowledge about old movies. And when I say old I mean old; think 1915 to 1940. He let me borrow a few DVDs, one of which was Metropolis, from 1927. If you’re going to watch Metropolis, you have to forget everything that you know about movies. You have to behave like you have never seen a movie, and indeed have never even heard of a movie. That’s the mindset the people who saw this movie when it first came out had. I don’t even know if movies with actual dialogue (called “talkies”) had come out yet. The term “silent films,” of which Metropolis is one, is really a misnomer. These movies are not completely silent; they have a soundtrack, but it is all music. All the words spoken in the movie are spelled out on black screens in between shots. It takes a bit of getting used to, watching a movie with no actual dialogue. In fact, the entire experience of watching this movie, and others from that time period, will be unlike any other movie-going experience you have ever had.
The storyline involves a futuristic society run by the “thinkers,” but that works on the backs of the “workers.” Does this sound like socialism to anyone else? It centers around the son of the head honcho, a boy named Freder. He is having fun and loving life in a place called the Club of the Sons. When it’s entered by a woman by the name of Maria, he is captivated, and goes out to find her when she leaves. Once he leaves the Club of the Sons, he discovers a world of steel and machinery, a harsh landscape that allows him to live his life of leisure. Also in the story are his father, Fredersen, who is in charge of, I guess, everything. There is also Rotwang, the mad scientist, and Josephat, Fredersen’s right hand man, who fails early in the film and attempts suicide. He is saved by Freder, and then becomes Freder’s partner in crime. Maria is sort of a prophetess for the “workers,” and says that there must be a mediator between the workers and the thinkers. She finds it in Freder, and the two become romantically involved. But Fredersen has other plans, and uses Rotwang to capture Maria and make a clone of her, then uses the clone to incite the workers to riots, destroying the Heart Machine, thus flooding the workers’ city and killing them all. Got all that?
Other things happen, but the plot isn’t as important as the foundational aspect of this film. The Mad Scientist, the Identity Mix-Up, the Human-Shaped Robot; all of them come from this. Nearly every other sci-fi movie (The Matrix, 2001, Star Wars, Blade Runner, Independence Day) uses this movie as its foundation, whether they know it or not. It doesn’t seem it now, because we have all these other (and better) movies to compare it to, but Metropolis is really innovative. Fritz Lang made a movie in 1927 when special effects were a thin piece of metal and some peppercorns, and you can’t see the strings. MST3K would have a field day with this movie; not because it’s bad (it’s definitely not), but because it has the potential to be extremely bad. Instead of laughable, it’s terrifying, and instead of kitschy, it’s really kind of beautiful.
“Between the head and hands there must be the heart.”
Particle Man
2 comments:
You only gave Metropolis a 9???? Sacriledge!!!!!!!
Well I know this is late in coming but I just watched Metropolis. (Sidenote: It is great when you get to watch movies as homework). I like the brief summary that PM gave for the film. However, I am working on a different kind of analysis that I thought I would share.
First of all, by itself this movie is a great film, but I think that is takes on new meaning when you consider the context it was made in. This movie was made in 1927 during the so called "Stabilization Period" of the Weimar Republic. (For those not aware, the Weimar Republic is the government that was established at the end of WWI and ruled until Hitler rose to power. During this period there were many cultural themes that Fritz Lang reflects in Metropolis.
1924-1929 showed a recovery from the inital shock of Germany's defeat in WWI. The culture moved from retreat in the earlier period to paralysis. A paralysis of emotion is shown in Freder's father and his indifference to the problems of the workers.
Another aspect that is shown in this movie is the paralysis of the human due to the lack of connection between the head and the hand.
As a general background, during this period in Germany, there was a large move towards industrialization,which serves as the main aspect of this movie, which Lang seems to be condemning.
Those are my thoughts
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