Saturday, December 08, 2007

Metropolis



So, for the last few days, I've been watching the classic 1927 silent film "Metropolis", by the German director Fritz Lang.

It's quite mind-blowing to me for a bunch of reasons:

here are a few:

--as a visual spectacle, it's unlike almost any movie you've ever seen. It looks more like ballet than what we normally think of as film, in that it's very co-ordinated and rhythmic, using gestures and movement to tell the story. It also borrows heavily from (or influenced, perhaps) a lot of the painters and photographers of the day, especially German and American. Charles Scheeler (i think) for e.g., with his great American cityscapes of the 1920's, Brookly Bridge and stuff like that.

--it has a 10 hour clock. (that was also once proposed for the independent prairie nation of Manisaskerta)

--it uses old testament mythology in lots of very deliberate ways-- the Tower of Babel shows up, the war god Moloch (when Freder, the main character, has a vision of children being sacrificed to Moloch--very Pink Floyd the Wall, too).

It's on youtube in 12 parts. Each part is about 10 mins. I highly recommend it.

here's part 1--

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFviW7ISk6I

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I believe this is the first sci-fi movie that ever was.

word verification:micmenim

greg oakes said...

you may know this already; the female cyborg was the inspiration behind c3-po. isn't youtube wonderful when it comes to this kinda stuff?! thanks for sharing! :)

cara said...

I didn't get a chance to watch it yet, but I love the still photographs...especially the picture of the woman with her hands clutched to her mouth.

Amazing.

Lorne Roberts said...

just finished watching it, finally.

conclusion:

the mediator between head
and hands
must be the heart.

cara said...

Amen to that.