The restored Metropolis: my own feelings

[eric_hinkle]

This last Sunday night, for the first time in over 80 years, the German Expressionist movie Metropolis was shown, appropriately enough, on TCM. I posted the ink so everyone can go and check out the plot and such for themselves. What I'm writing here relates more to how the restored masterpiece of SF and cinema made me feel.

And be warned, this is

Comments

[stauros]

I saw it once in college and I very much want to see the restored version, and introduce my cubs to it.

[eric_hinkle]

You should, they'll love it. Be warned that there is some nudity in it at parts, though the dance given by the (mostly) dressed False Maria at one point shows surprisingly little skin, yet somehow manages to be one of the most obscene things you'll ever see. Because she somehow gives you the idea that you're seeing something that just looks like a human trying and failing to act like one.

Pure nightmare fuel!

[stauros]

Because she somehow gives you the idea that you're seeing something that just looks like a human trying and failing to act like one.

Uncanny Valley.

And isn't there a folk tradition that when the Devil takes pleasing form, there's always going to be one thing defective about that pleasing form? A hidden cloven foot, or something unnatural?

"The Dark Power cannot create, but only copy and imitate."
-- somebody in Lord of the Rings

[eric_hinkle]

It's not just one flaw that makes her look inhuman, but a whole lot of little things in her expressions and bodily movements that seem so subtle by themselves but when put together are insanely creepy.

[eric_hinkle]

Maybe a better way of phrasing what I said would be to describe False Maria as a female version of the Un-man from Lewis' Space Trilogy who's trying to be seductive and only manages to terrify most people.