Fritz Lang's Metropolis
Last, night Jim and I stayed in with a movie, the 1927 silent film Metropolis. I had gotten it through Netflix as part of a personal effort to watch more classic films. It turned out we had the version that was restored in 2001 to be as close as possible to the original, although there was still about 25% of the original film missing. (According to Wikipedia, most of the remainder has since been found, and a newly restored, almost-complete version should be out on DVD soon.)
I wasn't expecting much from this film. Grainy footage, laughable special effects, and everyone walking around at double speed - you know how silent films usually look. But they had done an incredible job with the the restoration, so the picture was clear and sharp, and the film didn't twitch. The cameras they used back then were hand-cranked, so there was some variation in speed, but as far as I could tell this was mostly done during action sequences, like fights or chase scenes. I'm guessing they deliberately cranked the film slowly to make the actors appear to move faster, to make the scene feel more frantic. Or maybe that's what the restorers thought they had done. At any rate, it worked.
Overacting was rampant. Without words, the actors were all portraying their emotions with gesture and exaggerated facial expressions. There were a few really campy moments, but what it really reminded me of was the Muny, where the actors carry the action through broad gestures because most of the audience sits too far away to see their faces. Again, I had to look at Wikipedia afterwards to find out more about how acting has changed. Since this movie was released in 1927, the same year as the first "talkie" The Jazz Singer, the silent era was on its way out, and this kind of overacting ended along with silent films.
As for the special effects, I was actually really impressed. They used mirrors and multiple exposures to put characters in a vast city of the future. One of the characters used a video-phone, an invention seventy years before its time. The robot you see on all the posters didn't get nearly enough screen time IMO, mainly because its costume was just so darned cool. It looked all shiny and metallic and otherworldly, and not at all like it was wearing a rubber suit.
There was a good deal of political and religious symbolism. We had worker/owner conflict with undertones of socialism, the Madonna, the apocalypse, riffs off of Frankenstein, and the dehumanizing effect of machines. All very broad symbols, and the ending was a fairy tale, but thinking about these things in the context of the economic and political conditions of 1920's Germany was interesting. (Remember, this was a time of depression and rampant inflation just before the rise of the Nazi party.)
I'm not sure I can say this is a great quality movie from the standpoint of a modern viewer. But there was so much there to think about in terms of both film history and political symbolism that I have to say it's an important movie. I'm definitely glad to have seen it.
But there's more to a good movie than historical analysis. In the end, this was a fun movie to watch. After awhile, I stopped noticing the intertitles, and the overacting was just part of the epic feel. Metropolis is a lot like Star Wars. Bad acting, dated special effects, broad political symbolism, and a fairy-tale ending, yet it sweeps you up and carries you along on an adventure in a world full of detail and contradiction.
I wasn't expecting much from this film. Grainy footage, laughable special effects, and everyone walking around at double speed - you know how silent films usually look. But they had done an incredible job with the the restoration, so the picture was clear and sharp, and the film didn't twitch. The cameras they used back then were hand-cranked, so there was some variation in speed, but as far as I could tell this was mostly done during action sequences, like fights or chase scenes. I'm guessing they deliberately cranked the film slowly to make the actors appear to move faster, to make the scene feel more frantic. Or maybe that's what the restorers thought they had done. At any rate, it worked.
Overacting was rampant. Without words, the actors were all portraying their emotions with gesture and exaggerated facial expressions. There were a few really campy moments, but what it really reminded me of was the Muny, where the actors carry the action through broad gestures because most of the audience sits too far away to see their faces. Again, I had to look at Wikipedia afterwards to find out more about how acting has changed. Since this movie was released in 1927, the same year as the first "talkie" The Jazz Singer, the silent era was on its way out, and this kind of overacting ended along with silent films.
As for the special effects, I was actually really impressed. They used mirrors and multiple exposures to put characters in a vast city of the future. One of the characters used a video-phone, an invention seventy years before its time. The robot you see on all the posters didn't get nearly enough screen time IMO, mainly because its costume was just so darned cool. It looked all shiny and metallic and otherworldly, and not at all like it was wearing a rubber suit.
There was a good deal of political and religious symbolism. We had worker/owner conflict with undertones of socialism, the Madonna, the apocalypse, riffs off of Frankenstein, and the dehumanizing effect of machines. All very broad symbols, and the ending was a fairy tale, but thinking about these things in the context of the economic and political conditions of 1920's Germany was interesting. (Remember, this was a time of depression and rampant inflation just before the rise of the Nazi party.)
I'm not sure I can say this is a great quality movie from the standpoint of a modern viewer. But there was so much there to think about in terms of both film history and political symbolism that I have to say it's an important movie. I'm definitely glad to have seen it.
But there's more to a good movie than historical analysis. In the end, this was a fun movie to watch. After awhile, I stopped noticing the intertitles, and the overacting was just part of the epic feel. Metropolis is a lot like Star Wars. Bad acting, dated special effects, broad political symbolism, and a fairy-tale ending, yet it sweeps you up and carries you along on an adventure in a world full of detail and contradiction.