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Metropolis Reconstructed
Matt W writes "The New York Times (free as in beer reg, blah blah) has an article about a recent reconstruction of Fritz Lang's Metropolis. After being butchered by studios, Martin Koerber and Alpha-Omega have restored most of the scenes and score. Film Forum on Houston St. in NY City will be showing the film for two weeks." Collect all three! I don't think they're using Georgio Morodor for the soundtrack for this one.
Actually, the anime was based on a manga by Osamu Tezuka, and that manga was inspired by F.L.'s Metropolis. Even twice removed for it's original inspiration, it still would have been appropriate to credit Fritz at the end of the Anime.
I scanned it in for my own site about a month ago.--scroll down a little, it's maybe the seventh book.
Text is public domain/not renewed, but Gutenberg didn't like the version I used (and doesn't like not renewed in general), so they wouldn't add it.
Interesting read--was written by Lang's girlfriend of the time, Thea von Harbou.
There was an early Tom Hanks / Meg Ryan film called Joe vs. the Volcano which has the opening 15 minutes doing a GREAT takeoff on Metropolis - not camp or tongue in cheek, but a serious emulation with modern filmmaking. The rest of the movie was so-so to OK. Worth checking out.
Metropolis is a silent German black-and-white film that is considered to be the first true Sci-fi film, done in the early 1920s. Some documentation and still photos are here. The part of Metropolis everybody remembers is that the bad guys make a robot to take the place of the heroine Maria and the scene where the robot is activated is FANTASTIC. A great special effect even by todays standards that blew away audiences in the 1920s.
As brought to you by FilmThreat, an interview with Martin Koerber about "Metropolis."
Metropolis is a fantastic film and I am glad to hear that the english version is being revamped to be as close to Lang's original. With lost footage that Hollywood thought was to intellectual and made the movie to long for an american audience.
Hollywood tends to make the former mistake quite often. The original Star Trek pilot "The Cage" was rejected for that reason leading to the second pilot "Where No Man Has gone Before". Man, I would love to go threw Hollywood's extensive stack of rejected scripts. I'm willing to gamble that there is more diamonds in that stack than in
South Africa.
Lang did have a vision about the perils of a industrial society and the film delivered his message with for the time brilliant cinemetography and visuals. When you watch the film you must remeber that this was six years before "King Kong". Audio wasn't very widespread and the color film of the time was crap. Yet the cityscape and factory sets where remarkable and very well done, and I think I don't need to mention the robot. Lang wasn't the only artist who put their effort into the film.
The Americanized version of Metropolis proudly has a place in my DVD collection and so does the Anime. When the revision is released I would love to compare the three.
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We have to make sure George Lucas dosen't get anywhere near this revision. That guy can't even remake his own movies.
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Back in February I wrote a lengthy report on Metropolis for my college cinema class. The report was supposed to be about the themes of the film, but its history was so interesting I spent 2/3 of my time on that instead of the plot and events. An assignment for a 600 word paper turned into a 1700+ word essay that received an A+, not that I'm bragging or anything. I think it's an interesting read, whatever the grade was. The paper includes links to other sources and reviews more knowledgable than I. Check it out at www.msboycott.com/kmarks/metropolis.shtml .
There you have it.
== Paul Rickard, Editor of The Microsoft Boycott Campaign ====
After being butchered by studios, Martin Koerber and Alpha-Omega have restored most of the scenes and score.
What's the subject of that sentence?
~ radiographite: art by john shepard
I own a copy of the version Netflix has. It is really bad - a very poor quality, highly abridged master was used.
Wait for this restoration to come out on DVD. Even the Moroder version is better than the current DVD.
Rotten Tomatoes, one of the two great meta-review sites, doesn't seem to "get" that this release is very different from all previous cuts of the film, especially the recut, tinted, rock-n-roll-soundtracked 1984 Moroder cut. Many of the reviews refer to the "out of place rock-n-roll soundtrack" and "terrible image quality". This is a real problem, because people will be choosing whether or not to see the film based on extremely inaccurate data.
I've emailed them about the problem (and offered to provide them with a list mapping reviews to releases), but they seem to be ignoring me. If we can get enough people to let them know that yes it is worth taking the time to be accurate about this, this release might actually get the respect and attendance it deserves. Please mail them and let them and (as politely as possible) inform them that this is important.
Thank you.
Try turning the sound off before watching some more recent movies and see if you can discern their underlying messages. Here's what I came up with:
- Training Day: Cops do drugs and beat up homeless/crippled people.
- 2001: Always bring your helmet when leaving the space ship.
- Tron: Jeff Bridges should not smoke crack before operating a computer.
- Full Metal Jacket: Soldiers kill people.
- Dr. Strangelove: Peace is the military's profession.
- AI: What the hell was that all about?
It's not so easy, is it?Here is a review that does that.
What is interesting to me about 'Metropolis' (besides a cool flick) is the history of the term 'robot'. The Russian word for 'worker' is 'robotnik.' Kinda puts a different slant on our (if you're lucky) 40 hour work week.
Back in Austin, I think I saw the silent version of Metropolis with a Kraftwerk soundtrack. I enjoyed it, but was kinda... medicated.
Here's what MonsterZine has to say:
"In 1920 Czech writer Karel Capek's play R.U.R.: Rossum's Universal Robots coined the term "robot" (from the Czech robotnik, worker) for mechanical man. In the play emotionless artificial persons wipe out humanity, only to develop emotions of their own. In Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927), a grandly mad scientist (Rudolph Klein-Rogge) creates an evil robot, then, through a spectacular display of electrical equipment, transforms the robot into the duplicate of a virtuous labor leader (Brigitte Helm)."
And here is what Kraftwerk has to say about it:
The Robots
We're charging our battery
And now we're full of energy
We are the robots
We're functioning automatik
And we are dancing mechanik
We are the robots
Ja tvoi sluga (=I'm your slave)
Ja tvoi Rabotnik robotnik (=I'm your worker)
We are programmed just to do
anything you want us to
we are the robots
We're functioning automatic
and we are dancing mechanic
we are the robots
Ja tvoi sluga (=I'm your slave)
Ja tvoi Rabotnik robotnik (=I'm your worker)
We are the robots
. This sig unintentionally left blank. I meant to put something here, but I'm busy.