Metropolis, by Fritz Lang
A classic (very classic) movie
(Review posted 13 Feb 2005 02:00:30)

Another one of those things that isn't technically speaking a book. This is the "Hollywood Classics", "Excelsior Collectors Edition", Madacy Entertainment "Approx. 115 min." version of "Metropolis" (no commentary on the DVD). Specificity turns out to be important here, because there are a whole bunch of different restorations and versions of this film.

You can google up the historical background yourself, and learn why this was such an important film in such a lot of ways. As a watching experience it's striking. The overacting and absurd (by modern standards) makeup take some getting used to, and on this particular restoration the sound is just annoying (some random symphonic piece that has nothing whatever to do with the action, and that's completely inappropriate much of the time; sometime I'll get a better one). But it's still a powerful and well-told story, and full of impressive images.

One of the main feelings I came away with was about the blind terrible power of the mob. The true Maria calms them and keeps them barely in check, the false Maria incites them to mindless destruction (and self-destruction), and then the foreman easily turns them into an instrument of violent vengeance by giving them a way to distract themselves from their guilt. (What they needed was a good union organizer, of course.) But the danger of crowds, of mobs, of collective madness flowing into terrible channels, bubbles everywhere in this film.

One of the memorable images is the man-high clock face where a worker struggles, ten hours a day, spread-eagle in that circle, wrenching the clock's hands here and there in response to the flashing lights, until he collapses at the end of his shift. This is an old version of the tyranny of the Machine. Nowadays our tyranny is the opposite: the machine is all too good at taking care of itself, most of the time, and our challenge is to put up institutions that give everyone enough useful stuff to do. We don't chain workers to the hands of clocks (mostly); but we leave them on the sofa with a Super-size bag of chips and the TV playing.