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Thursday, January 20, 2011

Metropolis (film)

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Metropolis is a 1927 German expressionist film in the science-fiction genre directed by Fritz Lang. Produced in Germany during a stable period of the Weimar Republic, Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and makes use of this context to explore the social crisis betweenworkers and owners in capitalism. The film was produced in the Babelsberg Studios byUniversum Film A.G. (UFA). The most expensive silent film ever made, it cost approximately 5 million Reichsmark.[2]
Metropolis was cut substantially after its German premiere, and much footage was lost over the passage of successive decades. There have been several efforts to restore it, as well as discoveries of previously lost footage. A 2001 reconstruction of Metropolis, shown at the Berlin Film Festival, was inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register in that same year.[3]In 2008, a copy of the film 30 minutes longer than any other known surviving copy was located in Argentina. After a long period of restoration in Germany, the restored film was shown publicly for the first time simultaneously at Berlin and Frankfurt on February 12, 2010.[4] The event of the Friedrichstadtpalast was shown live on a screen at the Brandenburg Gate as well as on TV onARTE. This version was also shown in New York at the Ziegfeld Theater in the last two weeks of October 2010

Plot

The film is set in the massive, sprawling futuristic mega-city Metropolis, whose society is divided into two classes: one of planners and management, who live high above the Earth in luxurious skyscrapers; and one of workers, who live and toil underground. The city was founded, built, and is run by the autocratic Joh Fredersen.
Like all the other sons of the managers of Metropolis, Fredersen's son Freder lives a life of luxury in the theatres and stadiums of the skyscraper buildings. One day, as he is cavorting in the Eternal Gardens, he notices that a beautiful girl has appeared with many children of the workers. She is quickly shooed away, but Freder becomes infatuated with her and follows her down to the workers' underworld. There, he experiences firsthand the horrors of the workers' life, and is horrified and disgusted when he sees an enormous machine, known as the M-Machine, violently explode and kill dozens of workers. In the smoke, Freder envisions the M-Machine asMoloch, a monstrous deity to which the hapless workers are sacrificed.
Disgusted, Freder returns to the New Tower of Babel, a massive skyscraper owned by his father. There, he confronts his father and starts crying about the accident at the M-Machine, but Fredersen is more annoyed about hearing about the accident from his son and not from his clerk Josaphat. Grot, foreman of the Heart Machine, informs him of papers resembling plans or maps, which have been found in the dead workers' pockets. Again, because he had not heard the news from Josaphat first, Fredersen fires him, and also charges his spy, a slim man, to keep an eye on his son.
Freder keeps Josaphat from committing suicide and hires him to help with his quest to help the workers. Freder descends to the workers' underworld again and meets a worker named Georgy, #11811, who works a machine that directs electrical power to the enormous series of elevators in the New Tower of Babel. Freder persuades Georgy to exchange clothes with him, go to Freder's apartment, and let Freder work at the machine. Georgy, who finds large wads of money in the pocket of Freder's clothing, goes instead to Yoshiwara, the city's red-light district. While Georgy enjoys a night of wild and passionate partying, Freder works at the machine until he becomes delirious, having visions of being crucified to the factory clock.
Fredersen, wondering about the papers found, decides to consult the scientist Rotwang, his old collaborator, who lives in an old house contained in the lower levels of the city. The two were once friends but became rivals over the love of a woman. Rotwang loved a girl named Hel, but when he introduced her to his friend Fredersen, Hel abandoned him to marry the much more wealthy and powerful Fredersen. Hel died giving birth to Freder, leaving both Rotwang and Fredersen heartbroken and loathing themselves and each other. While Fredersen has moved on, the scientist's love for Hel and his hatred of Fredersen remain as strong as ever. Rotwang introduces Fredersen to a Machine-Manhe has constructed, to which he intends to give the image of Hel and marry.
When Fredersen seeks Rotwang's counsel about the papers, Rotwang explains that they are maps to the 2,000-year old catacombs that are deep under the lowest levels of the workers' city. The two enter the catacombs and climb down a tunnel, reaching a point above the workers' meeting-place. From a gap in the rocks, they observe the workers gathering in a cathedral hewn from the rock. There, the beautiful Maria appears and begins preaching to the workers (with the disguised Freder among them) about the Tower of Babel and about how they must wait for the coming Mediator. Her theme is that the heart must be mediator between the head (the planners) and the hands (the workers).
At the end of the sermon, Fredersen turns away and begins thinking, while Rotwang notices one worker who stays behind to talk to Maria. This "worker" reveals himself as Fredersen's son and tells her that he realizes that he is the Mediator that they have been waiting for. Fredersen instructs Rotwang to give the machine-man the image of Maria in order to sow distrust between her and the workers. Rotwang agrees but has ulterior motives, intending to use the machine-man to ruin Fredersen's life. While Fredersen returns to his offices, Rotwang captures Maria and imprisons her in his house. There, he uses his equipment to transform the machine-man to look exactly like Maria. He then instructs it to destroy Fredersen's city and murder his son, by any means that does not hurt Rotwang or itself.
Rotwang demonstrates the machine-man's abilities to Fredersen by dressing it up as an erotic dancer at the Yoshiwara, where it drives the sons of the owners into homicidal fits of sexual jealousy. The body count is enormous; meanwhile, the machine-man also visits the workers' city and encourages the workers to rebel. They storm out of the workers' city in a full-scale riot and destroy the Heart Machine, the city's power generator. This results in a complete hydraulic breakdown. The city's reservoirs overflow and flood the workers' city to the brim, and seemingly drown the children of the workers. The children are saved by the real Maria, Freder, and Josaphat in a heroic rescue.
The workers, realizing what they have done, and believing that they have killed their children, blame Maria. Under Grot's leadership, they dash to the upper city and run through the streets, chasing the real Maria. They run into Yoshiwara and meet the owners' sons, led by the machine-man. In the ensuing confusion, Maria escapes and the machine-man is tied to a stake and is burned. The flames burn off the likeness of Maria and reveal the machine-man's true form to the crowd.
Meanwhile, Maria is captured at a cathedral by Rotwang, who has broken down completely and believes her to be the real Hel. In a climactic scene, Fredersen watches in horror as Freder and Rotwang fight on the cathedral's roof. Rotwang falls to his death, and Freder and Maria return to the street. Freder takes his first step as mediator, overcoming the mutual reluctance of Grot and Fredersen to join hands, thus beginning a period of unity and reform.

[edit]Cast

Lang recounts the number of extras as being between 250 and 300.[6]

[edit]Architecture and visual effects

The Tower of Babel, modelled after...
Metropolis features special effects and set designs that still impress modern audiences with their visual impact – the film contains cinematic and thematic links to German Expressionism, though the architecture as portrayed in the film appears based on contemporary Modernism and Art Deco. The latter, a brand-new style in Europe at the time, had not reached mass production yet and was considered an emblem of the bourgeois class, and similarly associated with the ruling class in the film.
Rotwang's Art Deco laboratory with its lights and industrial machinery is a forerunner of theStreamline Moderne style, highly influential on the look of Frankenstein-style laboratories of "mad scientists" in pop culture. When applied to science fiction, this style is sometimes called Raygun Gothic.
The effects expert, Eugen Schüfftan, created innovative visual displays widely acclaimed in following years. Among the effects used are miniatures of the city, a camera on a swing, and most notably, the Schüfftan process,[8] in which mirrors are used to "place" actors inside miniature sets. This new technique was seen again just two years later in Alfred Hitchcock's film Blackmail(1929).
The Maschinenmensch, the robot character played by Brigitte Helm, was created by Walter Schulze-Mittendorff. A chance discovery of a sample of "plastic wood" (a pliable substance designed as wood-filler) allowed him to sculpt the costume like a suit of armour over a plaster cast of the actress. Spraypainted a mix of silver and bronze, it helped create some of the most memorable moments on film. Helm suffered greatly during the filming of these scenes wearing this rigid and uncomfortable costume, which cut and bruised her, but Fritz Lang insisted she play the part, even if nobody would know it was her.[9]
The restored version of the film includes scenes of the cityscape from many angles, including a straight-down view of the Tower of Babel, that were unavailable for years. But no prop designer touched the cars that drive the high, angled overpasses; they're typical 1920s cars.

[edit]Release

On January 10, 1927, a 153 minute version of the film premiered in Berlin with moderate success. Before it was shown outside Germany, however, the film was cut and re-edited, changing many key elements.[10] American and foreign theatre managers were generally unwilling to allow more than ninety minutes to a feature in their program, during a period when film attendance figures were high. Metropolis suffered as the original version was thought to be too long. Many theatres projected the film at the standard sound film speed of around 24 frames per second, rather than the standard silent film speed of 16 frames per second, at which the film was made. This affected the rhythm and pace of the original film. As a result of these changes, few people outside of Berlin saw Metropolis as Fritz Lang originally intended; the version shown to European and American audiences in 1928 was disjointed and illogical in parts.[10] In the United States, the movie was shown in a version edited by the American playwright Channing Pollock, who almost completely obscured the original plot, which was considered too controversial by the American distributors; the Pollock version is considerably shortened. In Germany, a version similar to Pollock's was shown on August 5, 1927.[10]
As a result of the edited versions, the original premiere cut eventually disappeared and a quarter of the original film was long believed to be lost forever.[11] In 2001, a new 75th anniversary restoration, commissioned by the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung, was screened at the Berlin International Film Festival. This version, with a running time of 124 minutes, restored the original story line using stills and intertitles to bridge missing footage. It also added a soundtrack using the orchestral score originally composed by Gottfried Huppertz to go with the film. This restoration received the National Society of Film Critics Heritage Award for Restoration 2002.[12] In June 2008, a copy of the original film was discovered in an archive of the Museum of Cinema in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Twenty to twenty-five minutes of lost footage could be added to the 2001 reconstruction, filling most of the gaps. It was believed this was a copy made of a print owned by a private collector, who brought the original cut to the country in 1928.[13]
Despite the film's later reputation, some contemporary critics panned it. The New York Times critic Mordaunt Hall called it a "technical marvel with feet of clay". The Times went on the next month to publish a lengthy review by H. G. Wells who accused it of "foolishness, cliché, platitude, and muddlement about mechanical progress and progress in general." He faulted Metropolis for its premise that automation created drudgery rather than relieving it, wondered who was buying the machines' output if not the workers, and found parts of the story derivative of Shelley's Frankenstein, Karel Čapek's robot stories, and his own The Sleeper Awakes. Joseph Goebbels was impressed however and took the film's message to heart. In a speech of 1928 he noted: "The political bourgeoisie is about to leave the stage of history. In its place advance the oppressed producers of the head and hand, the forces of Labour, to begin their historical mission".[14]

[edit]Screenplay and influences

The film was written by Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou. The two wrote the screenplay in 1924, and published a novelization in 1926, before the film was released.[15] Lang was influenced by the Soviet science fiction film Aelita by Yakov Protazanov (1924), which was an adaptation of a novel by Alexei Tolstoy. The plot of Aelita included a revolution taking place on the planet Mars. However, Metropolisadvocates non-violent cooperation rather than the Marxist ideal of "class struggle".
Fritz Lang later expressed dissatisfaction with the film. In an interview with Peter Bogdanovich (available in Who The Devil Made It...), he expressed his reservations.
The main thesis was Mrs. Von Harbou's, but I am at least 50 percent responsible because I did it. I was not so politically minded in those days as I am now. You cannot make a social-conscious picture in which you say that the intermediary between the hand and the brain is the heart. I mean, that's a fairy tale — definitely. But I was very interested in machines. Anyway, I didn't like the picture — thought it was silly and stupid — then, when I saw the astronauts: what else are they but part of a machine? It's very hard to talk about pictures— should I say now that I like Metropolis because something I have seen in my imagination comes true, when I detested it after it was finished?
In his profile for Lang featured in the same book, which prefaces the interview, Bogdanovich suggested that Lang's distaste for his own film also stemmed from the Nazi Party's fascination with the film. Von Harbou became a passionate member of the Nazi Party in 1933. They divorced the following year.

[edit]Restorations and re-releases

Poster for the 2002 restored version, featuring theMaschinenmensch
Several restored versions (all of them missing varying amounts of footage) were released in the 1980s and 1990s, running for 90 minutes.
In 1984, a new restoration and edit of the film was made by Giorgio Moroder, a music producer who specialized in pop-rock soundtracks for motion pictures. Moroder’s version of the film introduced a new contemporary pop music soundtrack for the film. Although it restored a number of previously missing scenes and plot details from the original release (in particular, Moroder's version restores the character of Hel, who was omitted from the original release version of the film), his version of the film runs to only 80 minutes in length, although this is mainly due to the original intertitles being replaced with subtitles, and being run at 24 frame/s. The “Moroder version” of Metropolis sparked heated debate among film buffs and fans, with outspoken critics and supporters of the film falling into equal camps.[16]
The Mororder film's release came at the same time that Queen released their video "Radio Gaga", which featured footage of the film and was featured as part of the film's soundtrack. Though the Moroder version was nominated at The 1985 Razzie Awards for Worst Original Score and Worst Original Song (with Freddie Mercury),[17] it brought the film back to the public eye.
It also brought attention to the large amount of missing footage cut from the film, due to Moroder opening the film with a disclaimer that addressed how the film was altered and recut shortly after its premiere. While available on now out-of-print VHS tape, music rights issues regarding the film's usage of popular songs of the 1980s have kept the film from receiving a DVD release.[citation needed]
The moderate commercial success of the Moroder version of the film inspired Enno Patalas to make an exhaustive attempt to restore the movie in 1986. This restoration was the most accurate for its time, thanks to the script and the musical score that had been discovered. The basis of Patalas' work was a copy in the Museum of Modern Art's collection.[citation needed]
The American copyright had lapsed in 1953, which eventually led to a proliferation of versions being released on video. Along with other foreign-made works, the film's U.S. copyright was restored in 1998,[18] but the constitutionality of this copyright extension was challenged inGolan v. Gonzales and as Golan v. Holder it was ruled that "In the United States, that body of law includes the bedrock principle that works in the public domain remain in the public domain. Removing works from the public domain violated Plaintiffs’ vested First Amendment interests."[19] The case is on appeal.
F.W. Murnau Foundation (which now owns the film's copyright where applicable) and Kino International (now the film's American distributor) released a digitally restored version of 3378 metres (which equals a running time of 124 minutes at 24 f.p.s.) in 2002, supervised by Martin Koerber. It included the original music score and title cards describing the action in the missing sequences. Lost clips were gleaned from museums and archives around the world, and computers were used to digitally clean each frame and repair minor defects. The original score was re-recorded with an orchestral ensemble. Many scenes had still not been recovered at that point and were considered lost. Among the missing scenes were the adventures of 11811, a worker who trades places with Freder; the Thin Man spying on Josaphat; Maria's incarceration; Rotwang's gloating and her subsequent escape; and scenes which establish the longstanding rivalry between Joh Fredersen and Rotwang.
Most silent films of the time were shot at speeds of between 16 and 20 frames per second, but the digitally restored version with soundtrack plays at the speed of 25 frames per second (equaling a running time of 118 minutes), which is the standard speed of PAL video (the US DVD is a conversion from PAL to NTSC). This speed often makes the action look unnaturally fast. A documentary on the Kino DVD edition states that Metropolis may have been intended to be projected at 25 frames per second. In the 1970s, the BBC prepared a version with electronic sound that ran at 18 frames per second and consequently had much more realistic-looking movement. Since there is no concrete evidence of Fritz Lang's wishes on this subject, it continues to be debated by silent film enthusiasts.

[edit]Rediscovery

On July 1, 2008, film experts in Berlin announced that a 16 mm reduction negative of the original premiere cut of the film, including almost all the lost scenes, had been discovered in the archives of the Museo del Cine (film museum) in Buenos Aires, Argentina.[20][21] The find was authenticated by film experts working for Die Zeit. Passed around since 1928 from film distributor to private collector to an art foundation, theMetropolis copy arrived at the Museo del Cine, where it stayed undiscovered in their archives. After hearing an anecdote by the cinema club manager — who years before had been surprised by the length when this copy was screened — the museum's curator and the director of the film department of the Museum of Latin American Art reviewed the film and discovered the missing scenes. The print was in poor condition and required considerable restoration before it was re-premiered in February 2010.[22]
In 2005, Wollongong-based historian and politician Michael Organ examined a print of the film in the National Film Archive of New Zealand. It had been thought that it was the same cut as the Australian version, but Organ discovered that it contained missing scenes not seen in the cut versions of the film. After hearing of the discovery of the Argentine print of the film and the restoration project currently under way, Organ contacted the German restorers about his find. The New Zealand print was found to contain 11 missing scenes and included seconds of footage which were missing from the Argentine print and also footage which could be used to restore damaged sections of the Argentine print. It is believed that the editor in charge of editing the New Zealand print for some unknown reason excised different scenes than that of the Australian print keeping scenes missing from other versions intact. It is believed that the Australian, New Zealand and Argentine prints were all scored from the same master. The newly discovered footage was used in the restoration project.[23]
The rights holders of Metropolis, F. W. Murnau Stiftung (Foundation), later confirmed that the newly discovered footage completes the missing footage except for a few missing frames. Although the new footage was in a "deplorable" condition, they announced in February 2009 that they had begun restoration work on the rediscovered film and had the "ambitious target" for its completion by early 2010.[24] The restored original version was shown 83 years after its Berlin premiere on January 10, 1927, on the occasion of the 60th Berlinale,[25] on February 12, 2010, at the Friedrichstadt Palast in Berlin, at the Alte Oper in Frankfurt, as well as on TV on ARTE HD and as a public viewing at theBrandenburg Gate. Only a few scenes - about eight minutes overall - were not included in the new cut because they were too badly damaged to repair or still missing; this gives the film a running time of 145 minutes. The film goes black for the original duration of the missing footage; in case of important scenes, an intertitle with a different typeface explains the content of the missing footage. These include a monk at the cathedral predicting the apocalypse to Freder and a fight between Fredersen and Rotwang which enables Maria to flee.
Kino re-released the film in select US theaters over the summer. A DVD and Blu-ray release following on November 16, 2010.[26]Eureka/Masters of Cinema did the same in the UK and Ireland, with a theatrical release commencing September 10, 2010.[27] Turner Classic Movies held its inaugural Classic Film Festival in Hollywood on April 22–25, 2010; included was the North American premiere of the newly restored version of the film, with an original score performed live by the Alloy Orchestra.[28] In October 2010, The Roundhouse staged three screenings of the restored film with the original score performed live by the London Contemporary Orchestra, conducted by Hugh Brunt.[29]
A possible 9.5 mm copy of the movie was found in 2005 in the film archive of the Universidad de Chile. The copy was sent to Germany in late 2008 for verification.[30]

[edit]Music

[edit]Original score

Like many big budget films of the time, the original release of Metropolis had an original musical score meant to be performed by large orchestras accompanying the film in major theatres. The music was composed by Gottfried Huppertz, who had composed the original scores for Lang's Die Nibelungen films in 1924. For Metropolis Huppertz composed a leitmotific orchestral score which included many elements from the music of Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss, plus some mild modernism for the city of the workers and the use of the popular Dies Iraefor some apocalyptic imagery. His music played a prominent role during the shooting of the film, since during principal photography many scenes were accompanied by him playing the piano to get a certain effect from the actors.
The score was rerecorded for the most recent DVD release of the film with Berndt Heller conducting the Rundfunksinfonieorchester Saarbrücken. It was the first release of the reasonably reconstructed movie accompanied by the music that was originally intended for it. In 2007 the original film score was also played live by the VCS Radio Symphony which accompanied the restored version of the film at Brenden Theatres in Vacaville, California on August 1 and 2.[31] The score was also produced in a salon orchestration which was performed for the first time in the United States in August 2007 by The Bijou Orchestra under the direction of Leo Najar as part of a German Expressionist film festival in Bay City, Michigan.[32] The same forces also performed the work at the Traverse City Film Festival in Traverse City, Michigan in August 2009.[33]

[edit]Other soundtracks

There have been many other soundtracks created for Metropolis by different artists, including, but not limited to:

[edit]Adaptations

Several adaptations have been made of the original Metropolis, including at least two[citation needed] musical theater adaptations (seeMetropolis). The 2001 animated film Metropolis, is based on an original manga by Osamu Tezuka (see Metropolis).
In December 2007, producer Thomas Schuehly (Alexander, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen) gained the remake rights to Metropolis

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