H G Wells reviews Metropolis and demonstrates that one can be a literary giant and still misunderstand how another medium works (though, to be fair, he does seem to have seen one of those horribly edited versions that went into general release).Today's phrase, Herbert, is "visual metaphor". Please provide the definition and use it in a complete sentence.
11 comments:
Turner Classic Movies says there's an award/festival with the most restored version ever showing... now?
Actually, I'm with H.G. on this one. Metropolis may have some amazing visuals, even today, but the plot is addled nonsense. The mad scientist seems to have wandered in out of a fairy tale.
Wells was really, geekishly interested in how science was transforming the world. He was the Bruce Sterling or Cory Doctorow of his day, and what he's reviewing is, in effect, Avatar.
Kino is supposed to be working on the restoration of one of the fabled "complete" versions from South America.
Maybe they'll finally satisfactorily explain Rotwang's hand.
At least Wells' (I'm guessing the creator of the website, Mr Brockway, is the actual author of the piece) review is one of the few that can't be blamed on the Moroder version.
Maybe his indignation stems from "Metropolis" hitting a little too close to the reality of the sort of social utopia Wells was so fond of.
Now if a complete copy of Elaine May's "A New Leaf" could only be found...
David, was it YOUR classic radio show sampler that included tan interview of Wells and Welles?
Not sure if this is a quote from or a review of HG's 'Anticipations':
The lascivious and the lazy, the dark-skinned and the dreamers, the rebels and the religious, the unstable and the unhappy, and all who do not fit deftly into the eye of Wells' needle would be put to death"
While we're on the topic of "Metropolis" there's a plot inconsistency that's as glaring as the disappearing land at the Tyrannosaur paddock in "Jurassic Park" during the rainstorm.
When Frederson goes to see Rotwang there's an establishing shot and an intertitle that reads "In the middle of the city stood an old house". Presumably this is in the middle of the upper level. Yet when Frederson and Rotwang go downstairs to check out what Maria and the workers are up to, Rotwang's cellar overlooks the ancient catacombs. That means the staircase has to meander down through the machine level and the worker's city.
That's a heck of a stairway.
One might say that Rotwang's house is out over the fringes away from the machine and worker's level, but it said in the intertitle "middle of the city".
Could the old house be in the worker's level? I don't think so since it's apparently right down from the big cathedral and there's a lot of surface-folk walking around outside.
Oh, and why doesn't Freder draw attention wandering around the upper level in worker's garb? I was thinking it was ok for workers to come up to the top level, but then I recalled the scene where Grot brings the catacomb plans to Frederson and Frederson makes a large deal out of closing off the curtains and blocking the view of Metropolis.
Thise aren't criticisms by the way, I still love Lang's masterpiece. Even the Moroder version.
'Anticipations' is downloadable from Archive.org.
I didn't find what I mentioned earlier yet.
To Neil Russell: I always had the impression that Rotwang's house was a relic of the olden times, before the city grew up to the concrete jungle that it had become by the timeframe of the movie. The exterior certainly looks as if the modern buildings were built around the ancient wood-framed house. Ground-level, with a basement down into he city's past, but separate from the fully artificial environment around it.
For all its talk of hands and brains and hearts, Metropolis gives Rotwang short shrift. It seemed to me last time I watched the movie that it might have been Rotwang's creative spark that built all the machines, which allowed the City to grow. But, the creative spark is no longer needed (says the subtext) once the edifice is built; indeed, it may get the idea that the City should be disassembled and rebuilt along new lines, and then where will all the cog-men be? Both workers and administrators will be out of a job! Hands yes, hearts yet, brains yes, all needed for the well-run City---but the chaotic impulse to invent something new has outlived its purpose. Freder, not Rotwang, got Hel; there is no longer a place for Rotwang's kind.
I had an email exchange with a friend, a fellow engineer, once, in which he complained that engineers get as much respect as a lame blacksmith, back in Classical times. So maybe I'm seeing this through the lens of self-pity (sniffle).
Sergej: I believe you have the idea that Lang was shooting for, but like Irwin Allen stories the continuity of the old house was sacrificed to keep the plot moving.
Good point about the role of engineers and how they become the forgotten warriors of great projects. They don't get a "mediator" they just get packed along to the next project. Although compensation is a reward for a job well done, history is bad to leave behind the real "minds that create".
Rather than glory, most engineers are ready for that next project, and if the projects were ending altogether, there's no wonder Rotwang was going nuts.
Not a problem, as long as there is a next project. Doing software has kept me hopping around the country the last ten years.
A thought. Metric for the degree and nature of the indispensability of a profession: how long a society can live if the profession were to go away. Farmers: a month, tops. Artisans and their administrators (the movie's ideal society): maybe a year. Engineers: decades. Scientists: a century or so. Artists: slow coarsening and decline over several generations. Telephone sanitizers: approximately 42 of some time unit.
That's all sort of moot since everyone dies of telephone-related infections when the sanitizers are shipped off to Earth MkII.
For a long time I was under the impression that Frederson was wanting to eliminate the worker class and replace them all with robots, justifying the replacement by using the Maria-bot to instigate an uprising and ultimately doom the workers to an obsolescence that would be demanded by the ruling class.
That of course implied the existencce of some sort of council that held even higher power than Frederson himself.
Or again maybe Lang just thought; "we've got this really cool robot suit, we need to make a flashy adventure for it to get into". I suppose he would have thought that in German however.
Oh, undoubtedly Lang was suggesting that Frederson wanted to eliminate the workers. That's orthodox Marxist theory, straight from the guy with the big beard himself.
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