Episode 752: Metropolis (1927)

It's the story of Freder and Maria that propels the narrative, which explores class relations, mysticisms, science, and a whole lot more. We're going to do our best to spoilis nearly century old film. Haven't seen Metropolis? Please do so now you will not regret it. So, Federico, when was the first time you saw Metropolis? And what did you think?

people emulated and copied and stole off of endlessly. So it was nice to finally go back to the original and to see what all the fuss was about.

it was wonderful Metropolis. I've never heard of this movie, Metropolis, but I thought, what a role reversal, other kids telling me about a silent movie. And a few months later, it was May twenty first, nineteen seventy seven, Saturday night, ten pm, K and Emmy Channel five Albuquerque PBS Movie Theater that night showed Metropolis, and I decided, what the heck, I'm going to watch this. I'm curious now. I watched it, and from the moment it started, I was completely mesmerized,

couldn't take my eyes off the thing. And I did and know why because I watched this movie and it is so ridiculous, so preposterous, so childish. It's like a really bad comic book that an eight year old boy would throw in the trash. Why am I hooked on this? Why can't I tear myself away from it? And then

I started obsessing it. Two months later, it popped up at a local cinema, Don Panchos, and I knew they would crop it in wide screen and went there and they cropped it to widescreen, and I watched it and this is not the movie I saw on PBS at all. It's totally different. Why am I seeing a different Metropolis here and a different one on PBS? And then both versions vanished. I've been able to get a bad copy of the PBS version. I have never been able to get another copy of the one I saw don Poncious

And that's what drove me crazy. What is going on with this movie? And then I found out it was massacred almost from the time it was released. And you know that, I get obsessed when I discover that the movie's been massacred. I want to know what it was originally Like, I grew up watching the Radio Gaga music video.

So I saw Nospharatu in college, absolutely loved it, but never saw Metropolis projected on the big screen until I think it was the twenty ten restoration, which, oddly my mom wanted to go see my mom and her husband, and then my wife and I. We went to a community college that we had, you know, my mom had actually attended that years and years before, and we went there and they showed it on a pretty darn big screen.

No live orchestral accompany, meant just the soundtrack that they had with the film, which is, I believe the same version that now is on Keno Laura bur It's very very similar, if not that exactly. I can't say that I'm in love with this film. It's very very interesting, and I really appreciate the restoration, and I kind of like that the Argentinian footage or the other footage that they cut into this looks kind of shitty because I can really tell the difference as to what is being

added versus what was there before. And I know to your point, Renjeet, there are so many versions of this movie, and it is just wild how many are out there. Even last night, I was trying to get a copy of it to play for myself, and I said, oh, I'll just go out to Amazon and I'll buy the version that's out there that's two hours long. That's not two and a half hours long. I'm just like, oh my god, like I just spent three dollars for nothing. Thanks a lot, Amazon, Why the hell do you have

this two hour version? But regardless, Yeah, I've watched a ton this week in preparation for our discussion. Like you said, it's mesmerizing. It is very mesmerizing. There's a lot of interesting stuff here. Is it fully successful? I don't think so. Like you said, there's a lot of comic book ye kind of stuff here. I'm not sure if it's saying what some people think that it's saying. But I'm very excited to kind of unpack this movie just because it

is so influential. Listening to some of the commentary tracks, it's like, maybe you want to stop talking about Blade Runner throughout the entire commentary track for Metropolis, maybe talk about the film Metropolis instead. But it's been a real

delight digging into thistually digging into Fritzlang. I mean, the guy is so fascinating, especially all the self mythologizing that he does, and especially around this time of his career with the whole Gerbels and the escape from Germany and all those things, and it's like, all right, So yeah, I'm very excited to talk to you guys about this, just because there's just so much to unpack.

There's so many things that just like the tonal shifts, just up and down, up and down, you have like the most amazing sequences of incredible power next to the most like norm just strange kind of cringe stuff, and you wonder yourself, how did it end up like this? And sure enough you go go in the history and you find out why.

the movie. In Germany in the nineteen twenties, labor unions were not what we have now in the United States, and businesses were not what we have now in the United States. Businesses were brutal. And what we see in Metropolis with all these men working furiously on these synchronized gears that don't do anything and have no meaning, with steam coming up for no reason. That was about how workers retreated ten hours a day, NonStop, no time to

sneeze and blow your nose, catch a breath. Nothing there was relentless. It was tailorism. Frederick Taylor in the United States tried to streamline business by doing scientific motion studies. How can you do the most amount of work with the fewest number of motions as quickly as possible? And a lot of business leaders took his ideas, and he had good ideas, but they applied them mercilessly. The employees literally did not know what they were doing. A guy

had to make bolts all day long. Make a bolt, make a bolt, make a bolt, make them both ten hours a day, had no idea what the bolts were for, no idea where they were going to be used or why. So there was no sense of fulfillment in what the worker was doing. So there was an idea that if the employees understood what it was that they were doing, if there was better communication between management and employees, workers would feel more fulfilled. That idea comes through in Metropolis,

and that specifically explicitly what Metropolis was dealing with. And labor unions at the time, as I say, were not like they are now. When they got angry, they got out their guns, they got out their bombs. There was blood in the streets, and some labor union activists organizers realized that this is going nowhere. We have to reach an agreen with management. Some managers are saying that we have to reach out, stretch out our hands, make a deal with labor. One of those who said that was

Paul Silverberg, who sat on the UFA board. UFA was the studio that produced Metropolis. He said that as Metropolis was being filmed, so this is a lot of the context of what the story was about. The head, hands in heart communication, the mediator between management and employees. So the terms that sound very silly and babyish when we watch them now had a lot of resonance in nineteen twenty six, nineteen twenty seven, and it was not babyish

back then. So if you have not read and Drummond's Master's Thesis, please read and Drummond's Master's Thesis.

living this care free existence. You know, you've got the Sun's Club, which is this whole thing of it could be spelt either way with Sun or Son, but you've got this whole idea of these sons that are just up there enjoying their lives and playing all of these games.

You've got the fetishization of their bodies. And meanwhile the rest of the workers are just you know, faceless lumps most of the time with their shoulders hunched in those dark uniforms on cut to those suns up there playing their sports games, you know, very Leney refinstall with some of these icons and these statues and all these things, and they're being entertained, of course by what I have to imagine our prostitutes that are just hanging around the

Sun's Club. They're living this care free life, and meanwhile the rest of the workers are just living in this underground dwelling and not really even being allowed to see the sun apart from possibly when they do their shift change.

lot from Metropolis as well. But to have this whole thing of Joe Frederson lording over everything in his central office where he's got televisions, he can see whatever he wants to see, He's got all of his agents, he's got Joseph fat Is. Does the Thin Man have a name or is he just the thin Man?

almost all the time. But as far as the labor stuff goes, it doesn't feel like he's that much of the villain of the piece, whereas me as a more of the ninety nine percent, I'm just like, oh, yeah, he's the guy in charge. He's the guy who I would want to see drawn and quarter by the end of the film. But instead it's more about let's mediate

this stuff. We're looking for the mediator, and really becomes almost like a Messiah story where you've got, oh, the Sun is going to be the mediator and he's the person, and we have to have him anointed by Maria, and of course having Maria and her name being so close to Mary, and it just feels, well, it doesn't feel there are so many biblical things going on in this movie. That's just so many layers of stuff, and sometimes it

feels kind of like a confusing mix of layers. But I do enjoy like trying to pull this thing apart and seeing all of the different stuff as far as like the Seven Deadly Sins, the Tower of Babel, just all of these biblical items that you have inside of here, and it's like, okay, well, how does that relate to what this overall story is.

You know, he starts the movie at the Club of the Suns, almost staring into the camera looking at Maria. That's like the inciting incident. That's his view into the other world. He had no idea that his bruughs toil in such misery, and he goes literally down to the office to meet his father. He goes to find Georgie and then he goes even further and it's it's so on the nose that you kind of roll your eyes. But then you're thinking, you know, nineteen twenty six, what

is the audience that's getting this. I'm not saying that the German audience in nineteen twenty seven isn't sophisticated, but he's casting a wide net so that everybody can get something out of it. But that aspect to Freder being the mediator, it's like, how well can you trust, you know, at the workers at the I don't want to skip to the end, but like the workers have the right to be suspicious of the son of the guy that's literally oppressing them, telling them no, I will mediate between

labor and capital for you. And I mean, Mike, I have the same idea of you. I just like violence against the working, the oppressor class, you know, the owners have to go to the wall, all that kind of stuff. So Frederson is like, not my kind of person. And at the end, I'm with you. I want him on the funeral pier. And they say as much. They say as much. They literally surround them and they say, look, that's the guy that's responsible for our suffering. Kill him.

But of course that third way of like trying to trying to find a balance between the left wing and the basically the fascism, the quasi fascism. I don't want to say the film is fascist, but what it presents is strong ultimate state control over people's lives, trying to

find that middle way. That's the aspect that is the most controversial, the thing we can talk about the most, that people will argue about the most, but it's the thing that unfortunately is kind of like the undoing of it in some respects Well.

Metro Golden Mayor. I believe it was, and just that it was this whole idea of the German film industry being so insular that they're successful at for a while with the way that they're running things, but then they start getting these imports of American films and it becomes this real threat to the German national cinema, and it's like, no, we need to reach out, we need to start to

get out of just Germany. The imports are kind of taking things over, and this was really supposed to be an attempt to bridge this gap and then ended up blowing up in their faces. I mean, this was kind of the undoing. This was the Heaven's Gate of nineteen twenty seven.

In the earlier days. There were some imports from several countries in Europe. Germany among them. I don't know if they did very well. They did some business, and Hollywood like to bring them in now and then. It was almost like free money. But Germans realized that in order to keep their business going, they had to compete with Hollywood. The Hollywood capitalists didn't like competition. They didn't like to hear that sort of talk. Ufer was having financial troubles

because of all this Hollywood interference. They got a good deal from Hollywood, from Paramount Metro gold Mayor, who would bail them out and fund their movies, and they were foolish to accept that offer. It would be better to just close down the studio than to accept that offer. They accepted the offer, they very quickly regretted it. Heads rolled Eric Palmer, who was the only producer that Fitzlang ever liked. He was on the Alps for a while.

They squeezed him out. They let him back in later. Yeh, yeah, it was just a bad situation. This was the undoing of UFA. The person who bailed out UFA shortly after Metropolis came out was Alfred Hugenberg, who was another gangster capitalist. He was a German oligarch who supported a certain guy named Hitler, and he was very much opposed to mediating with labor. He wanted to rule employees with an iron fist.

And I'm sure he never watched Metropolis, but I'm sure his assistants told him that you don't want that COMMI pinko stuff showing in your cinemas. You've got to cut this thing, and he ordered that it be cut. Anything that remotely wreaked of communism had to be cut. The odd thing is, there is no communism in the Moody. There was something called mercy in the movie. There's no communism in it, but they slashed it to pieces and then just treated it like a piece of junk. The

movie did not break the studio itself. There was a lot of hanky panky with cooking the books. The production of Faust discharged against Metropolis, the couple of other movie productions are charged against Metropolis, and Studio Overhead was charged against Metropolis. Metropolis only cost about two hundred thousand dollars, and that money all came from Paramount. It didn't even come from UFA. But when they cooked the books, they

made it look like Metropolis bankrupted the studio. It's just not true.

want like a tit for tat reciprocal relationship. The other one too, that that brings up to is the CanCon laws in Canada, I think was its seventies, eighties and nineties where they had like the economic stipulation that a certain percentage television had to be Canadian producing Canadian and were kind of living through a resurgence of that economic protectionism. And you know, I thought I never lived to see that get you know, liberalism died of the chopping block. But so here here we are.

It's because of movie collectors. You know, we talked to Dennis Bartak on the show a long time ago about his book A Thousand Cuts and just the idea of what role movie collectors can play in preserving films. I mean, Federico and I were just getting back from a festival all about film preservation. It's so important that we have these collectors out there, really who had these unique versions of these films, so that they're able to actually bring

them back together. I mean, that's why we have this two and a half hour version. It's still missing pieces. There are definitely inner titles in here that explain, well, this is when you know Freder breaks Maria out of rot Wang's prison, and they all right, great, you know, I would love to see those things, but for now,

we're not going to. But someday we might. And that's the thing is that over the years we have seen smaller renovation through restorations of this film throughout I can't even reckon I mean, Ranjie, you're talking about two versions that you saw within a matter of weeks that were different. Just imagine how many of these versions. And we haven't even talked about the Moroder version. We'll talk about that later on in the program. But just all of these

different things. And a lot of that was because they said, oh, well, the version that played was terrible, and we need to make a better film lot of this, and they hired here in the US, they hired a playwright, Channing Pollock was it, who recut the film, and that became the version that so many people saw for so long. Though now you know Federico was asking me for a copy

of it, I'm like, I can't find it. I can't find that particular cut of it, which is kind of good that we're moving past this, but those historical documents should really exist as well.

I want the original document of Metropolis to exist. I also want all of those different cuts that have come about over the years, like give me that Blade runner box where you had the five different versions of it, and since then, fan editors have done their own versions of these things, Like I want that stuff preserved as much as I want the original version that was shown in nineteen twenty seven and to still be around.

that you really can't get the exact copy. Like I said when I talked about the first time that I saw it, I saw it in the quote unquote full restored version, and like you might, I'm hoping and I know somewhere, you know, there's the footage. I just know that someday Metropolis will be as near complete as it can get. But I always wanted to see the American version because I'm one of those people that always loves

to watch like different cultures make the same. And the thing that I remember about Metropolis hearing about it was that it was three hours long. You know, people said like, oh, it's three hours long. It bombed at the cinemas, just like you said, they fell for the trap. And sure enough I looked into it and I found out that of course they would play it at a different speed

and so take longer, it would last longer. But when I first watched it, I was completely captivated, like just you know, it got into your mind, and yeah, I didn't think about the length. I tend to not think about like movie lengths. It's just like, once you're in the movie, you're in the movie. That's it done. But for two hours twenty five minutes now, and then the original release was one hundred and fifty three minutes. That's

like Prisoners by Move. You know. It's a bunch of films like Dark Knight, you know, just these movies that everybody loves but they don't want to say, like, oh, it's too long. You know. I think the problem too is that it's silent and all that kind of stuff. You know, Oh it's hokey, it's old. I don't want to deal with it. But two and a half hours long,

it moves like nothing. Even if the guy at the time in Germany made that joke in the newspaper about how like it's like an hour in and then it cuts and it's says the end of the end of the overture or the prologue, and you're just like, it's almost like a comic thing of just like what and then you have the intermetso oh gosh, no, no, no's it moves like nothing else.

Man and just how much I enjoy his character. Even you know grot the Guardian of the Heart Machine. It's like, yeah, these guys are great. But then when it comes to Freighter, I don't know if it's that Luke Skywalker going to Tashi station to pick up some power converters kind of thing or what it is, but it's just like, get this guy off the screen. He sucks. I just don't like I.

his good looks, youthful ernest. But I'm with you, Mike, there is something to be said about those silent actors who go they cast to the back row. It's almost like they come from theater and they're not adapted well to that kind of act. And I think he is the weak link and if you can get over him, and if you can take him as kind of like a naive child, like Ranjit was saying, possible, I mean the cast is so you know, it's just one actor

out of however many, he's a speed bump. You just get over him.

one that has these visions. He sees the machine as Moloch, this demon who's just eating all of the workers and just feeding upon the bodies of slaves. Later on, it's almost as if he sees Maria when she's in the club doing her dance. But there's some great cross cutting that's going on there. And also I want to say that he's the one that sees the seven deadly Sindents come to life, and so it's like he's the one

that can see what's behind the veil. Like I think that, of course these things are symbolic, but I want to say that he has seen the world for more of what it is than what the rest of everyone in the cast is seeing what the rest of Metropolis sees. They see a machine, whereas he sees a demon, and he sees what's really going on with these things, even if it's more metaphorical terms. All right, let's go ahead and take a break, and we'll be back after these brief messages.

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because they work below the surface of the earth. So he's down below the surface of the earth in this bizarre factory with machines that are just fantastical gadgets that have no relation to anything in reality. He has that vision of the moloc machine. He runs out out of the frame, down the stairs to a limousine that's waiting for him. Did that limousine know to be waiting for him right there? And then we see the puppet limousine leave and is driving down a ramp from something like

the twenty fifth story of a skyscraper. Where was he? Was he under the ground or was he at the twenty fifth store of a story of a skyscraper? And that's when I get the impression that this is fits and the other people making the movie telling us, calm down, this is dream imagery. Don't worry too much. We're playing games.

the love. You know, he's constantly searching for Maria. So yeah, I think that's really very astute as far as, yes, how does he get from below ground to way up above ground and then have to continue to descend, And really when it comes to his father, I would imagine his father is at the pinnacle when it comes to all of this. It feels like he should be the

person that's at the tippy top of all this. And the idea of the Tower of Babble keeps coming up, and we've got you know, think it's really more based on the Briigle painting than what you would read in the Bible. But I love this whole idea too, of having you know these and I guess there are archangels kind of looking at the Tower of Babel and just

talking about, like, you know, the hubris of man. And again the hubris doesn't get punished, Like I'm surprised that the tower, as in the biblical story, just doesn't get destroyed.

a dream city. You don't know where you're going to end up. You could think that you're at street level, but you could be basically up in the clouds. And about the cities in China that are built in the

side of like hills. You know, they're built in like river valleys, and they have all of these stairs and elevators, and so it's like you never know where in relation you are to the ground, and you could be like living on the eleventh floor, but there are people living far far below you, and you could go to work

far far above you. I wanted to answer the question talking about like the vision, the sense of Freda being the one that has these like apocalyptic visions, because there generally are apocalyptic the sense of like gays like this film has an absolute rock solid understanding of the camera I as being an analog or the viewer's eye, you know, the lens to the eye. And Ranjie you mentioned Maria opening the door and immediately looking at Frader, but she's

not looking at Frader. She's looking us as Freders, as the embodiment of him. And one thing I love about certain films and films of this era too, is that they're not afraid to, like Spike the lens, to have actors just peer straight into your soul. And this film has so so many scenes like of incredible pathos and power that would come off really not great if they

weren't done that way. Like I always think about the one where he goes to the chapel that they have in the catacombs, and there's that scene where everybody leaves and Freder comes up to basically receive blessing but also throw his heart and soul to Maria, and you see him clutch his heart, and that's very you know, one oh one, just over the top acting is just I need to show everybody that I'm in lie, so I

clutch my heart. But he's gazing directly into the camera as if we are the object of his love, and so that transference from the actor to the viewer. And then you cut to Maria. I mean Maria not only like Maria herself, but the false Maria also has incredible scenes of gazing directly into the camera, like the dance you were talking about, the dance that she does, and

the dance itself is like that's the seduction. Like you literally had the Madonna at the beginning goading you to fall into this you know, this great I don't want

to say lie, but this great promise of religion. And then near the end of the movie you have the horror of Babylon gazing from the cinema screen asking you to fall into temptation and talking about like the men there and the gaze of them, I mean to the point where they cut all their eyes out and they basically fill the screen like it's almost like the argus of Pinopti's the ogre that with a thousand eyes just gazing back at you. It's just that that that image

just lag. I don't know, it's just the kettle hot. Like all the production design of the cinematographer is just gaze. It's so much about Gaye.

same time. And then when you see and thank god, it's the you know, the the restored or like, it's not the Argentinian footage, it's the you know, the footage that we've had before, and how gorgeous that footage looks. And when you get to a shot like that, it just, oh, it just melts my heart to see that because it's so beautiful and so striking and just fits in with the rest of this film so much. Like you're saying, like the gaze and everything. Here are all of these

eyes looking at us and Maria looking at us. And yeah, the things that that the actress that that plays Maria, that she does with her eyes, the whole thing of like one eye open, one eye closed kind of thing.

to film into revolution with this false Maria. And the whole thing that he does is like, well, if you can't buy her as Maria by her as a person, you know, this whole thing is over with. But I we should probably talk a little bit about the whole rivalry between rot Waning and Joe and especially all of the stuff that goes on with the mother with Hell, because that the whole thing with Hell. It just there mentions, you know, of the wife, but her name being I

guess too offensive for America. I just can't buy that Hell was too offensive for Americans in nineteen twenty seven. But maybe it was. Maybe we were way too prudish with that. But come on, guys, it's a Norse goddess's name. It means light. It's not literal Hell. There's no double hockey stick on there, It's just one hockey stick.

rivalry between Lotvang and Yow for Hell. You do know that Telfon Habu was previously married to the actor who played Lotvang and then married Great Slang, so she was massed flit Slang when they were making this movie. But they were apparently still good friends, I guess with her first husband, and Flitz loved to cast him and he was wonderful And in this Movietang is just another version of Doctor Morbusa, which the Donald few years earlier. If

you remember, Doctor Morbusa is one of my favorites. That the rivalry there that seemed to be a joke about what had happened in their personal lives.

talk Brigitte Helm. This film would not work without her performance, and this is her first on screen role and she hated acting. She did not want to do this. I mean, she she did. This is like a famous story of him going to see her and asking her, you know, she was on set and he said like, do you know, do you want to be an actor? Actress? And she said, I want anything but and her mother like was apoplectic because her mother was the standard stage mother pushing her

daughter into it. But not only is this her first role, not only is she incredible as Maria, but she's playing five separate roles, like she's the machine man, the creative man, the seven Deadly Sins. I don't know how she played seven deadly sins, but she played death too. And she plays the false mother. That's a tall order for anybody, let alone somebody who was still growing at the time. Hence the costume like biting into her and her having

it to be there for hours and hours hours. I mean, this is just a toward of force performance from her. And you mentioned the eye thing, you know, closing one eye to show that she's a false Maria, that she's a temptress. And her makeup, the makeup and design of her is just incredible too. At the very end, you see her in the worker City and she's saving children. I don't know how asexual, like, how how motherly you

can get besides literally saving children from drowning. And her they're wearing the same costume, and her costume is straight laced and tight, and it's like a bodice. You cut to the false Maria. False Maria has bags under her eyes, disheveled hair, and the same costume, but it's like undone. So you're seeing more and more and more of her body, more and more of her cleavage, and it's just, you know,

production design is just tw tiny little things. And bridget Helm, I mean, despite her not liking acting, which I don't blame her at all, she did an incredible job well.

like to that the number. Georgie has a number that he's one one eight one one, So we've got that nice palindromic number, and you've got all the dumbles from one side to the other with that as well. I think that's great that they're doing these things and you've got like kind of the like Slim versus Joseph, Fat Joe versus rot Wang, like all the characters seem to have their other person other than just mentioned Georgie taking

the place. But really we know that Freder is the one, like Neo, right, He's the one when it comes to this stuff. And I love the machine that he's running that this whole idea of this big it looks like a clock face with three hands and just moving the hands around and the lights will light up and he keeps moving his arms around toward Georgie is there just wiping his head off because such labor intensive stuff. And it's like, like you said Earlierrojie, it's like, what the

hell does this machine do? We have no freakin' idea, And that became like a real stumbling block for somebody like an HG. Wells, where he's like, well, they don't explain what these machines do, and it's like, do they need to do we need to have an explanation as they like, what the what's being produced? I mean it's basically they're producing the guffins. You know, there's there's nothing to this, you know, it's just this is the point of it is the labor. It's not what they produce.

The labor is the production. It is just all about that and having that ridiculous machine. And you know, like I said earlier, when I was growing up and watching the Radio Gaga video and having Freddie Mercury there, you know, moving the arms around and stuff, and just like, what the hell is he doing?

United States. All the way on one side of it, it's seven am. All the way on the other side of it, it's seven am. The sun could rise around five or ten, doesn't really you know, like that was one of the things when the Communists came in, They're just like, yeah, nope, we control time. That is one of the things that we do. They're making the trains run on time. Was very easy since it's one big

time zone. And yeah, I just found that very fascinating that controlling time is one of those rights that a fascistic government is going to impose. That we are the ones that tell you how long a day is and how long a shift is. Like you were saying, renji, the expansion of the ten into twelve hours, because that's just the way that things work.

all this kind of stuff. You got up with the sun, you worked, you broke in the middle of the day, you worked, and then you went home and you slept, or sometimes you woke up in the middle of the night and you did a little bit of work and then you went back to sleep. And it's that primordial aspect of time is the only thing that we have. And so if a state can control it, like you bring up Brazil, but obviously the other big thing is

nineteen eighty four with coming into your thoughts. You know, it's like your time, your thoughts, just the things that are so absolutely personal you just can't deal with it and run g eat to you. I never thought that they stretched ten to twelve. I always thought it was an evocation of the decimalization of time from it was after the French Revolution they tried to do the Republican time and it was like it was like a terrible, terrible thing. Nobody liked it because everybody was so used

to the twelve hours that stuff. I thought of it as an eva that Mike. I just wanted to point out that technically the machine in Metropolis does have a name. It doesn't have a point, but it's explained terribly. It's not done in the in the film, but it's done

in the novel that Harbor wrote. It's a Potter noster, which is the pattern noster lift, which is almost like the chain buckets that you see in the movie, where you get on them and then you get off at the at the stop that you want, at the floor that you want. They're like super prevalent in Germany, Vienna, they have a few in England, they're kind of dangerous, people get like limbs, you know, all this kind of stuff.

But Potter is Latin for our Father, and there's this whole religious aspect to it, and it's in the novel by Harbor of just like a potternoster to the and those three blades essentially, and that Christ imagery when Freder is basically crucified on his own machine and he calls out for his own father. I mean, it's so on the youth. I mean, it's like one of the last things Jesus says is like my.

presented so poorly. I hear the music so much louder than I hear the voices, and I'm just like what the hell, guys, And it sounds almost like Collot's like three feet away from the microphone and rosenbombs across the room, and I'm just like, what are you guys doing? What the hell? But I swear at one point they're talking about the pottern Noster and Klot's like, oh, yeah, that thing's impossible, like it doesn't exist or something like it's

a science fiction invention. I'm like, uh, yeah, I've seen that in so many movies. Now, like, this is a real thing, guys.

to the whole rot Wing versus Show thing. The one thing that I've found very surprising is that there's no real resolution of their relationship in this as opposed to the book that actually has more of a resolution. And I wanted to say, what was it that it was? It was it Joe's mother that had a letter from Hell and gives it to him at the end of it, and it basically is a letter from Hell saying like, I've always loved you, I really never liked Rotlong. Your

whole thing of me falling in love with him. It was a complete lie, like no, I've always been you know, your woman kind of thing. And Joe's mother refused to give it to him until he had a change of heart, and so I guess, like the worker Revolution is what caused that change. So I'm like, okay, but that's not really found in this. There's not real real resolution between those two characters.

stopped it there. And then I just put my face in my hands and I thought, oh, guys, no, no, that was the wrong idea.

sixteen frames kind of thing. And you hear all of these stories that just get attributed to Metropolis where it's like, oh, yeah, Fritz Lang went to New York City and saw the

lights and that's what's inspired him for Metropolis. It's like, well, actually there was a treatment that he wrote all these years ago, or a script that he wrote that was very much like Metropolis, and don't forget that they tey Von Harbo was working on this book and the script, and it feels very two thousand and one to space outussy as far as the idea of when was the script versus the book? And was the script being written

at the same time as the book? And I don't know if anybody's really pulled that thing apart to say like this is what happened when kind of thing. But it wasn't a trip to New York City that made Metropolis happen. I mean, the trip to New York City was what twenty four or twenty six, and it's like, yeah, this was already in production, so like calm your jets

kind of thing. The the other thing that I really hate is this idea and I think this maybe came from our dear friend Louis Bnwell, where it's like, all the good things in the movie are Fritz Lang, all the bad things in the movie are Taevan Harbo, and she was this horrible, cheesy person that just added all the schlock to it. And it's like, no, she came up with a lot of these ideas on her own,

or they worked together as a team. It wasn't just you know, And it feels to me very misogynistic as far as like, oh, yeah, the woman comes up with all the bad ideas, the guy comes up with all the great ideas, and it's as simple as that. And it's like, no, there's a little bit more shading to the story.

But the aspect of him leaving Germany and leaving his white behind, you know, quasi wife, you know, all this is that shock of Oh I didn't know that, but

it kind of explains some aspects of the story. I don't want to say that I fell for it hook line and sinker, but I did believe for the longest time that Harbor was the one that inserted all of the I don't want to say fascist imagery, but the quasi fascist imagery, the reef install stuff you were mentioning at the beginning, kind of like trying to find a way to meld the two, because I think it's it's an idiotic prospect to try in bridge fascism and socialism,

like you make basically a demon baby in the middle. There's no way, there's no way you're gonna square that circle. But Harbu being a member of the Nazi Party, living through the war, staying there and then being blacklisted and then struggling to get work after the war and dying pretty is tragedy. But like Ron said, I mean, he was in an interview with Bogdanovic. I think he mentioned that he was fifty percent responsible for everything wrong with Metropolis.

He did defend her, even after he was no longer say what you will about long like his imperious ways on set, all this kind of stuff, But he had his moments.

self mythology that Lang was just steeped in. I love. There's a book by Howard A. Rodman called What Is the Destiny Express It is kind of a fictionalization of that time in Lang's life. Really great book, but it also then helps muddy the waters as to what's real and what's not, what's a theory versus what's true. I don't know again if we'll ever find out all of the things around there, but yeah, they highly recommend that book if people are interested in reading some good fiction around this.

go to Germany. And you know why, that darn yead.

Asian people are portrayed in films. I mean to have the nightclub, the very lascivious nightclub called Yoshiwara, which is a reference to the red light district in I think it's Tokyo. Yeah, to just greatantly call it, yeah, the Yoshiwara club. And then one of those deleted images that we have from the Argentinian cut is three faces that are kind of overlaid, cross dissolved kind of thing of there's a black person, a woman's face in the middle, and then an Asian face on the other side, and

I'm not sure if they are. The woman in the middle is definitely a woman, but I don't know if the Asian person or the black person are men or women. I don't know if they're female and pers at the time or not. But I find that othering and the whole idea of Yoshiwara being this den of iniquity to

be fascinating. I always appreciate seeing, you know, like I was shown broken blossoms and a woman in film class years ago, and it's like, oh, the way that Griffith would like, you know, all the bad things we're going to put onto the Asian people. You know, we gotta we're okay. Us white people are okay, but all the bad things come from the Asian, you know. You see that even in like The Big Sleep with Geiger's den and the Asian imagery having the camera behind the Buddha

heead statue, all of that stuff. So to see that here again, and then to see the way that black bodies are used just as ornamentation, like when Maria does her big dance and that she's lifted up onto this dais and the what's holding the dais? And are all these black men with it literally on their back. I'm

just like, wow, that's that's such powerful imagery. And it's that introduction of Yoshiwara which really takes us more into and it's just kind of a some imagery that's happening when Georgie is in the back of that limousine and it's almost like again he's picturing what's going on there

because a leaflet ends up in the car. But it's very shortly after that that imagery that we get to rot Wang and really start to see more of him, and we get to see more of like the Hell statue and things, and again rot Wang just being this fascinating character, and I love this whole idea of him. I don't know what happened when Frader was born, but that Hell died in childbirth, it sounds like. But then also something to do with Hell is why rot Wang only has the one hand.

of mix again of the scientific plus the fantastic. Even when in the intro, like you had a note Renjie where you're like, I don't really consider this a science fiction film. I consider the science fiction film just because there's a freaking robot in it. But there are so many things around magic and stuff, and like, you know, how would rot Wing's hand even work. You know, it feels like it shouldn't even be there, but again, you know it's I see this being such an influence. Of course,

Maria is so an influence on C three PO. You see those Ralph mcquarie drawings and you're just like, oh, yeah, totally this is Maria. And then you see you know, the fake hand and stuff, and you're just like, okay, yeah, that's Luke Skywalker. I mean, hands are always in danger

in Star Wars film Star Wars films. I mean it's even like Return of the Jedi we're going to talk about later on this month, and it's when Luke chops off his own father's hand, which I always see as being kind of a a more of a castration type of thing. I mean, for me, like the whole chopping off of Luke's hand is so like he chops off his son's dick basically, and the whole idea of like

rotwying having this mechanical hand. It's it's so to me, like, yes, he's not a full human being anymore, he's missing something super vital from him, and that to me, the hand really influences what happens inside of Star Wars. But just as a real quick aside. I love the idea of rotwaying and the performance of rotwaying so influencing Nick Cage in Moonstruck. Yes, Cage himself was like, yes, Like when he holds up his hand and.

talk about him in general. It's just rog The actor is just electric, just like the scene of him during the transformation, Like there are things that you have to put into a movie. You have to have shot to shot, you have to have conversations, and then you have to have you know, exposition. You do it some way. There's a scene in this where it's his scientific laboratory and it's all the bubbling stuff and you're thinking to yourself, well,

this is before Frankenstein. This is before a lot of things that would go on to be influenced by this. And it's just him paling around pressing dials and knobs. But the way that he walks, the way that he moves, the artificiality of every part of him. It's not just the hand, it's like his his piercing gaze, you know, the eyes, like even when he's at the nightclub and he just points to the curtain of the false marine about to open. And his relationship to Yo Frederson Jofriederson

is literally the god of this world. At the beginning, when we're in the office with him and the numbers are coming down and he's holding forth with all of his minions, one of them messes up, done out, he loses his job because he's, you know, so perfect. He's the master of Metropolis. They even rename him John Masterson. In the American release, which is just you know, a thing. Besides, but rot Wang is the only one that can stand

up to him, and I think that most importantly. The interesting thing about that is in the novel they talk about how rot Wang like invented Metropolis, he gave him the technology necessary to build it. That Yo Fraderson is not, you know, the luminary, all encompassing genius. He did need rot Wang, And it's this melding between science and you know, you know, one needs the other to survive and to exist. And that battle over Hell. I don't know how you

watch this movie without Hell. I don't know how you watch this movie without Yoshiwara, I have to say. I mean I watched the twenty ten restored version, so I only have that to go on. But they're like fundamental aspects to the story. Is the battle over a dead woman and rot Wang resenting Freder for taking both of them. You know, they resent Freighter the Sun and that it's incestuous.

It really is incestuous. And I just wanted to like bring up to that aspect the Youngian aspects too, of like the the top, middle and below, where you have like Yo Fraderson is like the super ego, he's all the way at the top. He's asexual, he's almost like celibate. He has no time for that. He only has time for work. Then you have like freder As the egg as the ego, who's like, you know, flitting in between

all this kind of stuff. And then you have Maria, who technically I suppose in her like vaunted, you know, pious mother mary Way is also super ego, but she's in the depths and she just has that aspect of pure Id when she turns into the false Maria and she does the dance.

You know, there's in somewhere in the middle. We've got the ego to balance those things out, but to have those layers, I mean, whenever I see things happening in an attic or things happening in a basement and a horror film, I'm just like, okay, And you know, kind of to your point, there are a lot of science fiction, there's a lot of mysticism in here, but there's a

little bit of horror as well. I mean, the idea of the demons and Moloch, you know, eating these slaves to the machine is very horrific and gosh, just the idea of going down in those catacombs, and it's it's fascinating to me that I think in the version that we've seen, you know, not the restored version. I think in the Americanized version of this, they cut out this whole idea of having to go to rot Wang in order to look at that map and see what's happening

on the map. Because two of the people that die early on in the film have this drawing of a map inside of their thing. And then when Frader is wearing the uniform of Georgie, he finds the exact same map as well. And Joe, meanwhile, at the exact same time, is going to rot Wang saying, you know, what is this? Well, where is this part of the city. It's like he doesn't even know his own city. And that's the catacombs where Maria is, and I think there's you know, skeletons

and all these kind of like horror show things. I want to say that there's it's very similar to set in The Nevable Nee Below, which I cannot pronounce, So I apologize, and I apologize to everybody for all my horrific pronunciations of German words. It just does not roll off the tongue for me very well at all. Thank you. I just need to hire you to say that whenever I refer to that movie.

I mean, I love like a Billy Wilder where it's like seeing how he reflects American culture back to us, and just things like Double Indemnity where it's like, yes, people are really super Venal and just will do anything to fuck over each other just to get you know, Fred mcmuurr will do anything to get laid by Felix Philis Dietrichson. Great, you know, and I think that's very fun to watch how other cultures reflect back to us.

know what they're talking about. That's war. One of the most amazing noras I've ever seen. And Long is just on a different You can say all you want about him come to America and not comparing to the German films, but he is a master in like a child's playground. It's the same thing that happened with Murnow when he

came here. It's the same thing. It's the same thing that happen with Lubitch, same thing with happened with them all is that they hone their skills absolutely to the peak that they could in Europe, and then the economics set in, and then they came to America because America had the production facilities, They had everything. I mean, I was reading the interview with Fritz Long and he was talking about how in order to get light on the

sets when they made Metropolis, they used coal furnaces. They didn't like I mean, they had electricity in some aspects, but when they were shooting in the Zeppelin hanger for the Tower of Babel sequence, they had coal furnaces to do and light reflectors, and in between takes because it was so cold, all the extras huddled around the coal furnaces. So it's just like when Wang comes to America, he has that aspect too, of like, it's no longer a

strong man. You know, the German national character is Siegfried. It's basically a demigod. And then when he comes to America he has to learn no, it's America is the land of the common man, and I have to give it to Long. He said, he came here and he started reading newspaper comics. He read them every single day. He read thousands of them, because he said they're not high art, but they speak to the people, and they're

so popular. And you can tell, you can tell aism in his American works, that he has a sensibility that is so so sharp about America.

the idea of expressionism. And I don't necessarily see a lot of expressionistic things inside of Metropolis, other than really some of the set design, of course, But really when it comes to the altar that Maria has and all of those crosses behind her, because it's not just one big cross, it's several crosses, and they're different sizes, different shapes, they're not all standing upright, some are tilted, and just all of those crosses, to me, feel like the most

expressionistic part of this film. This is not Caligari, with the painted sets and the very outward mental projections of things. If there was anything, I would say maybe some of the title cards. And I like that the title cards, so many of them, especially at the beginning of the film. They're in a triangle shape, and it really, to me represents that whole heart, hand and head type of triumvirant that we have, even when it comes to the Tower of Babel. Very very triangular when it comes to that.

And I never really realized how much the Tower of Babel was the inspiration for Minas Tirif in the Lord of the Rings movies until I was rewinded this and going, oh, yeah, that's that's or sorry, I said, minister as I meant Gondor, the White City of Gondor is so Tower of Babel. As far as this designed, this same who is it Breugel painting of the Tower Babyl. It's like, oh, okay, I can see that. And I don't know if that

was in Tolkien. It's been a while since I've read Returned the King, but definitely when it came to the Peter Jackson versions, it's like, yeah, there it is.

are just not having a good time. I mean, you mentioned the idea of the the outfit that Maria is sorry, I forget the actress's name that she's in, and the way that it would cut into her legs and things that it was not meant to be sat in. But then Lang had her sitting in it for who knows how many takes. Yeah, it sounds like this was just a miserable production to be on in that it took what was it three hundred days or something to make this film just seems like it went out forever.

have cones, sections of cones stuck on them. Then when the children rush up to Maria during the flood, they all have their hands up and as they rush toward her, they form a triangle. At the club, when the robot does her dance, all the men rush up to her with their hands up. They form a triangle. And you're right. The triangle is the three parts head, heart and hands. And at the end, when you have y'all on one side, grow up on the other. In the middle, he grabs

their two hands. He forces them to shake hands. The very frame we're all hands touched. They've completed the triangle cut end of movie go home, no doubt there.

it's sheet music. It's just incredible. I mean, maybe we can take a moment now, or we can wait until later to talk about the Hubert score, because I do kind of want to, like mention you know, just how modern it is, because when I first put it on and the title started, like the music starts halfway through the credits, and then it hits that triumphant absolute peak when the when the beautiful titles, the hand drawn titles in animated titles come up and the lightmotifs that are

so Lugnerian that come from like, you know, Nibologian, all that kind of stuff, the German background of how you write the music, and then that developed into film music itself. And I had, I guess, the opportunity to watch Metropolis live score by a musician and it was at a Wurlitzer, but it was technically not piped. It was like a digital like a mixture. And I talked to him afterwards, and I mentioned how much I love the hooprit and he said, but it's so terribly repetitive, don't you find it?

It tires you. And it's like, I don't know, it's like the fundamental basis of modern film music. It's just like you could take the score out of this movie and put it to any movie and it would work. And the score is like so much of the emotional power of it. For me, all the themes get me every time every time I watch it.

plays through here. It's almost like it reminds me of watching King Solomon's Minds, the Richard Chamberlain version, which was and I know King Solomon's Minds came way before Raiders of the Lost Arc, but then you watch the film, which is after Raiders, and it feels like the main theme of King Solomon's Minds is like that da da da da da du you know, like we're playing with it,

but we can't do the theme. We have to do like a few notes off, and the Marseille is when it comes up during the revolution in the third act or the third movement of this. It's so close but not quite there. It's just a little off key kind of thing. But it's definitely so reminiscent that you're just like, oh, I get it. This is the French Revolution, this is

a revolutionary theme. Okay, I got it. But that for me was the only sour note where it was like literally a sour note where I was like, ah, why can't you guys just play the damn song? You know? But instead it's like a little twisted Yeah, it's like it's not quite there. Maybe the twisting is the point, but it just every time you hear it, it's kind of like the Yosemite Sam when he hears bugs Bunny playing that song wrong. Every single time he's like.

is fomented by basically the creation of the depth. So if they played the Internacionale in nineteen twenty seven Berlin, there would be people sitting in that theater who sing that song at their political meetings and they would take umbrage with that. So I think by tuning it a little bit out of whack, it's saying, Okay, we know that what they're saying is the slogan of the Communist party, you know, smash the smash, the means of production, take

over everything, all this kind of stuff. But it's it's twisted. So that's why we're able to like demonize them and make them, you know, fools that leave their own children. You know, they're just in a frenzy that go to buy a thing. I think it's a very deliberate artistic decision.

They should stay silent. Anytime there is music, somebody obstructs my rhythms.

for Metropolis, but of any movie ever. It was the very first respiration ever to be shown through the pubblic so it was revolutionary in that sense. It made absolutely no impression when it was first shown, but over the next couple of years it gained some traction, and people got the idea that maybe it's a maybe it would be good to start restoring all movies. But they ran it on BBC two nineteen seventy five. They got a thirty five millimeter full aperture print. They ran it at

twenty frames per second. Why they chose that speed, I don't know. It looked nice though, and there was no music. The accompaniment was electronic sound effects. That's the version I saw on PBS Movie Theater in May nineteen seventy seven. Now I'm quite to a purists when it comes to silent movies. I want to see them presented the way they were originally presented, with this sort of music that would originally have accompanied them. This one I forgave because it worked perfectly,

And I am wondering. Fitzlong was still alive in seventy five, and the East German ARC guy was in contact with him. Did somebody ask him what sort of music would you like on this? And did he say I don't want any music on it? And did they then suggest, well, what if we put electronic sound effects? And he said, okay, fine, I don't know, but it worked beautifully. You should watch it.

also the court jester. They would make fun of him, kind of to diffuse tension on set. They'd play practical jokes on him. They did horrible, awful things. He led a terrible life. But there was one stipulation in his contract Long at the beginning of production of every single film with Gota Vienna, and they'd have a perfectly cut suit made for him, tailored absolutely, and he would put it on at the start of the day and he would take it off at the end of the day.

Basically essentially ceremonial work clothes and put Kerr. His reward for having to put up with Long, dealing with all of this stuff day after day after day, was he got that suit at the end of production, the end of every production, he got a little piece of Long, and I I just love that. It's just weird German stuff.

of you know, I mentioned the title cards. The title cards are wild because they are not just title cards, you know, like we think of title cards and like people will be like, oh, well, yeah, Alfred Hitchcott got to start making title cards and most people yawn and be like, okay, great he could type. You know. It's like no title cards were part of the experience, and the title cards for a movie like this so important.

I mean to have animations of title cards, you know, the idea of the upper and lower having the title cards animate on the screen and having those words telling us the story, but also telling us the story through the shape, through the form of things to have, you know, even just the use of the title of Metropolis when the title comes on screen, beautiful animation and just really stunning, and that they even use animation in the movie itself.

I mean, I think Frederico, you were going to call out the whole idea of the way that Death's scythe is being animated across freighter when he's having his visions, and it's just wonderful that they do that. It's just a slight little thing, but it makes such a difference.

I know, it's like a great art, But yeah, I did want of you guys have been talking about the triangles and the title, and I've just been like itching to talk about the fact that they cut from the film itself into the titles and then the titles cut back into the It's so naturalistic, it's done so expertly, and that's why the film works so well. I mean, it's two and a half hours long, like a've blabored saying, but it moves so well because the titles allow you

to breathe and they get you in. And this is like the Tower of Babbel sequence. They have these beautiful glass light bars all around the to kind of tell you this is a separate story of Maria's. You know, this is like a biblical story. This is something different. And when the Tower of Babbel comes up on the titles, it's dripping light. I mean, honestly, it should be dripping blood,

but you know, we'll take it. And this, I mean, I die every single time I mentioned this, every single time I talk about Metropolis, is that there's one shot when the workers are in the elevator and we start at the top with the human actors in the elevator

for the set, and then they moved down. Then we cut and we're in the model shot, and rather than doing some kind of like optical they just have a hand drawing of the workers Like this is one of the few films I've seen where they have just artists work straight in front of the camera and I live for it every time. The opening titles are just art. It's the blending of music, technical draftsmanship, art, anime, all of that model shots and stop motion. I mean, it goes on and on and on and on.

to put stuff back together. But it was the music cues that helped guide the hand of the restoration people to say where things were supposed to be properly, just because it was such a complete score. I mean, the whole idea of showing a silent movie without any music really hurts my heart because that's how I saw a lot of silent films in one of the film classes I took in college, where professor Ukatake was like, no, no, silent films were never shown with accompaniment or soundtracks. I'm like,

what are you talking about. So watching Strike with no music whatsoever, It was one of the weirdest experiences I've ever seen. I love you, Sergey Eisenstein, But my god, there's a reason why there was a score to that movie. It's not supposed to be shown absolutely silent, because I had a hard time keeping my eyes open, no matter how wonderful the montage was. The eyes were closing without the music to give me a little jug and I hate it.

it's so important to get the music. It's just like they say that the music and sound effects are basically half of the emotional power of film, but in silence it might as well be like sixty seventy percent, because if you have a terrible a terrible time, then you're not going to enjoy the film at all.

It just feels like there's so much gill that comes in from these German crafts, people that just make it, just make it shine, make it sane. And even just the art style of things. You're talking about again the title cards, but also the title of Metropolis itself. Just that use of the Bauhaus or is it art Deco. Just the style of the stuff looks so good. You're in Joe's office and you can see lines in the background where it's like, Okay, there's something going on. These

aren't just flat walls. Everything is made with purpose, and even in like a you know, a cave scenario, the catacombs that they're in, everything looks very well put together. I just love the production design of this movie and the special effects of this movie. I mean, again, I won't say it's a perfect film, but it's sure put together, very very well.

I love the story of Roy Baddick, but that aspect of yeah, everything is just designed to within an inch of his life and then you see Blade Runner, then you watch Metropolis and it's like, oh, okay, so you now I understand, you know, and people kind of labor, people kind of like talk over the fact, you know, all the kind of this time around was the first time activist art in general, like there's not a lot of adorment on walls in terms of like you know,

paintings or like prints. There's a few, but generally they're they're kept for the upper classes, which is in keeping with you know, Europe at a certain point in time. You know, the workers barracks are completely bare. There's stone, there's no adornment, there's no nothing. I mean, there's not even like windows or anything. It's just straight cut. But In's visions when he's in bed and he sees the dance and Slim is at the foot of his bed.

If you look closely on the wall, there's a single i want to say, maybe like a watercolor, like a like a ukiyoe, like a woodblock print of like Japanese art, and you were talking about orientalism and the Yoshiwara stuff, and it's just running under the surface constantly, like all the design like Bajau's the Vienna Secession movement too was like a very important like influence on this, like not

only Clint but his contemporaries too. There's an incredible book I don't know, Ranja, if you, I was lucky enough to find it in my library catalog. It's called German Film ar Charchitecture nineteen eighteen to nineteen thirty three. It's in German and English both at the same time. Thank you very much for whoever decided to do that was published in twenty nineteen by a gallery and they have

the original production drawings for the Tower of Babel. They have depictions of Metropolis itself, they have how they're going to set up. This is where I learned that the production designers on Metropolis actually dictated the shot composite, which I had no idea what it previously On Niva Longan, the production designers actually drew where the camera would be placed, the platform, the height, the actors where they would be placed in the frame. And then they show the drawing

and the film and it's the same image. And they even have most incredibly, they have hands scrolled out drawings of Metropolis, like the city center, the shot of the cathedral where Fritz long actually dictated. He said, I don't want a standard office building here, I want a cathedral. And he just wrote straight on straight on the paper and he said, this is what I want. I want

the cathedral. And it's like you have the cathedral that is old and you have Rotwang like lair, and those are the two kind of like you know, talking about the German expressionist things where it's like kind of tips over into old Germany. You know, this is quote unquote modern Germany or way into the future, but then we kind of dip dip into the past and it becomes

a totally different film. I just wanted to mention in Passing if we don't get to it, that the scene of Rotvang chasing Maria in the catacombs, it could be from a movie from last year, Like it is the most startling, startlingly contemporary like editing feat I've seen in ages, and every time I watch the movie, it takes me,

it takes my breath away. That's probably my favorite part of the entire movie because Rodvang has the lighting is intentional where he has the light in his hand and so you see the light move as the gaze of the cameras and you try to find Maria and her face of bridget Helm, just afraid of what this man is going to do to her, and it's oh, it's so good.

there again there's this Neon shape. When he goes down to find rot Wang, he's coming down a spiral staircase. You know, it's very much associated with that character. And I don't know if it's supposed to be like, oh, he's twisted or something. You know, usually when I see a spiral staircase, it's a symbol of you know, going to the lower depths. You know, like you see spiral staircases and Hitchcock films all the time. You know, think of Scotty going up to the top of the tower

and vertigo kind of thing. You know, there's just all of this spiral stuff. And then that also plays into the Tower of Babble. Like I was talking about, how it feels like you go up and up and up going around these spirals. It's very Guggenheim ask, you know, with the way that that's almost like a Nautilus shell. Oh sorry again with the spirals, the up and down of the stuff across Maria's body, and especially across the

false Maria across the robot. I find that fascinating to the almost Leleu esque dress of the straps across Maria, the real Maria when you see her in the chamber. But it's very interesting that he's associated with that. And then going back to also the idea of the expressionism versus not expressionism. The I love that when rot Wang is taunting and not necessarily torturing Maria, but he's got

her in that room. In the attic again an attic that the shadows on the wall are not just painted on shadows, that these are real shadows created by light from a light source. So it's not that caligary effect of you know, painting the shadows onto things that it's an actual thing, like when she moves in front of that, you see those shadows on her dress that it's actually there. The one thing that we haven't talked about during this whole thing, too, is the use of the moving camera.

We don't have too many shots of a moving camera, but when those shots come around, they're very striking to me. I think the very first time you see it is when the explosion is happening in the factory and the way the camera kind of swoops in on freighter, and then there's also a swoop in later on when he is in rot Wang's place and he goes to reach for I don't remember what it is, but I just remember the camera moves and it's almost following his more

like emotional state than his physical state. But it is supposed to be his hand reaching out for this.

might be closer, one might be farther. You get a slightly different angle of course, just because of the geometry

of the space. And there's a great documentary about the restoration of the film, the whole finding of the Argentinian print and all this where they show a picture and this could be from Metrupolis, could be something else, but of three cameramen standing next to each other, and then they do a side by side comparison of here's what's in one version, Here's what's in the other version, and you can see that the framing is slightly different. Some of the takes are actually different.

restoration well, you can't substitute it. It's all different.

talking about Fritz Lang's Metropolis. The Marauder version is interesting. Can't say I'm a big ban of it, obviously.

I actually would have rather have had more of When I think of Georgia or Morouder, I think of the work that he was doing with Donna Summers and just the idea of the more electronic type of thing that he was doing. I would rather have had something like that or give me, you know. And of course there have been you know, you're talking Federico's far all of the different scores and things, and there have been like the Ally Orchestra has done a score. There's so many

different versions of the score for this. If you look on Wikipedia, they're just like scads and scads of people that have done scores for this. Moroder, as far as I know, he really pushed as far as like doing yet another edit of the film and then doing some interesting things as far as still frames or like images that they had from the film and then he would

try to animate those. Almost reminded me of like a Alan Parsons project music video with the way that he would move the images along and he would have like, you know, the Yoshiwara logo in the back and kind of go through the window to show us that thing. It was interesting as far as that goes, Like, Yeah, the pop music itself just didn't fit with the rest of the film. Sometimes it felt like the songs was just kind of fade out, fade back in later on, and I'm like, no, no, just give me a whole

electronic score. Give me Ahex Twins version of Metropolis. I would like to see that personally.

this is not what I signed up for. I will say I do love Blood from a Stone, the one song from this that I actually can stand of them working. I think it's kind of haunting and beautiful. You know, Moroder hint like he tinted the film, and he did what he could to restore it at the point of the footage that was extant, and at the end of it, I said, you know, it's not for me, but I

really respect him for putting up the money. You know, he put up his own money to make a restoration of the droplets and share it with people, and that just it's a testament to the continuing like power of the film that somebody would be willing to do and show it to people, so that people could take it within themselves and carry it and show it to more people, even if it has you know, the Bonnie Tyler songs. At least you've seen a version of Metropolis. You'll see another in ten seconds.

running in wide screen? The distributor sent us this lens in this aperture, but I don't know what to do with it. I don't know what they're for, so I just left him on the shelf. My god, is the Academy aperture. This is what you're supposed to use. It's an Academy reduction. But anyway, he didn't switch it, so I I'm not gonna watch this. So I waited years until it popped up at University of Buffalo and there was one projectionist there I liked and he trusted me.

I thought, okay, there are about four projections there, one and four chants. He'll be there tonight, So I went he was there. I had Howard reached into my pot. Use these apertures bring down the tall screen, and so I got to see the full image, as probably the only time that was ever shown at a cinema without being cropped. I watched it, and this tells me a lot about me, and it will tell you a lot

about me. I watched the whole movie, and when it ended, I thought, I thought there was going to be singing in this. I didn't hear any singing. I heard lots of loud music. I didn't hear any singing because I was so concentrating on the images, I didn't notice that many of one was singing on the ground track. But what I did notice about the movie is that this is not what I saw on PBS. This is not what I saw don ponchos. This is some other version of the movie. I wish I could put the three

side by side to see what the differences are. I can't put my finger on what the differences are. And I've seen them such great different times. I you know, it's not like I watched one and then an hour later I watched another, and I saw one months later, I saw another more than a decade later, I saw another, and so I could. I couldn't remember what the differences were. I just knew they were very, very different. But yeah, I have nothing against the moral de version, so long

as people know it's not the original. It's what Georgio Moroder paid his dues paid for the paid the licenses to do with the film. It's a Georgia Morada film. It's not a fitzlan film anymore. And if you like a Georgia morad film, fine, if you'd rather see the fitz long version that's available too, I'm okay with it. It did not get a big release because it didn't get a good distributor. Well I don't know where you two saw it, but it did not play at the big houses, led at the mom and pops.

some people to classic silent cinema. Will you talk about I keep going back to Caligari. There's a great video for Living Dead Girl by Rob Zombie or White Zombie. I don't remember if it's a solo or a band act that is all Caligari or even And I'm not a fan of this band at all, but Smashing Pumps one of their videos was basically a redo of a trip to the Moon, So it's like, okay, this is a good way at least to introduce people. So like

Moroder and that version of his thing. At least it's a way to get people introduced to old classic cinema. And yes it's very boulderized, but at least it's there and it's a way for people, hopefully to go. I'm interested in finding out more about this.

pull Metropolis with it. It's like it changes for the times and people now they want it to be in color, and they want it to be the speed that they like and at the resolution that even if it's you know, bastardized, even if it's not whatded I mean you say Long didn't want any music. I'm not going to go that far. I'm not going to watch Metropolis without music. I can't do it. Don't make me.

past and grabbing you. It's that it's just completely universal, and you know, seeing that transposed to the metrics of our time of what film and what basically internet media is supposed to look like, it's the it's almost Metropolis itself saying, you know, I'm going to be here for a long time. If we're coming up on one hundred years, there is no doubt in my mind that one hundred years from now the image of the false Maria in that chair with the rings around her will be where.

You know, it might be in a book, it might be on the internet, it might be an art you're talking about music videos. I mean, it just rolls on and on and on. And that's how silent cinema survives. And I'm so happy the Metropolis survives because so many films of that era just completely got butchered and destroyed, lost and fires everything, and we have, you know, lunatics and film fanatics to thank for keeping it, you know, the Argentinian Film Archive, all just it just it just endures.

have been influenced by this, so many music videos. I know that I think it was the might have been the Rosenbomb and commentary, or might have been another commentary that I heard where they're talking about was it Express Yourself the Madonna where it's like, yep, here we go. Here's another influence on Metropolis. And we haven't even talked about the two thousand and one anime version, which I was reading more about that, and it was based on manga from was it the forties, but it was definitely

older than the two thousand and one date. But that two thousand and one version apparently takes takes a different track than the Are Attacked than the manga and really feels like it's more like beholden to Metropolis itself, but then also with a lot of Blade Runner inside of there, because it's not just a society of a few replicants

are few robots, but it's many, many robots. And this whole idea of the robot underclass, I mean very I robot again with an influence very this idea of the servants, you know, the planet of the apeseness of it, where you've got that underclass of difference and then the way that the difference gets played out, and some of that was I'm not a big anime guy, obviously, We've only done a few anime films on this podcast over the last fourteen years, but it was decent and it was interesting.

I'm not a big fan of the character design where they look very cartoonish and things, but yeah, I found some of it to be kind of interesting and just a new way of looking at the material.

most movies I can't even get through once. But Metropolis, I think I made it probably fifty times by now, or close to it. But I've seen the Museum Modern Art version, the Australian version that I sent you the links to that on YouTube. I saw the nineteen sixty three German version with Mulis score. I saw the nineteen sixty five version with the Cornard Elcher score. I saw it the BBC two version which was shown on PBS with the Electronics score. Yeah, this goes on and on.

Every time. It's something different, and it's edited differently, and different scenes are missing a lot of them. They don't even have Malhias dance in the middle. It's gone censors did.

his friend jealously was not in there. And it's like, it's so fascinating to try to peel back these layers and just say who made these decisions and why were these decisions made? So obviously Maria's bear back, Oh that might be too titillating, you know, but like why the look, why was that cut? Why are some of these reaction shots cut? And it's just I love watching these kind of film mode where you can say, like, oh, okay, what was the logic behind removing all of hell? You know?

And obviously, like we're saying it can't be censorship. Is it just we're gonna remove that subplot? And that seems much more logical to me, is we're going to remove all references to the mother. And then when you start removing references to mothers, then you start talking about like feminist film theory and all these things, And I just love that there are so many different ways of looking at this. I like that Rosenbaum really comes to things

from more of a Freudian point of view. I love to read films that way, and you know, talking about the id in the underground and all these kind of things. But there are so many different ways to to you know, skin this cat, sorry Ranjie, to skin this cat that

it's just wild to be able to see. Like well, Marouder, he removed a lot of the use of the montage and things, and you know, within the American version is much more straight shot, reverse shot kind of stuff, and like Lang's original montage and montage being so important, especially in silent cinema, but still, you know, montage is one of like my favorite things. I love the use of editing, and I love the power of editing to be able to see those edits right there in your face. Watching

that restored twenty ten was a version of it. It's just great. And it seems amazing that it's gone fifteen years and we haven't had yet another update of this. It feels like we're maybe on the brink of yet another discovery because there are still versions out there, there's shot differences, there's all of these things I would almost love to see, like the every single different version of this that there's available. I mean, where's the box set of here's all of these different versions.

put them back in. See you don't have the time. Someone needs to do that. I'm sure more of the film will pop up. I'm almost convinced that there's a complete print incost film a fund that's mislabeled and that I hope ticks up before I broke what that's.

dangerous the stock is. We were going to transfer all of these night Trates prints to thirty five, Oh you know, it would cost way too much, so we have to transfer it to sixteen. I'm like, oh God, that just hurts so much to hear. And you see the loss of the quality and the different aspect ratios and all this, and you're just like, oh, somebody just to make a

cost seeming thing. And when they were talking about how it was stored and it wasn't stored correctly, and you're just like, you see all of these mistakes from the past, just adding up to where we're at now and just going Yep, because people were fucking cheap or they couldn't store the nitrate film, this is what we're ending up with.

means one point eight five to one wide screen. You can't watch it. Run a full aperture movie at one point eight five and see anything that's cutting off half the image. The film by then was shriveled, so a guy went up to the projection booth and put his fingers at the top of the gate to hold the rails in tightly so that it wouldn't buckle as much. That's why I got so scratched. If they had just left it alone, not shown it, donated it to a

German archive, we'd have the movie. And they when they printed it through sixteen millimeter, they didn't even print it through the proper gate, so they pumped it to the Academy aperture and lost the top on the side. Knuckle heads, something more is going to pop up, I'm certain.

Wonderful world of film restoration.

do not function at that level. I mean in Uruguay they had a leftist film archive that was made during the Junta years and it was destroyed for political reasons. It's just a totally different ballgame, like art is superfluous. I mean, the people that run that film archive, they're not even federally funded through Argent. It's just like a museum.

We can lament the past. I'm lad that we have it, like you guys have saying, but there is that aspect too, where Metropolis was found, like in the two thousands, and they got a lot of funding from ZDF and art and a bunch of like German film archives that are all credited at the end all over the world. But still to this day they're struggling to get funding to

save their films, the films that they still have. And you can like say, well, you know, you should have kept your nitrate, you know, climate controlled vaults, all this kind of and it's like, have you ever been to Brazil. It's not going to happen with a with a country

under a military dictatorship. It's just you know, the Western the Western powers they have they have the money to put into art as soft power and propaganda, but South America doesn't have the power projection to be worth that well.

created on VHS and see the differences. And then even when they took it to then that finally opened up doors and got them to go to actual like Berlin or wherever in Germany and show it there. And they were showing either a VHS or DBDR at that point, and they're just like m hmm, yeah, oh yeah, there's a slight difference here. Oh there's a slight difference there. And they're not seeing a lot of stuff in the

first few reels. And then finally it starts to kick in and they're just like everybody sits up in their chairs, so they're like, oh, okay, this is interesting, you know. Then they finally start to believe him. And it just felt like kind of like you're saying, Federico, and this is not the attitude I want to have, which is all these these simpletons in Argentina. No, they're doing a

fantastic job. And yes, under very bad circumstances. I mean, the Perone regime was not very kind to anyone, much less film restorationists or film keepers, and so yeah, and it's really only again going back to what I was saying at the very beginning thanks to this guy who

was had kept a copy of this. It was kind of like that, hopefully, one of these days we're going to see the copy that was sent from of Magnificent Amberson's during the editing phase down from Brazil to Orson Wells when he's you know, that's the theory and hopefully one of these days is going to pan out. They said this version down to Argentina, this guy's like, oh,

I fucking love this movie. This is fantastic. And then I love too that he changed the ending, that he took a little bit of the early part of it Tropolis and put it at the end to show the city still or has been restored, and basically like, now we have our happy ending. So we do have a slightly different end to that version of it, just because the guy was like, no, no, let's give this a happier ending.

planning phase. I really want to do kind of like a breakdown of this year's Nitrate with my friend to like talk about the movies and keep it as kind of like a memo, and especially the last film. I really want to go into that and get people's like discussions because everybody at the festival was talking about it, but it's in like scattered, tiny little discussions, so it'd

be nice to pull it all together. So, Mike, if you get a message for me asking for your thoughts on nitread as a whole and specific films in particular, don't be surprised.