all the news that print will fit.
|
|
| notes from underground - societal whispers all the news that print will fit. |
|
|
Sunday, November 23, 2003 np: the church - the blurred crusade last tuesday i went to the carolina theatre here in greensboro for their monthly revival movie showing. they've been showing classic movies for awhile now on the 2nd (or so) tuesday of each month, with a matinee and night time showing. it's only five dollars (cheaper than your average night time commercial movie house) and the proceeds always go to the greensboro art council and the upkeep of the carolina theatre, which is a restored theatre house originally built in 1927. it is a magnificent piece of architecture. if you ever get a chance to pop in and see the main theatre it's quite a treat. the movie this month was quite a doozy. it was a restored (magnificently, i might add) copy of the 1927 fritz lang classic metropolis. having only ever seen bits and pieces of this groundbreaking film before, i was really excited to actually see the 'full' version. unfortunately, due to film preservation techniques (or lack thereof), about a full quarter of the movie has been lost to the ravages of time. how they have dealt with this is a combination of the following: filling in the blank spots with still frames (if they exist - this is used only once to give an important image its presence, otherwise unseen in the film); filling in short, unimportant missing spots with black reel; filling in large missing spots with black title cards that explain how the plot proceeds in the missing section. admittedly this can be a bit jarring, but what can you do? the version i saw is, purportedly, the most complete version of the movie in existence right now. jeremy and i, with our perverse depth of american 20th century cultural/pop-cultural knowledge, have just about ruined anything from < 1940s from being interpreted in a fully straight manner. we went to see the jazz singer at the carolina last spring and nearly fell out of our chairs throughout most of the film, stifling ourselves. well, granted, we didn't find the blackface performances that amusing. but having grown up exposed to various bits of reels and movies from that time period, i identify them very closely with the american culture that i digested in my youth. it all feels very much at home with me. but i can't help the fact that when the young al jolsen's character is caught singing and dancing in a jazz hole, his father's friend relates the story to jolsen's father by saying: "he was singing that raggy time music!" admit it. that's funny. metropolis has its share of (sometimes unintentionally - well, mostly unintentional actually) funny things. particularly funny is the scene depicting the moral decline of metropolis city, lascivious dancing and sinful merry-making re-enacted in all its hedonistic glory. watching the tuxedoed men of metropolis breathing heavily and drooling (almost, but not quite, slapping themselves in the face ala 8 1/2 - thanks for the tip on that, jeremy) over the Maria character is quite hilarious. this, of course, is where one asks: so, josh, you keep talking about how this supposedly great piece of film making just made you laugh a lot at its anachronistic placement in our current society. so is it good? well, in a nutshell... yes. honestly, i went in expecting to be sitting through a two-hour, black and white, silent, german film just for the sake of having experienced the art. what i got, was a surprisingly engaging and entertaining film. the visuals are absolutely stunning. it cost lang in the area of five-million marks (german money, for those unfamiliar with the pre-euro world) to make this film. a really absurd amount for the time. but metropolis is a city that breathes, in a way that many modern films don't achieve. granted, metropolis city is as much a character as any human in the film, so this adds to the life of the gotham, but lang makes it interact, bringing its many flaws and lines to the surface. the thin man is also one of the most menacing figures in silent film. one criticism that is (unfairly, i believe) levelled at silent film actors is that their facial expressions and so forth are almost overacted, since they lack vocal expression. there is an art to telling the story with your eyes and face, and lang's thin man is a dark and wearying figure. the fact that he is a minor, though important, character doesn't alleviate his impact. all in all it is easy to see why metropolis has had such a lasting impact on film. much in the same way that the beatles, the beach boys, even the velvet underground have had their impression permanently set on music to this day, without the lines always being immediately traceable, so has metropolis impacted film. it, like those bands in modern music, has become so ingrained in the modern idea of film, that it is almost inescabable. tim burton's gotham city in either of the first two batman films; chaplain's modern times; dark city; the matrix trilogy; blade runner (or any of ridley scott's sci-fi films). all of these owe an obvious and deep debt to the pioneering landscape of lang. for all that alone, this movie has stood the test of time. and hopefully it will for some time to come. there is still much to be dug out of its insides. not to mention the importance of its morality-play-style conclusion, which is actually very sharp and timely for us: there can be no understanding between the hand and the brain unless the heart acts as mediator. indeed. posted by J. Neas | 11/23/2003 01:11:00 PM
Comments:
Post a Comment
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
