Fritz Lang's Metropolis is a viewing experience like no
other. The pre-2001 VHS version rushes at you, throwing an image at you,
then pulling away before you can fully process it. People are either
running frantically from one enigmatc space to anotherr, or standing
frozen in anguish. The whole effect is vaguely alarming. It's like
watching people hastening their own deaths. The effect is also, frankly,
a bit bombastic, especially when compared to M., which unfolds
according to its own sinister logic.
However, a new restoration of Metropolis, the second since 2001, brings us the closest we're ever going to get to the version that premiered in Berlin in 1927. David Bordwell, one of the deans of film studies, has seen the restored print, based upon reels discovered in Argentina in 2008. Bordwell begins,
Metropolis has never been my favorite Lang of the period, but this version makes the strongest possible case for the film. It’s hard to dislike its shameless, preposterous ambitions, its stew of biblical and modern ingredients, its bold architectural vistas, and its trancelike characterizations. Also, people running crazily about in gargantuan spaces can usually hold your interest.
According to Bordwell, the 2008 restoration, completed by a team at the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung, restores critical plot elements, providing better context for the film's hurly burly visual language. The film action now makes more sense. With the plot fleshed out, the thematic emphasis changes. Traditionally Metropolis has been regarded as an early science fiction film or a standard example of German Expressionism. Now it appears to be an allegory of class struggle. Bordwell also reports that Metropolis appears more firmly situated in its historical moment, both in German film and in Lang's career. Bordwell says Lang has "perfected his breathless version of silent-film narration." The film is "a compendium of everything in the air in 1927 Germany.”
Bordwell is one of those rare film viewers who sees everything. (One of his blog entries is entitled "My name is David and I’m a frame-counter.") For example, Bordwell counts the intertitles in order to make a point about Lang's narrative technique, which departed from the practice of the late silent era and its liberal use of expository and dialogue intertitles. Bordwell provides a great primer on film techniques of the period, particularly Lang's fluid camera movements within scenes and his inventive means of linking scenes through the play of visual metaphors. Metropolis reminds us of what was lost om the conversion to sound, which naturalized the image and tamed the camera.
The restored version of Metropolis will appear on Turner Classic Movies this fall, and then released on DVD in the US by Kino International.
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