I hadn't seen this before, though I of course knew about the infamous eyeball scene. Often lauded as a masterpiece, it's a French/Spanish surrealist short film by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali but I'm not going to describe the film any more than that — watch it and you'll understand!
I have to say I'm seriously wondering if there's an Emperor's New Clothes thing going on here. Buñuel is a revered director (who made several highly regarded films surprisingly not on this list) and Dali is one of the most famous artists of the last century, so obviously this has to be a great film. After all, that's what film students the world over are told. So how come it seems to be total shit? Oh well, it must be my shortcomings as a film watcher because all those people can't be wrong. I don't want to look like a dick so I'll just pretend that it's actually awesome.
Except I'm more than happy to look like a dick, so here's an honest review.
The most interesting thing about it is probably the fact that it's utterly meaningless. And that's not me being stupid; the writers purposefully made it void of all symbolism, metaphor or interpretation. This means that any critic who claims to possess some deep understanding of it is an idiot. There's also no plot and I'm pretty sure there aren't any characters either — there are actors in common through the piece but they're just showroom dummies on which the director dresses his bizarre scenes. Just because the girl in the opening scene looks the same as the girl running away from the bloke tied to the pianos (sigh...) doesn't mean it's the same person any more than Jake Gittes is the same person as Jack Torrance. The whole thing is just really empty and pointless.
Don't put this down to surrealism-bashing. I'm not against the movement and it led to some excellent pieces of artwork. David Lynch's backwards-talking dwarf, for example, is one of the coolest scenes in all television and is undoubtedly "surreal". True surrealism tries to express the chaos of the mind and the trip into Dale Cooper's dream psyche is perfectly weird. Un Chien Andalou, by comparison, is just very tiresome. A load of random stuff happens but you don't care about any of it, can't find any meaning in it and it's not even particularly interesting from a purely visual perspective.
Watch Porky in Wackyland instead — a much better example of surrealist film.
Tuesday 16 November 2010
Tuesday 9 November 2010
37. Metropolis
I first saw this about 15 years ago when Channel 4 showed the colour-tinted Giorgio Moroder rock opera version, running at 80 minutes. I loved it of course, and didn't even mind the music despite the multiple Razzie nominations. Then a couple of weeks ago I went to the cinema to see the newly rediscovered and lovingly restored almost complete version: pure black and white with an authentic score and a whopping 150 minute running time. Some of the difference in time is technical (the Moroder version was run at a slightly faster speed and used subtitles instead of intertitles) but also there are a lot of previously lost scenes added. In fact, there are now only a couple of scenes missing from the film shown at the 1927 Berlin premiere and they mark these in this version with title cards explaining what should be happening.
In a word, it's awesome and a completely different experience to the first time I saw it. In fact, apart from the iconic scenes everybody knows, it's as if they're two different films. If you've seen Metropolis before and you enjoyed it you owe it to yourself to catch this re-release.
The Metropolis of the title is a sprawling futuristic city with a stark division between the rich thinkers who live in luxury in their ivory towers and the practically enslaved working class who live underground and make the city's machines tick. Both halves are magnificently depicted. Above we have the incredible soaring tower blocks, opulent night-spots and fantastical transport systems - all modelled on the New York of the 20's, itself a futuristic landscape for European eyes. Down below are the machines: enormous, complex and industrial with little or no automation and requiring hordes of oppressed workers to run. The whole thing, of course, is an allegory of Communism but this wasn't the film's strong point for me. In fact, the central thesis of the film — that "between the head and the hands lies the heart" — is a bit heavy-handed (not to mention nauseating) and really didn't need to be repeated throughout the film; there is such a thing as subtext, y'know. That said, this was 1927 and audiences hadn't yet been subjected to thousands of films on this subject so maybe I'm just jaded.
While the politics might not be especially inspired, the film more than makes up for it in sexy robots. Mad scientist Rotwang — who has more than a shade of Strangelove about him — creates the man-machine to replace his dead love and it takes on the appearance of Maria, the leader of an underground movement for better working conditions. With Maria out of the way, the evil doppelgänger actually encourages the workers to rise up so that the city boss has an excuse to kill them off and replace them with an army of robots. It's not quite that simple, though, as Rotwang plans to double-cross him and his son has grown a conscience and rebels (mostly because he's trying to pull Maria).
Brigitte Helm is probably the best thing about the film. It's an incredible performance: virginal and strong as Maria; deranged and sexy as hell as the robot. I can't have been the only person in the audience who preferred the evil version, though, erotically writhing around with those maniacal eyes. It is actually surprisingly risqué, not that I was complaining. Evil Maria does like to touch herself and even in metal form she's built for sex appeal. And that dance, phew! I've read that Fritz Lang (the director) was a bit of a tyrant and that the shoot was hell for many of the cast, especially Helm, but it clearly got the best out of her.
The film is chock full of iconic scenes: the transformation scene, obviously; Freder at the clock (but lord knows what mechanism he's actually working there); the children fleeing the rising flood waters; Rotwang chasing Maria through the pitch-black tunnels; and of course those amazing Futurama cityscapes. It's exciting and intelligent and massively influential to not only science fiction film makers. Perhaps in another 15 years they'll have discovered the last missing pieces in some cave in Afghanistan and I'll go and see it again.
In a word, it's awesome and a completely different experience to the first time I saw it. In fact, apart from the iconic scenes everybody knows, it's as if they're two different films. If you've seen Metropolis before and you enjoyed it you owe it to yourself to catch this re-release.
The Metropolis of the title is a sprawling futuristic city with a stark division between the rich thinkers who live in luxury in their ivory towers and the practically enslaved working class who live underground and make the city's machines tick. Both halves are magnificently depicted. Above we have the incredible soaring tower blocks, opulent night-spots and fantastical transport systems - all modelled on the New York of the 20's, itself a futuristic landscape for European eyes. Down below are the machines: enormous, complex and industrial with little or no automation and requiring hordes of oppressed workers to run. The whole thing, of course, is an allegory of Communism but this wasn't the film's strong point for me. In fact, the central thesis of the film — that "between the head and the hands lies the heart" — is a bit heavy-handed (not to mention nauseating) and really didn't need to be repeated throughout the film; there is such a thing as subtext, y'know. That said, this was 1927 and audiences hadn't yet been subjected to thousands of films on this subject so maybe I'm just jaded.
While the politics might not be especially inspired, the film more than makes up for it in sexy robots. Mad scientist Rotwang — who has more than a shade of Strangelove about him — creates the man-machine to replace his dead love and it takes on the appearance of Maria, the leader of an underground movement for better working conditions. With Maria out of the way, the evil doppelgänger actually encourages the workers to rise up so that the city boss has an excuse to kill them off and replace them with an army of robots. It's not quite that simple, though, as Rotwang plans to double-cross him and his son has grown a conscience and rebels (mostly because he's trying to pull Maria).
Brigitte Helm is probably the best thing about the film. It's an incredible performance: virginal and strong as Maria; deranged and sexy as hell as the robot. I can't have been the only person in the audience who preferred the evil version, though, erotically writhing around with those maniacal eyes. It is actually surprisingly risqué, not that I was complaining. Evil Maria does like to touch herself and even in metal form she's built for sex appeal. And that dance, phew! I've read that Fritz Lang (the director) was a bit of a tyrant and that the shoot was hell for many of the cast, especially Helm, but it clearly got the best out of her.
The film is chock full of iconic scenes: the transformation scene, obviously; Freder at the clock (but lord knows what mechanism he's actually working there); the children fleeing the rising flood waters; Rotwang chasing Maria through the pitch-black tunnels; and of course those amazing Futurama cityscapes. It's exciting and intelligent and massively influential to not only science fiction film makers. Perhaps in another 15 years they'll have discovered the last missing pieces in some cave in Afghanistan and I'll go and see it again.
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