Metropolis (1927)

 "The mediator between brain and hands must be the heart..."

I've been resisting watching the fully restored print of this film for some time. Not because I wasn't keen to see it, but because, well, when you're choosing which film to watch, the one with the three hour run time might, in the moment, seem off-puttingly long. But I've seen it now, and my mind is reeling. The film is, in some ways, not one might expect from a science fiction classic, but its aesthetics and its themes are very much of the Weimar Republic, after hyperinflation but before the Wall Street Crash.

One thing must be addressed, though: the writer, Thea von Harbou, would later co-operate with the Nazis, whereas Fritz Lang would divorce her, leave Germany, taking his magnificent monocle with him. I don't think this can be said to taint the film at all, quite frankly. Von Harbou's Nazi ties can be seen as quite passive, she had an Indian husband... and no one in 1927 could have known what was to come, Hitler being seen as a bit of a Farage figure. But... yeah, let's be a bit more wary of those Farageists, shall we?

The look of the film is incredible. One could make the obvious observation that this is Fritz Lang doing German Expressionist cinema, but this 1927 vision of the future is fascinating. An age of Modernism, a future Metropolis that looks VERY Le Corbusier. And the plot revolves entirely around the extremities of social class. Realism is nowhere to be seen. Acting is deliberately expressive, and characters are vehicles for the film's ideas rather than three dimensional people- said as observation, not criticism. It's just that sort of film.

Hence the shuffling misery of the underclass being quite obviously choreographed, and the exaggerated leisure pursuits of the wealthy young men. The work, which we see Freder voluntarily undertake for a shift, reminding me of the myth of Sisyphus. The long, lingering visual shots which are what makes this fairly simple film, in which relatively little happens, so very long. Yet it doesn't drag: the visuals are the point.

There is religious imagery here aplenty- the Tower of Babel, apocalyptic stuff from the Book of Revelation, but this is really there to serve what is very much a political rather than religious subtext: the immense gap between rich and poor, the intense inequality. As Freder says to his father early on, there is a risk of revolution, and this in a Germany where Bavaria had relatively recently erupted into Communist revolt. Yet, in the frightening violence of the mob, we also see the potential horrors of populism, of Fascism.

The film is a triumph of visual cinema, but also a fascinating political artifact of its time, eschewing realism for a type of satire that almost reminds me of Voltaire's Candide or Zadig. Not one for the casual viewer, but a true cinematic masterpiece.

Frau im Mond (1929)

"Learned ignoramuses, lacking in fantasy, whose brains work in inverse proportion to their level of calcification…!"

I can't watch Metropolis yet, as I still haven't got around to buying the restored version, including all the recently recovered clips. But I do happen to own this, a very different science fiction film by Fritz Lang, from just a couple of years later and grounded very much in "hard" sci-fi. And it's a fascinating document of film history as well as of space travel in popular culture.

For all that it's very much of its time and very German (the car number plates are recognisably German even in 1929, and I was amazed to see that the credits and intertitles use the long "s", something which I imagined had fallen out of use during the eighteenth century!), this reminds me very much of Bollywood films in one important respect. Bollywood films tend not to specialise, but to be aimed at a very wide audience of all ages and backgrounds, and both genders. Hence films tend to include action, romance, comedy, songs, etc. This film may not have any songs (a silent film hardly could!) but it ticks pretty much all the other boxes.

We have science fiction, obviously. We have romantic drama in the form of the love triangle between Helius, Friede and Windegger. We have an extended comic sequence at the beginning, in the Professor's flat. Most of the first hour is devoted to a bizarre, but entertaining, conspiracy theory thriller. There's even a quick shoot-out. This is several films in one; no wonder it's so bloody long.

It doesn't feel too long, though, strange though it can feel for a silent film, to feature so many sequences of people talking. It's never boring; the acting style sees to that. This is very much a melodrama, with all that entails. This is probably essential, and it works; the characters are all extremely well-rounded. We have the brave, determined but worry-prone Helius, whose name seems to evoke the Icarus myth, rather appropriately. We have the decent but cowardly Windegger. We have Friede, the bravest, most loyal and most collected of the whole of them, and the epitome of the strong woman. She's the heroine of the film. We have the Professor, our requisite comedy character. We have Gustav, the boy in short trousers with his sci-fi pulp magazines.

But perhaps the most interesting character is Walt Turner, he of the superhuman powers of disguise. The hairstyle and mannerisms evoke Hitler very, very strongly, and in the Germany of 1929 this can be no accident. Interestingly, the Hitler character is the only one who isn't German, and he hasn't got a moustache (that would be too blatant!), but it's hard to escape the conclusion that Fritz Lang was not exactly a fan of Hitler's; it's hardly a flattering portrayal. Not only is Turner incredibly sinister and villainous, but he's by far the most cowardly (and dishevelled!) during the g-force section. Hitler is being treated as a contemptible Nick Griffin figure which is, of course, exactly what he was in 1929. The Nazi party didn't exactly come to power by promising to shove people into concentration camps and murder six million Jews; they kept rather quiet about that. That's something which should be borne in mind by anyone who imagines the BNP or the like are remotely less dangerous.

Still, it's weird to see the Hitler figure as the one who's part of the sort of conspiracy which, in Germany between the wars, can hardly not have anti-Semitic overtones. This cabal of four rich men and one cigar-chomping woman is utterly ridiculous and not remotely believable. Then again, there are depressing numbers of people today who believe even more obviously stupid conspiracy theories, so perhaps I shouldn't judge.

It's hard not to be impressed by the prescience with which manned space flight is depicted, with two caveats, both forgiveable. Yes, to have the Moon (or even just an unseen part of it) be breathable and habitable is a bit dodgy. But there are, I think, very good grounds to plead artistic licence here. It's 1929; everyone knows that actual travel to the Moon is decades away, and at least they're acknowledging that the known part of the Moon is airless. Besides, there's a literary tradition of a habitable Moon from Verne and Wells (whose novel is echoed in the strong element of greed here).

The other odd thing is that this is a private expedition, not state sponsored, although surely only a nation, and a major one at that, could possibly be able to fund such an undertaking, especially back then? But, those little things aside, there are so many amazingly correct predictions. An unmanned vessel, equipped with a camera, was sent first. Travel is by rocket, and it has three stages. There's a countdown, the first ever example of what would become a well-worn trope. There's a sort of spacesuit which, rather logically, looks like a deep sea diving suit. There's even weightlessness, with people walking by aid of footstraps in the floor!

There are things to raise eyebrows, of course. The Moon has an atmosphere as strong as the Earth's, which is not only a problem in itself but raises the question of how they can take off again. The different stages of the rocket have to be jettisoned manually during a period of strong g-forces, which seems rather risky. But the film gets so many things right that it seems churlish to complain; I'd be amazed if Werner Von Braun didn't turn out to have seen this film...

The film may have dated a little, it's very long for a silent movie, but it held my interest throughout and is a fascinating little historical document.