Sculpture and Metropolis

The FUTURE is really old.

I just saw the restored version of Metropolis, the Complete Metropolis.

The complete Metropolis has restored scenes, found in film archives, edited out and unseen for decades.

Metropolis is wonderful on several levels. No pun intended, as the added sections make the plot more understandable. I'm amazed by the visuals of the segregated city of pleasure gardens and underground workers labyrinths. There are no "dance" sequences, but the movement of the workers changing shifts and at the clock are beautifully choreographed, and still very moving.

What I found interesting is how the present frames the past. Watching the heroine and children try to escape drowning by climbing the stairs made me think of the people in the twin towers escaping by descending the countless stairs in the dark. Context frames content.

Watching Metropolis is to see a bridge from the past to the future. Some of the acting (the hero and heroine) is stage, silent film, with  every emotion sold to the back row. Yet the understated father /villain is THE prototype for every cold, withdrawn intellectual ever since. Every film from Dr. Strangelove to Blade Runner owes an enormous debt to the creativity of the original. Go see Metropolis.