https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/literature/21l-011-the-film-expe...
I subscribed to the Criterion Channel after watching the lectures, which has a number of the movies referenced in the course. I developed a new appreciation for Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. There is a lecture on German film:
https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/literature/21l-011-the-film-expe...
Prof. Thorburn doesn't seem to like Metropolis either:
> It's much admired by certain film scholars, although not by me.
That said, I don't know what Lang's political views were, and Serfdom has been abolished in Germany for about 100 years when the movie was made.
I actually like like the movie quite a bit, but I've always been disappointed with the ending.
That's my main impression from a lot of texts written by Wells about the "modern" world. Reading them, it's easy not only to recognize that he had wrong predictions, but even that he didn't have a good enough idea about the world of his time. Interestingly enough, in spite of that, some of his observation and conclusions based on them, when they were correct as far as his myopic view reached, can be indeed lucid.
Still, I'm very sure that he's not at all unique, neither in his time nor in our current. Most of us are myopic as soon as we start to write about the "big" topics, and even more when our political biases are to be present. In many decades, whatever we saw wrong will be much more obvious.
“In him I realised that Communism could after all, in spite of Marx, be enormously creative. After the tiresome class-war fanatics I had been encountering among the Communists, […], this amazing little man, with his frank admission of the immensity and complication of the project of Communism and his simple concentration upon its realisation, was very refreshing. He at least has a vision of a world changed over and planned and built afresh,”
Anyone who has romantic illusions about that period should read Montefiore's `Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar`.
Reminds me of when I used to fly for work a dozen times a year. A 737 is basically a bus with wings. Probably even less so. And a further point like me sitting a 737 back in the 80's Metropolis's denizens I think don't find their technology dazzling.
"Fritz Lang's Monster: Was Metropolis a Pro-Nazi Film"[1] by Elly Hoffman is one of these, and it echoes the conclusions of the others:
"Thea Von Harbou may very well have attempted to slip her pro-Nazi opinions into Metropolis, but ultimately Metropolis not only does not reflect how Nazi Germany operated in practice -- -- the Nazis' failure to truly uplift the working class -- -but it actively disregards and objects to the pillars of Nazism. The Führerprinzip is rejected in Metropolis' critique of Joh Fredersen, the Volksgemeinschaft is contradicted in its promotion of general equality and its lack of a 'racial enemy', and the Judenkampf is contradicted in the absence of an all-evil Jewish caricature, as well in Metropolis' portrayal of the beauty of technology not lying in its use for exterminating the enemy, the Jew, but instead as being the very goal when building Utopia. The Nazi ideals, the Nazi vision of Utopia, not only does not exist in New Babylon, but Maria and Freder's mission ends up casting such ideals and visions into the gutter."
[1] - https://medium.com/science-technoculture-in-film/fritz-langs...
> while Metropolis might posit some ideas with regard to cooperation between the classes for the ‘greater good’
But the movie does not stop there. It actually says "Gee, wouldn't it be nice if there was some Mediator guy that made everyone get along?". That's the "slight nod" I was referring to.
And the thesis that a movie is not leaning towards a certain ideology because it does not present all of its principles in spades is untenable. Olympia and Triumph of the Will also lack an "evil Jewish caricature" and "enemy-exterminating technology", but does that means they "object to the pillars of Nazism"?
Edit: I should clarify, I do not want to diminish the artistic value of Metropolis, which I love. I am just pointing out that it's better seen as a "fairy tale" (as Lang himself said) than as a "political" movie.
While some of the themes are obvious—rich living in the sky, poor toiling underground… I had trouble fully understanding the point of the lady robot and "heart mediating between the head and the hand" angle. Wells' helped me come to a better understanding, thanks for that.
I think he gets much right, about art's fear of technology. I found his complaints about car and plane models nitpicky however. (They had already spent too much, I suppose they could have spent more.) I am generally pro-technology/efficiency, however there are negative aspects that often need to be addressed for the good of society, and aren't.
But then he drops square into urban planning and the density/NIMBY debate, which affects many parts of society today:
He's both right and wrong, and there is definitely a tension between these forces today. Mid-century the movement was outward, these days inward. It took decades, but NIMBYs seem to have finally lost the upper hand, in my city at least. Population is increasing so it is somewhat inevitable in the long run.Interestingly, Wells also gets bogged down in the details of mechanical efficiency, which have put numbers of folks out of work. But when we watched it, my brain immediately converted the factory to a metaphor of modern work, not the physical production of cheap goods. We see today it is quite possible to fleece the poor and increase homelessness by limiting housing and inflating assets, cheap goods or not. Manipulating the masses has never been easier, as well. In any case, lots to think about.