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Metropolis Reconstructed 156

Posted by chrisd from the fredersen-is-the-link dept.
Matt W writes "The New York Times (free as in beer reg, blah blah) has an article about a recent reconstruction of Fritz Lang's Metropolis. After being butchered by studios, Martin Koerber and Alpha-Omega have restored most of the scenes and score. Film Forum on Houston St. in NY City will be showing the film for two weeks." Collect all three! I don't think they're using Georgio Morodor for the soundtrack for this one.
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Metropolis Reconstructed

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  • The anime was the best! I loved the ragtime soundtrack. They didn't even credit Fritzy though :(
    • The anime was the best! I loved the ragtime soundtrack. They didn't even credit Fritzy though :(

      That's because the anime was actually an adaptation of a Japanese comic book, and not a reincarnation of Fritz Lang's masterpiece. Here is a handy link [rottentomatoes.com], if you want to learn more about the anime, or get trailers, etc.

      • Re:Metropolis (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Picass0 ( 147474 )
        Actually, the anime was based on a manga by Osamu Tezuka, and that manga was inspired by F.L.'s Metropolis. Even twice removed for it's original inspiration, it still would have been appropriate to credit Fritz at the end of the Anime.
  • Could someone explain to me what the hell this article is about? It's just words, man!
    • well, without actually reading the article, it would appear that 2 dudes are redoing metropolis, the 1919 dystopian film by fritz lang. this is to i guess make up for an appearently bad version redone in the 70s [my guess, since he mentioned giorgio].

      and it is being shown at Film Forum on Houston St. in NY City for two weeks.
      • ...and upon some research, the original was 1925-27, and the remake was 65 [hey, i was close :/]

        see http://us.imdb.com/Title?0017136
      • Thanks for your explanation. I got a bit confused, as the story wasn't praising Linux or bashing Microsoft. Not really news for nerds eh?

    • Re:Eh? (Score:3, Informative)

      by cybrpnk2 ( 579066 )
      Metropolis is a silent German black-and-white film that is considered to be the first true Sci-fi film, done in the early 1920s. Some documentation and still photos are here [persocom.com.br]. The part of Metropolis everybody remembers is that the bad guys make a robot to take the place of the heroine Maria and the scene where the robot is activated is FANTASTIC. A great special effect even by todays standards that blew away audiences in the 1920s.

    • Re:Eh? (Score:2)

      by tcc ( 140386 )
      >ould someone explain to me what the hell this article is about? It's just words, man!

      It's about a Peasant needing additional lumber.
  • I'm kind of embarrassed to say it, but I actually liked the rocked-up, colorized 80's release. Of course, I haven't seen it for at least a decade, so perhaps I'd feel differently about it now. It was my introduction to Metropolis, however, and I thought it was pretty damn cool.

    I'm very excited to hear about the "restored" release (hope it comes to my metro soon), though it sounds like there are a number of rolls still missing... what's 1500 new feet of film translate to, minute-wise, anyway? 10 minutes?

    • I'm with you, I thought the 80s rock version was pretty good. I particularly remember one scene that I think was an Adam Ant song set to the workers going down in the tunnels that I thought was particularly appropriate and well done.
    • I can understand why some folks my object to the 80's pop, but I liked both the music and the reconstructions. Until Moroder did the work, the only version of Metropolis widely available was short, badly hacked up, and accompanied by an embarassing Moog Synthesizer track.

      I would love to get the Moroder version on DVD. My videotape, dubbed from the laserdisk, disappeared years ago.

      I certainly look forward to the new release, however.
    • I saw that version of Metropolis even before I saw Bladerunner, and I swear it somehow turned me into the sci-fi geek I am now. Now the only copy of Metropolis that's available is a very poor DVD that I have. The DVD itself looks like there has been 0 attempt at a restore. I suspect they may have burned the DVD from a VHS tape. I'm -so- looking forward to any new DVDs that show up as a result of this.. and I'd even love to find the fruited-up 80's version (because it sorta rules in it's own way too).
  • Then don't watch Osamu Tezuka's Metropolis [imdb.com]. It's quite a departure from the plot of the original, taking way too many pages from the Akira playbook. The character animation is across the board, but done so intentionally - Some of the characters look like they were drawn 30 years ago, while others are clearly modern and highly detailed.

    Still, the drastic departure from the original plot keeps me from really enjoying this release...
    • That's because it has little to do with Fritz Lang's film, and more to do with the 40's manga by Osamu Tezuka (the creator of Astro Boy, hence the character designs)

      You can enjoy both, you just have to realize that the two films aren't meant to be the same thing.
    • Why, do you think it's inconceivable that someone could like both?
    • funny, Ive liked all versions I have run across, Moroder's, the original, the anime based on the magna which is based on the original movie. I have read the book many times, and I have the book-on-tape version as well...
    • I'm a huge anime fan, so I'm probably more forgiving on anime than most movie-goers... and let me tell you, I thought the anime Metropolis was completely awful.

      None of the characters were developed in a way that made me feel any empathy, and most of the plot was murky and full of babble. Animation was good but not good enough to make up for the weak story and characters.

      Just a quick FYI, Osamu Tezuka based his Metropolis manga off of Fritz Lang's movie in the circa 1950's. He based it VERY loosely, since he'd never actually seen the movie, so it was more of an inspiration thing, rather than an adaptation.

      I don't know how closely this modern animated version sticks to the manga- I'm guessing it's a fairly loose or at least highly compressed adaptation of the manga, since that's what happens when a multivolume printed work is crammed into a 2-hour movie. :P
  • Available here [majcher.com]

  • get it here [majcher.com] without registering with ny times

  • I remember watching this sci-fi classic back in College during my "Science Fiction" course :)

    If you are a sci-fi fan that can appreciate a movie for the message it communicates to the viewer, this movie is worth watching. As a warning the original has no sound and of course is in black & white. But true to the original purpose of science fiction it very much delivers an important message.
  • I remember watching this class at SFSU in a class called "Arts and Humanities in Computer Science." Well, remember as well as I can through the haze that was my first year of college. Our instructor mentioned that the reason the film seemed so choppy was that large portions of the film had actually been lost. I'm hoping this remake will include some of those "lost" scenes.

  • If anybody's looking for the book... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dmoynihan ( 468668 ) on Friday July 12, 2002 @08:30PM (#3874778) Homepage
    I scanned it in for my own site [blackmask.com] about a month ago.--scroll down a little, it's maybe the seventh book.

    Text is public domain/not renewed, but Gutenberg didn't like the version I used (and doesn't like not renewed in general), so they wouldn't add it.

    Interesting read--was written by Lang's girlfriend of the time, Thea von Harbou.

  • Ebert's Film Festival.... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I saw the original Metropolis at Roger Ebert's Overlooked Film Festival last Spring here at the University of Illinois. The film was made much more memorable because they used a live orchestral score by the Alloy Orchestra (who apprently specialize in silent film music) - although it was three people (drum, woodwind, sythesizer) it really created an excellent mood and atmosphere.

    In addition - Ebert showed the anime Metropolis after the original, as a double feature. I really enjoyed the film, it was entertaining and very brilliantly animated and drawn, although I didn't find it particularly complex or intellectually deep. I was also very pleased that Ebert insisted on using subtitles rather than a english dub.

    Sincerely,
    Kevin Christie
    Neuroscience Program
    University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
    crispiewm@hotmail.com
    • I was there too, hopefully when this new release is available the Alloy Orchestra will be allowed to license it. I greatly prefer the Alloy Orchestra's soundtrack to that of the original. I can't wait for this movie release to make it to DVD though, the rest of the DVD releases of Metropolis have horrible video quality!

  • Tom Hanks Does Metropolis (Score:4, Informative)

    by cybrpnk2 ( 579066 ) on Friday July 12, 2002 @08:35PM (#3874790) Homepage
    There was an early Tom Hanks / Meg Ryan film called Joe vs. the Volcano which has the opening 15 minutes doing a GREAT takeoff on Metropolis - not camp or tongue in cheek, but a serious emulation with modern filmmaking. The rest of the movie was so-so to OK. Worth checking out.

  • Interview with Martin Koerber (Score:5, Informative)

    by bonch ( 38532 ) on Friday July 12, 2002 @08:44PM (#3874814)
    As brought to you by FilmThreat [filmthreat.com], an interview [filmthreat.com] with Martin Koerber about "Metropolis."
  • first fembot in movie history!

    i had the opportunity to watch this masterpiece two months ago in a local alternative cinema... i really liked the way it was restored, they said they added altogether well over half an hour of previously thought lost material, which fritz lang had to cut out in order to gain more public acceptance in his days. scenes which were destroyed by time are summarized in caption screens, so you get to understand more of the whole picture.

    Mittler zwischen Hirn und Hand muss das Herz sein -just beautiful.

    -strangeloop
  • How could they use a previous score written for a different cut of the film? This version contains 1300 feet of film that hasn't been in any version of the film since since the original German release. This cut, at 147 minutes, is only six minutes shorter than the original, but far shorter than director's 210 minute cut, which is apparently lost forever. More information can be found at the Digital Bits [thedigitalbits.com], and from the restorer's site [filmrestauration.de], and Kino's site [kino.com], the company releasing the DVD of this version.
    • There was a stunning soundtrack (though only approx. 60 minutes) to Metropolis composed by American electronic musician Jeff Mills released on his own axis records (http://www.axisrecords.com) via Berlin's famous tresor label in 2000. I was lucky enough to see the cut of the movie that Jeff used for his soundtrack at a screening he held during one of his DJ tours (he is possible even better known in Europe as a techno dj) and it was quite stunning despite its short length. I recall that there was excellent information on his site in regards his reasons for starting the project and also details on the various versions of the film available. All of Mills work is recommended listening for anyone interested in electronic music and should be seeked out as he is almost completely overlooked by USA/MTV though he is quite well known in Europe and parts of Asia (Japan/Australia).

  • The first collegiate-level production of Metropolis done as a musical was done in 1994 at Southwestern College (in San Diego, CA). (My father performed in it, so I ended up at the theatre for many-a late night.) Anyway, I remember hearing all sorts of debate over the different versions of the movie out there. Which was the "truest" to the original story (none, really), which was the most accessible.

    Since we were the first in the US, the script and songs for the musical were re-written and umpteen number of times during production. It ended up as a sort of rock opera, but evoking many themes that were more present in the original than in later edits.

    Apparently, even with as much research as they've now been able to do, there are still significant portions of it missing ('it' being Lang's original version).

    Anyway, all technology workers deserve to see this story in one form or another. Definitely has as much to say now as it did 75 years ago.
  • I'm amazed at the amount of Metropolis footage that turns up in commercials, videos, and TV shows.

    No, I take the back. It's mostly three scenes that are used, over and over: The creation of the robot Maria, the workers' descent into their dreary city, and the workers' revolt.

    There are a lot more great scenes, of course. There's a amazing, simple, evocative shot in which the hero runs around a corner.

    "Eh? So what?"

    Because it's a HUGE corner, a giant, windowless, monolithic heap. Seeing Federsohn cruise around it gives you a great sense of scale.

  • Metropolis is a fantastic film and I am glad to hear that the english version is being revamped to be as close to Lang's original. With lost footage that Hollywood thought was to intellectual and made the movie to long for an american audience.

    Hollywood tends to make the former mistake quite often. The original Star Trek pilot "The Cage" was rejected for that reason leading to the second pilot "Where No Man Has gone Before". Man, I would love to go threw Hollywood's extensive stack of rejected scripts. I'm willing to gamble that there is more diamonds in that stack than in
    South Africa.

    Lang did have a vision about the perils of a industrial society and the film delivered his message with for the time brilliant cinemetography and visuals. When you watch the film you must remeber that this was six years before "King Kong". Audio wasn't very widespread and the color film of the time was crap. Yet the cityscape and factory sets where remarkable and very well done, and I think I don't need to mention the robot. Lang wasn't the only artist who put their effort into the film.

    The Americanized version of Metropolis proudly has a place in my DVD collection and so does the Anime. When the revision is released I would love to compare the three.

  • Wait! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Treeluvinhippy ( 545814 ) <liquidsorceryNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday July 12, 2002 @09:25PM (#3874937)
    We have to make sure George Lucas dosen't get anywhere near this revision. That guy can't even remake his own movies.
    • Wake up, pancho.... Metropolis is one of the films Lucas repeatedly alludes to in his Star Wars trilogy, and if haven't picked up on it you should take a course or two in film analysis and quit bashing Lucas as a filmmaker.

      Besides the direct visual allusions he gives us to Metropolis in AOTC, here are some of the more striking commonalities between the two films:

      (1) An emphasis on clones. The heroine, Maria (who advocates peace) is replaced by a robotic Maria who looks just like her and who advocates war in an evil attempt to cause the workers to destroy themselves so as to enrich the corporate ruler of the city. Likewise the prequels show us individuals who abandon pacifism to advocate war.

      (2) Overarching theme that violence/war is self-destructive. Identical to theme in AOTC, where aggressors ALWAYS lose.

      (3) The hero of Metropolis is a mediator between "the brain" and "the muscle" of the city -- not a direct parallel to AOTC, but think about balance in the Force, and wisdom versus emotional action. Close enough....

      (4) The hero of Metropolis is a SON! In other words, a father-son relationship is at the heart of the movie, and the son is a saviour figure. Just like Star Wars.

      (5) The wicked inventor of the robotic Maria has a mechanical hand.

      Translation: if you can't pick up on the more obvious of visual allusions Lucas provides in ttack of the Clones, it really isn't your duty to bash the film, or its directory for his lack of sophistication as a filmmaker....

  • Metropolis Review (Score:3, Informative)

    by PRickard ( 16563 ) <pr AT ms-bc DOT com> on Friday July 12, 2002 @09:32PM (#3874957) Homepage
    One of my partners in crime at the MSBC (who doesn't have a /. account) asked me to post this:

    Back in February I wrote a lengthy report on Metropolis for my college cinema class. The report was supposed to be about the themes of the film, but its history was so interesting I spent 2/3 of my time on that instead of the plot and events. An assignment for a 600 word paper turned into a 1700+ word essay that received an A+, not that I'm bragging or anything. I think it's an interesting read, whatever the grade was. The paper includes links to other sources and reviews more knowledgable than I. Check it out at www.msboycott.com/kmarks/metropolis.shtml [msboycott.com] .

    There you have it.

    • someone with the domian msboycott.com doesn't have a /. account? I'm confused.

      • randyest typed: someone with the domian msboycott.com doesn't have a /. account? I'm confused.

        I have the domain, he works with me... I post here and he doesn't make a habit of it. And my account gets the extra high-karma bonus point, so the posting is more likely to be seen if I do it for him. That's not cheating, I hope...

    • from your review:

      We can summarize [the moral of the original film by saying] that men are, by nature, greedy and selfish. Those who have the capacity to oppress others for their own gain will always do so, and the advancement of technology makes that easier. Rebellious masses can be placated, fooled, or eliminated by technologies that appear to be helpful at first but slowly remove more freedom and individuality as they become more advanced.

      Or if that doesn't work, you can start a war. That usually keeps those commie rebels who keep griping about human rights confused and occupied long enough to destroy them.

  • This sentence is unintentionally amusing. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Squid ( 3420 ) on Friday July 12, 2002 @09:35PM (#3874964) Homepage
    After being butchered by studios, Martin Koerber and Alpha-Omega have restored most of the scenes and score.

    What's the subject of that sentence?
    • "Martin Koerber and Alpha-Omega"
  • The Club Foot Orchestra did a [amazon.com]
    soundtrack that was just marvelous.

    It was also a great experience to see the film with the group playing live in the theatre.
  • I don't think they're using Georgio Morodor for the soundtrack for this one.

    If you had actually read the article you're posting about, you'd know they aren't.
  • unless they found a BUNCH of reels of film, they can't say restored most. 7 of the 17 reels (3301 ft) of the film are missing, thanks to them shortening it for "American audiences".


  • IIRC, Metropolis fell into the public domain or something (or at least, there are 50 million versions of it, editing aside -- sort of like His Girl Friday).

    Will they be releasing this spiffed up version at some point in the future?

  • RT Links Reviews of Wrong Version of Metropolis (Score:3, Interesting)

    by naloxone ( 142847 ) on Friday July 12, 2002 @10:15PM (#3875049)
    Rotten Tomatoes [rottentomatoes.com], one of the two [metacritic.com] great meta-review sites, doesn't seem to "get" that this release is very different from all previous cuts of the film, especially the recut, tinted, rock-n-roll-soundtracked 1984 Moroder cut. Many of the reviews refer to the "out of place rock-n-roll soundtrack" and "terrible image quality". This is a real problem, because people will be choosing whether or not to see the film based on extremely inaccurate data.

    I've emailed them about the problem (and offered to provide them with a list mapping reviews to releases), but they seem to be ignoring me. If we can get enough people to let them know that yes it is worth taking the time to be accurate about this, this release might actually get the respect and attendance it deserves. Please mail [mailto] them and let them and (as politely as possible) inform them that this is important.
    Thank you.
    • while many do not like the Moroder version, the quality of the restoration was very good, and was closer to the story than most of the butchered copies out there right now.
    • Really it's just a matter of expectation-- if the incorrect reviews of the '84 release prompt viewers to go see the film specifically to see the tinting and modernized soundtrack, they'll be sorely (and unfairly) disappointed. It's like taking a swig from a glass of what you assume is beer but turns out to be iced-tea. It may be very fine iced-tea, but you're going to do a spit-take because it wasn't what you were expecting.

      You raise valid points, though. Cuts prior to Moroder tended to focus very heavily on the political subplot, which was fairly minor in the original (Berlin) screening. That bias mostly originated in the studio re-cut when it was first brought over to the U.S. Really, there were three major plot-lines and this release will be the first modern cut to resurrect the majority of all three.

      I would refer to the image quality of the Moroder release as "variable". Some of the scenes were restored quite nicely, others substantially less so. The incorrect projection speed of the "Maria Dancing" scene was really irritating (and inappropriately humorous).

      I will, however, admit to being quite taken with some of the tinting and image effects in the 1984 release. It was the first cut I ever saw of the film and many of the scenes stick in my memory as hauntingly beautiful.

  • "Only by pushing himself to the very edge of coherence was Lang able to transcend the schematic moralizing that keeps so much science fiction tethered, ultimately, to the mundane."

    Personally, I push my perl code to the very edge of coherence in order to "transcend the schematic moralizing"... but YMMV.

    P.S.- what the heck does that mean!
    • It means that Lang made a movie that was complex compared to silly morality plays... you know, plays/films meant to "teach a lesson". Not that Lang doesn't have any themes -- far from it. He just refuses to tell a trite, formulaic story to get his point[s] across.

      Speaking of Perl, it's sort of like Larry Wall's postmodern Christianity thing. He doesn't beat Perl coders over the head with Bibles or nothing, but certainly elements of his religion visibly influence his work.

      $0.02USD,
      -l

  • Silent Movies (Score:3, Funny)

    by guttentag ( 313541 ) on Friday July 12, 2002 @10:35PM (#3875108) Journal
    Do you have any idea how difficult it is to say something profound with a silent movie?

    Try turning the sound off before watching some more recent movies and see if you can discern their underlying messages. Here's what I came up with:

    • Training Day: Cops do drugs and beat up homeless/crippled people.
    • 2001: Always bring your helmet when leaving the space ship.
    • Tron: Jeff Bridges should not smoke crack before operating a computer.
    • Full Metal Jacket: Soldiers kill people.
    • Dr. Strangelove: Peace is the military's profession.
    • AI: What the hell was that all about?
    It's not so easy, is it?
    • Do you have any idea how difficult it is to say something profound with a silent movie?
      Try turning the sound off before watching some more recent movies and see if you can discern their underlying messages.

      That's like turning off the picture to try and get an idea of what a story told through radio is like. Your medium defines the fundamental nature of how you tell the story.
    • In 2001 the first word is about twenty-five minutes into the film ("Here you are, sir. Main Level D."), and, in total, there is less than fourty minutes of dialogue. Most of the dialogue is trivial, too. Perhaps you should re-watch some of those, closer this time.

      • Re:Silent Movies (Score:3, Interesting)

        by foobar104 ( 206452 )
        Exactly. As far as I'm concerned, 2001 is almost a silent film as it is. There are basically three expository passages of dialogue in the film (the briefing by Dr. Floyd, the televised BBC interview, and the final recorded message from Dr. Floyd to the crew), and the rest could be eliminated completely without too much editing.

        Maybe in my spare time I'll do an artsy parody of 2001, re-editing the DVD as a silent film with just a musical soundtrack and some title cards for essential dialogue. Sounds like a fun little project.

        You heard it here first.
    • See Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will. It's considered the greatest propaganda film of all time. Yet the first twenty minutes of the film has no dialogue at all. And it's just a documentary of a big Nazi party rally, which would normally lead to a very boring film. But through excellent camerawork, composition, and cutting, it became a powerful symbol of Naziism.

      Leni Riefenstahl is still alive and active at age 99. She knew Fritz Lang when he was making Metropolis; they were working at the same studio.

  • Is this the Superman vs. Batman movie that has been rumored? Superman lives in Metropolis, right?
  • was dominated by giant, dehumanizing machines. Machines driven by steam, gears, pistons, etc.

    The thing that fascinates me about the film is not that he tried to protray a future dominated by machines, but that the machines that came to pass are so vastly different. We don't labor in front of huge steam engines; our machines are based on information.

    And hence the danger of predicting the future based on past history. :-)
    • *Somebody* has to be working with heavy machines in order to produce the manufactured goods you use and enjoy. In Lang's vision of the future, employees in a subterranean world beneath the city fulfilled that function. In reality, those of us in the West have just exported our heavy, exploitive, polluting drudgery to the Third World, where despots are more than willing to whip our servants into submission for us. I'd say Lang's vision of the future was fundamentally correct - he just got a few irrelevant details wrong.
      • *Somebody* has to be working with heavy machines in order to produce the manufactured goods you use and enjoy. In Lang's vision of the future, employees in a subterranean world beneath the city fulfilled that function. In reality, those of us in the West have just exported our heavy, exploitive, polluting drudgery to the Third World, where despots are more than willing to whip our servants into submission for us. I'd say Lang's vision of the future was fundamentally correct - he just got a few irrelevant details wrong.

        And except for the fact that you've completely ignored the point of the post you're responding to, you're fundamentally correct.

        Lang's vision of the future is fundamentally Industrial, which means it is based on things: Physical objects, such as oil and gold and wood and iron, are the basic items of commodity. They are the things corporations live and die on. They are the things that the whole infrastructure of nations is built to transport. The Interstate Highway System is the ultimate Industrial infrastructure, because it allows people to move things in a reliable way from any point in the country to another cheaply. That is what Lang saw for the future: More of the same, but bigger.

        Now we have made a transition from Stuff to Information. We live in the Information Age, and we now have to move information around efficiently. We have to find or produce information. Corporations live or die on their ability to react to information. J. P. Morgan's steel works could ignore the goings-on of Nihon or Corea or French Indochina because none of those regions were close enough to affect it. These days, dead is the corporation that thinks physical distance has the slightest to do with impact, or that it is safe to ignore whole regions of the globe. The Internet is the new infrastructure, because it allows us to move information around reliably and cheaply.
        • No, I didn't ignore the "point" of his post - his "point" just demonstrates his (and apparently your) complete lack of understanding regarding what Metropolis is all about.

          He said, "We don't labor in front of huge steam engines; our machines are based on information." That's a load of hooey. The upper classes in Metropolis didn't labor in front of huge steam engines, either - they had their subterranean worker classes to do that, just as we here in the West have the Third World to do our steamy industrial dirty work. And the upper classes in Metropolis were already portrayed as Information Age workers, adding up the receipts of the labor of others, which is all we ultimately use our vaunted "Information Age" technology for - to maximize industrial efficiency. And if you think the world isn't still fundamentally industrial, you're living in a corporate propaganda dot com bubbleland, the same kind of rarified, disconnected atmosphere inhabited by the elites in Metropolis. In fact, you're the living proof of just how visionary Fritz Lang really was.

          Without the industry of around two billion people toiling under generally pretty shitty, steamy, industrial-age conditions all across the globe (particularly in the Third World), this cozy little anal retentive so-called Information Economy we have here in the West would curl up and die in about a week. You'd starve shortly thereafter.

          As usual, the fleas end up believing the dog exists solely for their benefit.
          • So all of a sudden mass-production is back to the level of the late Industrial age with absolutely no automation at all. How nice.

            If you could remove the bile ducts from your mouth, you might be able to produce a listenable arugment. If you could remove the blinders from your eyes, you might be able to see mine. Calling me a bubblehead while ignoring the profound changes that have occurred in this century is simply lazy. Ignoring the fact that most 'industrial' jobs bear little resemblence to what was being done in the 19th and early 20th centuries because most of the tedium has been mechanized is simple ignorance, and unexcusable in an age where all of the information you need to craft a good argument is literally at your fingertips.

            Fifty years ago, could you have looked up the GNP of Ghana while viewing a live feed of the inside of someone's dorm room? Could you have found five million pages that reference a specific disease in less than a second? Could you possibly have gotten so much information to need anything as complex as google to even hope to sort through it all? No. Simply impossible, all of those things. Such concepts didn't exist in the 1950s, because the 1950s was on the tail end of the Industrial Age. In the 1950s, information was something you hunted for, not filtered through. Finding information meant looking among all of the general-purpose works, unless the information was so important as to merit its own treatment. Getting a deluge of information for relatively narrow topics was not possible.

            How times have changed. A google search for 'Perl6', a specific revision of a specific language, gets me 'about 128,000' returns. 128,000 pages is more than ten big dictionaries, 128,000 books is an exceptionally well-stocked library. I now have to filter out all the noise and find the stuff I want. (A search for 'earthquake' gets me 'about '1,690,000', by the way, a number that would give a little over a page to every six people on earth.) Why? Why can I get so much information so quickly? Why could I not have gotten it fifty years ago?

            Because in this age, information counts. 'Things,' physical artifacts, have gotten so cheap that they don't drive economies anymore. They have gotten this cheap because production methods have changed radically, removing the need for people to stand in front of machines of steam and steel just to produce the most basic items of commerce. Lang's factories are no longer economically viable because they lack automation and computerization and rely on human drudges. Slavery is not viable for the same reasons.

            So telling me I'm living in a dream world while you ignore the facts of life is a rather odd admixture of irritation and amusement to me.
            • So all of a sudden mass-production is back to the level of the late Industrial age with absolutely no automation at all. How nice.

              Well, I don't think the average Nike or DeBeers worker would see any great changes in working conditions over the last 300 years and they ain't insignificent companies.

              I think the poster had a point, for the mass of humans the idea that you can look up Perl6 on google and find information and that you have any use for that information is almost like something from a myth. There is a parallel here between you (and me) and the upper classes in Metropolis.

              Slavery still exists and is perhaps more common than you'd like to think.

              TWW

            • So all of a sudden mass-production is back to the level of the late Industrial age with absolutely no automation at all. How nice.

              Your words, not mine. And your bile. There was automation in Metropolis - what do you think the workers were doing? That's right - running machines in factories.

              Ignoring the fact that most 'industrial' jobs bear little resemblence to what was being done in the 19th and early 20th centuries because most of the tedium has been mechanized is simple ignorance.

              Ha! You've obviously never worked a day in a factory in your life, let alone a factory in the Third World. Kathy Lee Gifford and Nike have to lock 'em in their sweatshops for a reason. And those sweatshops are a paradise compared to places like mines & smelters. Just because horrible working conditions have been (pretty much) eliminated from your immediate vision (as they had been for the elites in Metropolis) doesn't mean they don't exist elsewhere in the world. Of course we've been able to eliminate most of that from our little corner of the world - we're now largely the management class overseeing the labors of around two BILLION people. It takes a hundred million people to manage that pool of labor, and another hundred million to support those managers. But nothing that we do is "magic", and it's certainly nothing some of the workers couldn't do for themselves. Lang's film serves as a stark warning of what's going to happen someday when, en masse, they figure that last bit out.

              'Things,' physical artifacts, have gotten so cheap that they don't drive economies anymore. They have gotten this cheap because production methods have changed radically, removing the need for people to stand in front of machines of steam and steel just to produce the most basic items of commerce.

              Ha!!! You have two billion people working at slave wages to produce goods for you, troops stationed all over the world to keep the cost of energy down, and then crow about how cheap things have gotten thanks to the "Information Age"? Please! Things have gotten cheap because the pool of labor is ten times what it was in 1927, and the relative cost of energy has plunged. Things have gotten cheap because 100 years of industrial might have produced a military machine nobody can resist. Sure, "Information Age" technologies have helped to facilitate these changes - you couldn't manage two billion people spread all over the globe or fight a modern war without them - but please. A stealth fighter may be a marvel of modern information technology, but without the materials to build it and the fuel to run it, it's just a CAD drawing. And nobody's going to be intimidated - let alone killed - by something out of a videogame.

              You don't eat ideas. You don't drive around town in information. We live in a material world, and all the information you shuffle about on the Internet won't ever change that fact.

              And as for automation, it only makes sense to build hugely expensive and complicated robots to perform industrial tasks when the cost of labor is extremely high, as it became in the West and Japan during the 1970's, and the government doesn't allow you to move those jobs to Third World nations (as is the case with the heavily-regulated automobile industry). The per-capita GDP of China in 1990 was $798 US dollars. For America, it was around $32,000 dollars. So long as labor remains cheap in the Third World, they aren't going to be automating those jobs.

  • Compare all three versions? (Score:3, Informative)

    by redbeard_ak ( 542964 ) <redbeard@riseu[ ]et ['p.n' in gap]> on Friday July 12, 2002 @11:23PM (#3875251) Homepage
    Here is a review [persocom.com.br] that does that.
    What is interesting to me about 'Metropolis' (besides a cool flick) is the history of the term 'robot'. The Russian word for 'worker' is 'robotnik.' Kinda puts a different slant on our (if you're lucky) 40 hour work week.

    Back in Austin, I think I saw the silent version of Metropolis with a Kraftwerk soundtrack. I enjoyed it, but was kinda... medicated.
    Here's what MonsterZine [monsterzine.com] has to say:
    "In 1920 Czech writer Karel Capek's play R.U.R.: Rossum's Universal Robots coined the term "robot" (from the Czech robotnik, worker) for mechanical man. In the play emotionless artificial persons wipe out humanity, only to develop emotions of their own. In Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927), a grandly mad scientist (Rudolph Klein-Rogge) creates an evil robot, then, through a spectacular display of electrical equipment, transforms the robot into the duplicate of a virtuous labor leader (Brigitte Helm)."

    And here is what Kraftwerk has to say about it:
    The Robots
    We're charging our battery
    And now we're full of energy
    We are the robots

    We're functioning automatik
    And we are dancing mechanik
    We are the robots

    Ja tvoi sluga (=I'm your slave)
    Ja tvoi Rabotnik robotnik (=I'm your worker)

    We are programmed just to do
    anything you want us to
    we are the robots

    We're functioning automatic
    and we are dancing mechanic
    we are the robots

    Ja tvoi sluga (=I'm your slave)
    Ja tvoi Rabotnik robotnik (=I'm your worker)

    We are the robots


  • I read somewhere that they are also searching for and reassembling Lang's original stuffed monkey.

  • (free as in beer reg, blah blah)

    CNN, MSNBC, ZDNET, CNET are all "free as in beer". What news site that you know of, gives away the rights to its stories?
  • This guy [slashdot.org] reconstructed a metropolis over a month ago!
  • For those in the Midwest, the restored Metropolis is also showing in Ann Arbor, Michigan (are you listening CmdrTaco?) at the Michigan Theater [michtheater.com]. From their classic film series schedule:

    Sound of Silents: METROPOLIS Digitally Restored Print!
    September 21 With live organ accompaniment
    September 22 With restored 60-piece orchestral soundtrack

    It's a beautifully restored theater, built in the Roaring 20's, with gold trim, chandeliers, a balcony, and a pre-show organist.

    AlpineR

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