Overlooked Treasures in the Collection
Silent movies are back! Well, at least one silent movie. The Artist is out in theaters now and is generating a lot of Oscar buzz. With silent films being back in the news we would like to highlight a couple of silent movies that the Mercer County Library purchased in 2010 that might have slipped by unnoticed. These overlooked treasures are certainly worth checking out.
The first up for discussion is Metropolis. This is a German silent movie from 1927, directed by Fritz Lang. A film director of Austrian descent, Lang got his start in the German film industry as a screen writer and quickly worked his way up to film director. He belonged to the Expressionist movement in film; this movement wanted to focus on telling a story from a highly subjective viewpoint distorting reality to express the inner turmoil people face. Expressionist films used highly stylized set design, sharply exaggerated shadows and high-contrast lighting, and off-kilter camera angles to represent this turmoil. Lang alternated between “art” films and popular thrillers, always bringing his expressionist influence to the films he directed. Metropolis and M are the best known of his German expressionist films. As the Nazis rose to power in Germany Lang moved his talents to Hollywood and became a director of big Hollywood movies such as, You Only Live Once, The Return of Frank James, and The Big Heat.
Metropolis is a science fiction story that takes place in a city of the future where a utopian society is divided into the Thinkers and the Workers, but it is really only a utopia for the Thinkers who live up in the dazzling heights of Metropolis than the workers who provide the sweat and muscle that make this world work. The film follows one of the Thinkers (Freder Frederson) as he visits the “underground” where the Workers toil and live. He has followed a pretty young lady down into the underground where he falls in love with this Worker woman (Maria) who is a prophetess, espousing a society where the “head” (Thinkers) and the “hands” (Workers) live and work together to lead a better life for all. Freder’s father is the leader of the thinkers and he is sure that Maria is stirring up the workers to revolt against the rule of the Thinkers. He works with a mad scientist (Rotwang) to suppress what he considers the workers uprising Maria seems to be espousing, but Rotwang has his own agenda (I did say he was a mad scientist, right) that doesn’t accord with the Thinkers ends and promises to lead more to creating anarchy than bolstering the Thinkers rule.
Metropolis is an iconic film from the silent era and stands as one of the greatest films ever made. Its influence can be seen throughout movie making history, Blade Runner certainly owes a debt to this silent masterpiece. Terry Gilliam, of Monty Python fame, cites it as an influence for his films, especially Brazil, and Japanese Anime director Oshii Mamoru say that his anime masterpiece Ghost in the Shell is his attempt to reinterpret Metropolis.
What is amazing is that all this influence happened with a version of the film that was very different from what Lang originally envisioned for the film. After the film’s premiere, the German studio that produced the film thought the original running time of the film, 153 minutes, was too long to be profitable and cut out many scenes and reedited the order of the film to meet their expectations of what a successful film should be. Over the years the film has been re-edited and cut scenes added back into the film, but never the full 153 minutes. The original edition of the film was long thought lost forever.
But that was not the case. An original copy of the full 153 minutes and the director’s original edit was sitting in the private vault of a prominent Argentinean film critic, Manuel Peña Rodríguez. After his death in 1970 the film was eventually donated to Museo del Cine in Argentina where it was discovered and started its long journey to a full restoration to its original length and form to be released onto DVD. This restoration was big news in the film world, where it was the subject of stories in major papers, like the New York Times, and film periodicals, it was the cover story of the October 2010 issue of Sight and Sound. The full restoration in DVD was a highly anticipated event. The story of the discovery of this masterpiece in its original form and its road to a restored edition released on DVD is fascinating and is itself worth reading about. The library has access to many newspaper and periodical articles on this subject, including a major New York Times article from the May 4, 2010 edition of the paper and the October 2012 issue of Sight and Sound; you can ask local your reference librarian for help in accessing this material. Also, there is a website from the company that produced the restored DVD, Kino Loeber, that is dedicated to the story of the film and its long journey to DVD in its original form. The DVD was released in 2010 and was purchased by the Mercer County Library and is available for circulation.
The second silent gem is Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times. This film shares some common idiosyncrasies with the current silent film The Artist in that they are both silent films made at a time when “talkies” are the predominant, if not only, form of motion picture production. Chaplin made Modern Times in 1936, long after the “talkies” became the preferred method of making films. The film was originally planned by Chaplin to be his first “talkie” and he was so far advanced in that plan that he had written a script for the film with dialogue for his Little Tramp character and did some trail recordings. However, Chaplin came to think that hearing the “Little Tramp” speak would be the character’s ruin, as the sound trails confirmed Chaplin’s opinion that the Little Tramp’s appeal was universal and would suffer from being heard speaking English in the world markets. This film would mark the last time the Little Tramp would appear in film, as Chaplin “retired’ the character to embark on his talking picture career.
Modern Times was Chaplin’s first overtly political film. The story has the Little Tramp moving through a series of events that see him struggling to survive in the modern, industrialized world. Remember that this film was produced in the middle of the Great Depression and it was Chaplin’s commentary on conditions many people faced during the Depression. The film opens with the Tramp working the assembly line in a factory and the indignities he suffers lead to a mental breakdown. He is taken away in an ambulance and loses his job. The tramp then seeks employment only to suffer through a series of rejections and misunderstandings that lead to prison where he thwarts a prison break, becomes a hero, and is released from jail. The Tramp finds life outside prison pretty hash and attempts to get re-arrested to go back in, but can’t seem to find a break even in this endeavor. He meets a girl, played by Paulette Godard, his real life girlfriend at the time, and they strive to make a life for themselves; but this being a Chaplin film all attempts lead to comic mayhem.
In 2010 the Criterion Company released a DVD of Modern Times. Criterion is a company that takes films and creates DVD releases of these films in digitally restored and cleaned up audio editions with tons of extras; documentaries and commentaries on the movie, director and stars, interviews with stars and film historians, original theatrical trailers, etc. The films they chose to release will probably never be seen in a better way. The Modern Times Criterion DVD has a restored copy of the film and soundtrack, audio commentary from Chaplin himself, documentaries from Chaplin historians, deleted scenes from the original edition of the film, home movies of Chaplin, and a comedy short from Chaplin’s early film days, and more.
A personal recommendation, I have a 16 year old son who refused to watch any movie in black and white, let alone a silent movie. “I’m not interested in that old stuff,” he would say. The black and white restriction fell with a couple of Laurel and Hardy movies, and somehow I convinced him to watch Modern Times, it might have involved tying him down to a chair, but I would never swear to that in court. In any event he spent the time laughing out loud, he especially loved the scene where the Little Tramp secures a job as a waiter in a restaurant and tries to deliver a roast chicken dinner to a patron across a very busy dance floor. This scene had him literary falling off his chair and him being tied to it caused quite a mess! His words after the DVD, “Got any more Chaplin?”
The first up for discussion is Metropolis. This is a German silent movie from 1927, directed by Fritz Lang. A film director of Austrian descent, Lang got his start in the German film industry as a screen writer and quickly worked his way up to film director. He belonged to the Expressionist movement in film; this movement wanted to focus on telling a story from a highly subjective viewpoint distorting reality to express the inner turmoil people face. Expressionist films used highly stylized set design, sharply exaggerated shadows and high-contrast lighting, and off-kilter camera angles to represent this turmoil. Lang alternated between “art” films and popular thrillers, always bringing his expressionist influence to the films he directed. Metropolis and M are the best known of his German expressionist films. As the Nazis rose to power in Germany Lang moved his talents to Hollywood and became a director of big Hollywood movies such as, You Only Live Once, The Return of Frank James, and The Big Heat.Metropolis is a science fiction story that takes place in a city of the future where a utopian society is divided into the Thinkers and the Workers, but it is really only a utopia for the Thinkers who live up in the dazzling heights of Metropolis than the workers who provide the sweat and muscle that make this world work. The film follows one of the Thinkers (Freder Frederson) as he visits the “underground” where the Workers toil and live. He has followed a pretty young lady down into the underground where he falls in love with this Worker woman (Maria) who is a prophetess, espousing a society where the “head” (Thinkers) and the “hands” (Workers) live and work together to lead a better life for all. Freder’s father is the leader of the thinkers and he is sure that Maria is stirring up the workers to revolt against the rule of the Thinkers. He works with a mad scientist (Rotwang) to suppress what he considers the workers uprising Maria seems to be espousing, but Rotwang has his own agenda (I did say he was a mad scientist, right) that doesn’t accord with the Thinkers ends and promises to lead more to creating anarchy than bolstering the Thinkers rule.
Metropolis is an iconic film from the silent era and stands as one of the greatest films ever made. Its influence can be seen throughout movie making history, Blade Runner certainly owes a debt to this silent masterpiece. Terry Gilliam, of Monty Python fame, cites it as an influence for his films, especially Brazil, and Japanese Anime director Oshii Mamoru say that his anime masterpiece Ghost in the Shell is his attempt to reinterpret Metropolis.
What is amazing is that all this influence happened with a version of the film that was very different from what Lang originally envisioned for the film. After the film’s premiere, the German studio that produced the film thought the original running time of the film, 153 minutes, was too long to be profitable and cut out many scenes and reedited the order of the film to meet their expectations of what a successful film should be. Over the years the film has been re-edited and cut scenes added back into the film, but never the full 153 minutes. The original edition of the film was long thought lost forever.
But that was not the case. An original copy of the full 153 minutes and the director’s original edit was sitting in the private vault of a prominent Argentinean film critic, Manuel Peña Rodríguez. After his death in 1970 the film was eventually donated to Museo del Cine in Argentina where it was discovered and started its long journey to a full restoration to its original length and form to be released onto DVD. This restoration was big news in the film world, where it was the subject of stories in major papers, like the New York Times, and film periodicals, it was the cover story of the October 2010 issue of Sight and Sound. The full restoration in DVD was a highly anticipated event. The story of the discovery of this masterpiece in its original form and its road to a restored edition released on DVD is fascinating and is itself worth reading about. The library has access to many newspaper and periodical articles on this subject, including a major New York Times article from the May 4, 2010 edition of the paper and the October 2012 issue of Sight and Sound; you can ask local your reference librarian for help in accessing this material. Also, there is a website from the company that produced the restored DVD, Kino Loeber, that is dedicated to the story of the film and its long journey to DVD in its original form. The DVD was released in 2010 and was purchased by the Mercer County Library and is available for circulation.
The second silent gem is Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times. This film shares some common idiosyncrasies with the current silent film The Artist in that they are both silent films made at a time when “talkies” are the predominant, if not only, form of motion picture production. Chaplin made Modern Times in 1936, long after the “talkies” became the preferred method of making films. The film was originally planned by Chaplin to be his first “talkie” and he was so far advanced in that plan that he had written a script for the film with dialogue for his Little Tramp character and did some trail recordings. However, Chaplin came to think that hearing the “Little Tramp” speak would be the character’s ruin, as the sound trails confirmed Chaplin’s opinion that the Little Tramp’s appeal was universal and would suffer from being heard speaking English in the world markets. This film would mark the last time the Little Tramp would appear in film, as Chaplin “retired’ the character to embark on his talking picture career.
Modern Times was Chaplin’s first overtly political film. The story has the Little Tramp moving through a series of events that see him struggling to survive in the modern, industrialized world. Remember that this film was produced in the middle of the Great Depression and it was Chaplin’s commentary on conditions many people faced during the Depression. The film opens with the Tramp working the assembly line in a factory and the indignities he suffers lead to a mental breakdown. He is taken away in an ambulance and loses his job. The tramp then seeks employment only to suffer through a series of rejections and misunderstandings that lead to prison where he thwarts a prison break, becomes a hero, and is released from jail. The Tramp finds life outside prison pretty hash and attempts to get re-arrested to go back in, but can’t seem to find a break even in this endeavor. He meets a girl, played by Paulette Godard, his real life girlfriend at the time, and they strive to make a life for themselves; but this being a Chaplin film all attempts lead to comic mayhem. In 2010 the Criterion Company released a DVD of Modern Times. Criterion is a company that takes films and creates DVD releases of these films in digitally restored and cleaned up audio editions with tons of extras; documentaries and commentaries on the movie, director and stars, interviews with stars and film historians, original theatrical trailers, etc. The films they chose to release will probably never be seen in a better way. The Modern Times Criterion DVD has a restored copy of the film and soundtrack, audio commentary from Chaplin himself, documentaries from Chaplin historians, deleted scenes from the original edition of the film, home movies of Chaplin, and a comedy short from Chaplin’s early film days, and more.
A personal recommendation, I have a 16 year old son who refused to watch any movie in black and white, let alone a silent movie. “I’m not interested in that old stuff,” he would say. The black and white restriction fell with a couple of Laurel and Hardy movies, and somehow I convinced him to watch Modern Times, it might have involved tying him down to a chair, but I would never swear to that in court. In any event he spent the time laughing out loud, he especially loved the scene where the Little Tramp secures a job as a waiter in a restaurant and tries to deliver a roast chicken dinner to a patron across a very busy dance floor. This scene had him literary falling off his chair and him being tied to it caused quite a mess! His words after the DVD, “Got any more Chaplin?”
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