Hollywood As The Moloch Machine: Metropolis To Be Remade
Posted by John Brownlee
Fritz Lang’s Metropolis is very much a film that could only have been made in 1920’s Berlin, where the decadence of the cosmopolitan elite rubbed against the struggles of the working man like salt against a razor wound. Where gentlemen clubs existed off of Unter der Linden based around the concept of gang sodomizing, then consuming geese; where helmet-haired starlets pranced naked in winter down Friedrichstrasse, clad only in mink and garters; where the saying went that cocaine replaced water from the flowing faucets of Charlottenberg’s penthouses; and where, beneath all this excess, the working class seethed, wanting some semblance of sanity restored to their lives as they did everything humanly possible to keep their families’ heads above water.
Eventually, this schism between working class and decadence would cause otherwise sensible people to think Hitler’s ultra-conservative (and ultra-crazy) Nazi party might have the right idea. The point is, the film — undeniably a masterpiece — is a sci-fi extrapolation of the times. It isn’t a vision of the future: it is the class warfare of 1920’s Berlin extrapolated to its logical — but not historically accurate — conclusion.
Even if you don’t buy all of that, Metropolis is a classic: a film perfect unto itself, that Hollywood shouldn’t touch. No one else could be Maria than Brigitte Helm. No CGI could be more spectacular than Eugen Schüfftan’s art deco modern cityscapes. And the Moloch Machine should never be touched: it is a mechanical industrialpunk god utterly nonsensical in a computerized age.
But Hollywood has never cited necessity as inspiration for its terrible ideas. So why be surprised that producer Thomas Schuehly (responsible for the execrable Alexander) is planning on remaking Metropolis. And no doubt ruining every single thing that has made the original so timeless. Maybe Hollywood itself is the modern-day Moloch Machine.
Thomas Schuehly Is Producing a Remake of Metropolis [Movieweb]
Categories: Metropolis, Fritz Lang, Design, Hollywood, Architecture, Berlin, Retrofuturism
Posted at 10:44 am on January 2, 2008
6 Comments -
This bothered me at first, too. But then I realized, the original isn’t being ruined, here. The original is, and will always be, exactly the same and no remake is going to alter it. Let stupid old Hollywood rehash, so long as the originals still remain.
Comment by Sharpless — January 2, 2008 @ 2:16 pm
Actually, this isn’t the first remake of Metropolis. Osamu Tezuka (yes, Mr. Astro Boy) remade Metropolis as an Anime film in, I think, 2004.
I’ll be honest, I’m a fan. It’s very different from the original (of which I also adore), while many of the same themes are there, the Japanese just don’t DO the class struggle culturally, so it becomes a whole different psycho-technical thematic diorama.
As to the many ‘trimmed down’ re-releases of Mr Lang’s masterpiece, may their producers be fried and fed their own putrescent entrails.
Comment by Justin — January 2, 2008 @ 6:59 pm
amen to that, Justin.
Comment by zanbowser — January 3, 2008 @ 7:17 pm
To be factual, Justin, it was not Tezuka himself who remade Metropolis, as I believe he’s been dead for some time, it was Katsuhiro Otomo, the writer/artist of Akira, itself as classic an anime as there is. Tezuka just made a manga called Metropolis way back in the day, and it was based on the original solely on the basis of the name and original poster alone.
The “trimmed down” editions of Lang’s Metropolis are all that exist. Say what you will about needing to dumb it down for American audiences, but it’s the American cut that means we have the film at all. When Lang refused Goebbel’s invitation to make films for the Third Reich and fled to the U.S., all German cuts of the film were destroyed. Sadly, Lang’s wife, Thea von Harbou, the writer of the novel Metropolis upon which the movie is based, stayed in Germany and worked with Leni Riefenstahl on Triumph of the Will. If you can find it, there’s a GORGEOUS version of that book illustrated in very appropos art deco style by William Michael Kaluta, probably most famous in comic circles for his interpretations of “The Shadow.”
And I hope that whatever this new version of Metropolis becomes, it retains the design sense of the original and uses the full story von Harbou wrote. Somehow, I see this as a Baz Luhrmann film, except perhaps with content. I’d suggest Alex Proyas, but he already did his riff on Metropolis in Dark City.
Comment by License Farm — January 7, 2008 @ 3:23 am
The intermediary between the brain & the hands is the heart.
Comment by Evil Jim — January 11, 2008 @ 7:29 am
hollywood has been messing up most remakes recently anyways
Comment by devko — January 28, 2008 @ 7:19 pm