We Shall Build [Another] Tower That Will Reach to the Stars!
Back in May, Alamo Drafthouse and DJ Nick Nack teamed up to bring us a screening of Fritz Lang's magnificent Metropolis, set to a live turntable score by the vinyl maestro. This Saturday, they're bringing it back with back-to-back showings of the black and white sci-fi masterpiece at the Downtown Drafthouse, at 7pm and 9pm. The screening we attended last time sold out, so we had to settle for seats at the very front; even then we were impressed. This time we're planning on showing up early to secure a halfway decent vantage point.
Read on for our original description of Metropolis:
In 1927, Austrian filmmaker Fritz Lang premiered his latest masterpiece to a modest reception in Berlin: Metropolis it was titled, so-named for the futuristic citystate where its story takes place. The black-and-white silent film describes a society split into two vastly disparate castes: the privileged Thinkers, who dwell in the lofty upper levels of the skyscrapered urban cityscape, and the oppressed Workers, who wallow in the squalor of an underground dystopia.
Borne of the waning German Expressionism movement, the working-class exploitation in the post-Industrial Revolution years, and Lang's own shell-shock from having fought in World War I, Metropolis was criticized by many for encouraging the rise of Fascism. In 1933, Hitler's confidante Joseph Goebbels himself attempted to persuade Lang to produce propaganda films for the Nazi regime. Lang, who despised the Nazi philosophy, escaped to America instead.
But apart from any social commentary, Metropolis is a dazzling science-fiction masterpiece with special effects decades ahead of its time. Its influence can be found in all manners of modern pop culture, including movies such as The Matrix, Blade Runner, and (honest) SpongeBob SquarePants, Madonna music videos, and Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. Not surprisingly, Lang has often been compared with early George Lucas - after Star Wars and American Graffiti but before the crush of the Hollywood machine.
