The Great Movie

Wow ... No, seriously: Wow! After the end of the film, I wanted to stand up and applaud as if I had just watched a grandiose production somewhere in the theater, despite the fact that everything happened at night, behind a small computer monitor in the usual Brezhnev's panel. You thought that the old films - it's not yours, and nothing will make you sit for two and a half hours, looking at the dumb, black and white action? You have never been so wrong, because before you "Metropolis".

I'll start with music. The soundtrack brings endless pleasure. The body shudders and creeps, when the moving notes of the orchestral compositions move and jump to the rhythm of what is happening on the screen. Music supports the already strong atmosphere in the film, and sometimes it pushes it to the extreme peaks. I watched the version of 2010, I did not hear the accompaniment of other versions, so I can not evaluate it, but I definitely recommend the version I watched from the Berlin Film Festival, because the music in it is gorgeous.

Of course, the most directly influenced by the atmosphere and powerful scenery. I can not even imagine how titanic it was for those times to erect such scenery, to create such a living spirit of an anti-utopian city. The picture can be touched. It is worth touching - and now you are standing in this awesome city, amid the colossal houses of Metropolis and the stuffy shops of the underground city of workers. The rigor of the constructivist forms of residential buildings here is echoed by the variety of sculptures and the luxury of the Art Deco style, in which Yoshiwara and the New Tower of Babel are executed, which sets the film the atmosphere of the dieselpunk. Large-scale buildings, and even huge extras for a couple of globally expressed thoughts form an incorruptible sense of scope.

Individual admiration is caused by characters. There are many of them, and despite the lack of sound and color, each hero is unique and colorful, and this, I think, is worth a lot. Here is the greedy, uncompromising tycoon Yo Fredersen, and his son, Frider, who is preoccupied with the destiny of the oppressed class of workers, thus going against the interests of his father, and an insane genius forced to share his love for one woman with the city's ruler. There is a cruel, self-satisfied intelligence agent here, there is a cowardly but devoted friend of Freder who leaves a pleasant warmth in his heart. And of course Maria is a pious and chaste seer, holding back the workers' rebellion with all her might, as well as her evil alter-ego - the Machine Man, the Babylonian harlot, sowing discord, hatred and chaos around, awakening animal lust in men.

Brigitte Helm was able to translate both images due to her brilliant facial expressions and plastics. Maria evokes sympathy and faith in her spirituality, and from the look of the opposite of the girl sometimes becomes uncomfortable. In general, the film a lot of what is not at ease, some scenes literally drove into horror. This is due to the fact that the picture is very expressive, it has a very high degree of emotion and unrestrained sensations, keeping the viewer in suspense.

The plot closer to the finale is twisted into an action drama, where several (more than two) opposing sides are involved, each of which pursues its goals. The topic and the message are relevant to this day, despite the fact that the film has been around for almost a century. This is one of the examples when we should pay attention to the warnings of our ancestors. The predictions of Metropolis are accurate, and with incredible sincerity they try to stop people from the negative tendencies of technological progress, from social inequality and from the creation by these circumstances of the iron heart of a man of a new time, ruthless and cold-blooded.

Verdict: I did not regret the time spent watching the movie. More I will say, I wanted to see something else from Fritz Lang. Greatness and universality permeate the picture literally every second - in appearance and audiorade, in the captured emotions, in the philosophy of the film and its amazing topicality. "Metropolis" is a brilliant film, a film-legend, and if he has to have some kind of evaluation, then it is exceptionally the highest.