week end - The Screengrab

Visions of Change: Cinematic Utopias & Worst Case Scenarios (Part Four)

METROPOLIS (1927)

The granddaddy of cinematic dystopias, Fritz Lang’s science fiction masterpiece will probably get a re-release in the not too distant future, now that long-lost footage from the original 1927 cut has turned up in a film museum in Argentina (at least according to the German paper Die Zeit). The film’s Art Deco production design has influenced everything from Star Wars, Blade Runner and Tim Burton’s Gotham City to Madonna’s “Express Yourself” video, but the story is even more universal, with its (sadly) timeless depiction of a society where the rich are supported by the suffering of the unseen, overworked poor and power is maintained through divisive lies spread by sexy robots.

DVD Digest for February 19, 2008

New this week: another Jean-Luc Godard film goes Criterion, and plenty of Oscar-bait (successful and not-so-successful) premieres on DVD.

Take Five: Revolution!

Monday was Guy Fawkes Day. What the hell is Guy Fawkes Day, you may be asking if you are not British, or the product of an inferior educational system? The Fifth of November is what it is, the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot by one Mr. Fawkes to blow up Parliament. Americans, comic book fans, and people who were hung over in their Survey of European History classes may remember it best from V for Vendetta, where the eponymous terrorist V decides Guy Fawkes Day is the perfect time to throw his own fireworks display at the Houses of Parliament, touching off a popular revolt against the tyrannical government of a future England (not entirely without similarity to modern America). Hollywood films have always had a bit of a, shall we say, delicate constitution about films that portray violent revolution, which, despite the circumstances of our own founding, seems to smack a bit of pink. Other countries haven’t been so squeamish; here’s some good films to watch when you’re ready to stick it to the Man.

BRONENOSETS POTYOMKIN [THE BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN] (1925)

A classic in every sense of the word, Sergei Eisenstein’s phenomenal silent movie about an uprising of sailors against the czarist regime virtually invented the modern art of montage, gave us the endlessly influential “Odessa Steps” sequence, and stood as a towering achievement of Soviet cinema, even outlasting its censors and detractors in Russia itself. But one of the most astonishing things about it is that it was made less than eight years after the Russian Revolution, arguably the most important upheaval of the 20th century. The notion that such gorgeous and powerful art could be put the service of the purest propaganda would haunt writers and critics for decades – and would be put to the test again when Leni Riefenstahl began work on her Triumph of the Will.