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He keeps talking about the end of the world and I'm a follower of fashion
As an experiment, I am trying to feel smug rather than superfluous when it turns out that other critics and I have noticed the same kind of thing. Per Fiona Moore in The Black Archive #43: The Robots of Death (2020):
Insanity, again, is a common theme to both Expressionism and The Robots of Death. David Collings' performance as Poul sinking into madness upon seeing the gore-encrusted hand of a robot is a visual echo of the scene in Metropolis in which Freder sees what he thinks is his beloved Maria – but is actually her robot double – in the arms of his father; he collapses, wide-eyed and moaning, becomes catatonic, and experiences surrealistic visions in which the Maria-Robot becomes the Whore of Babylon. While we don't get to see what, if any, visions Poul is experiencing, the parallels are clear.
Of the same scene, I wrote:
He held himself together even after the killings began—and guessed the nature of the perpetrators, half insight, half paranoia, long before anyone else from his planet had a clue—but the sight of a dead robot with its silver hand sheathed in human blood pushes him over at last. He disintegrates with the head-clutching horror of silent film: "No! Oh, no! Please, no!"
The silent film I had in mind was in fact Metropolis (1927), although I was not picturing Gustav Fröhlich's Freder but Alfred Abel's Joh Fredersen, as described later on that same year. The physical language matched more closely, but missed out on the likeness of robot-triggered deranging revelations, which does reward comparison—the robots of Kaldor aren't self-willed human-hating rebels any more than the Maschinen-Mensch is an unfaithful Maria, but Poul isn't wrong to see the end of his world spiraling out from the proof that its robots are not fail-safe and the intercutting of Freder's delirium with the man-maddening dance of the false Maria accurately tunes him in to the apocalyptic mood overtaking Metropolis. In the case of both characters, their collapse out of sanity makes a window for the audience on the fragility of their world.
I am sufficiently out of joint with time that I hadn't realized until just now that Metropolis was part of the batch of art that entered the U.S. public domain at the start of this year. Honestly, if asked, I would have guessed it had been in the public domain for years. It's not as though people haven't been remixing the movie for decades already, cf. this entire conversation, but I look forward to seeing what results this change of states produces nonetheless.
Insanity, again, is a common theme to both Expressionism and The Robots of Death. David Collings' performance as Poul sinking into madness upon seeing the gore-encrusted hand of a robot is a visual echo of the scene in Metropolis in which Freder sees what he thinks is his beloved Maria – but is actually her robot double – in the arms of his father; he collapses, wide-eyed and moaning, becomes catatonic, and experiences surrealistic visions in which the Maria-Robot becomes the Whore of Babylon. While we don't get to see what, if any, visions Poul is experiencing, the parallels are clear.
Of the same scene, I wrote:
He held himself together even after the killings began—and guessed the nature of the perpetrators, half insight, half paranoia, long before anyone else from his planet had a clue—but the sight of a dead robot with its silver hand sheathed in human blood pushes him over at last. He disintegrates with the head-clutching horror of silent film: "No! Oh, no! Please, no!"
The silent film I had in mind was in fact Metropolis (1927), although I was not picturing Gustav Fröhlich's Freder but Alfred Abel's Joh Fredersen, as described later on that same year. The physical language matched more closely, but missed out on the likeness of robot-triggered deranging revelations, which does reward comparison—the robots of Kaldor aren't self-willed human-hating rebels any more than the Maschinen-Mensch is an unfaithful Maria, but Poul isn't wrong to see the end of his world spiraling out from the proof that its robots are not fail-safe and the intercutting of Freder's delirium with the man-maddening dance of the false Maria accurately tunes him in to the apocalyptic mood overtaking Metropolis. In the case of both characters, their collapse out of sanity makes a window for the audience on the fragility of their world.
I am sufficiently out of joint with time that I hadn't realized until just now that Metropolis was part of the batch of art that entered the U.S. public domain at the start of this year. Honestly, if asked, I would have guessed it had been in the public domain for years. It's not as though people haven't been remixing the movie for decades already, cf. this entire conversation, but I look forward to seeing what results this change of states produces nonetheless.
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I wouldn't have known Metropolis wasn't in the public domain before, either. I wonder what greater rights people have now than they did? I know how public domain works (... ish) for literature but not film.
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Thank you! I'm working on it.
I wouldn't have known Metropolis wasn't in the public domain before, either. I wonder what greater rights people have now than they did? I know how public domain works (... ish) for literature but not film.
The website from which I got the news discusses it chiefly in terms of accessibility and creativity, e.g. the capacity for a film to be screened legally by a community theater or hosted on the Internet Archive and its intellectual property used as a basis for professional transformative work. And in fact as I read more thoroughly through their page, I see that Metropolis was out of copyright from 1955 to 1996 before being brought back in subject to the 95-year limit, which makes sense of my initial exposure to the movie, although it does not explain the appearance of some of its characters in Elizabeth Hand's Weimar-cinema super-mashup Pandora's Bride (2007) unless there were licensing fees involved, which was maybe the solution for the entire cast of that novel. I am also much more familiar with copyrights in terms of literature.
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It's slightly strange that it's a novel, except that a film would require a time machine. All of the main players come from films of the 1920's and '30's—Frankenstein (1931) and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Metropolis (1927) and Pandora's Box (1929) and The Blue Angel (1930) and M (1931) and almost certainly some other shout-outs I've forgotten, plus supporting appearances by real-life figures of interwar Berlin such as a slightly uncredited W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood. It is the sort of thing that would completely not puzzle me to encounter at novel length on AO3 for Yuletide and it was professionally published, ostensibly as a Universal tie-in. I don't love all of it, but it is consistently fun and inventive and reads like the sort of thing people like when they really love German Expressionism, which I am fine with.
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Yes, absolutely! You are obv both Right [TM]! Graciously allow them to be in the same club of Rightness as you. XD (And, I meran, yeah: we all interpret things very individually, but if themes are there, then you would expect more than one person to recognise and identify them - and still bring out different aspects.) <3
I'm glad it's an interesting book. :-)
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I am working on my magnanimity!
(And, I meran, yeah: we all interpret things very individually, but if themes are there, then you would expect more than one person to recognise and identify them - and still bring out different aspects.)
The different aspects is the part where my brain is convinced I have nothing to contribute that anyone or indeed everyone else couldn't and I am trying to convince it otherwise.
I'm glad it's an interesting book.
It is! There is a ton of production information and extensive discussion of the sequel material, including Corpse Marker and Kaldor City in all its cracktastic glory. The author of the monograph turns out to have been one of the writers for Kaldor City, meaning
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Oh, very good! And if they were involved with Kaldor, they would indeed know all about the crack. XD
Thanks for the links!
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Also in our university days we went out one Halloween as the Machine-Mensch (me) and Rotwang (her). Not Quite as impressive as it sounds, my costume was tights, papier-mâché and duct-tape. There was a minor stampede on Yonge Street that night and she had to shove me into a doorway as a crowd roared past us.
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I am delighted to hear it. Should you get the chance, please tell her that I enjoyed her book, which she was obviously always going to write.
Also in our university days we went out one Halloween as the Machine-Mensch (me) and Rotwang (her).
No, that's actually impressive and sounds entirely in character for both of you. The stampede sounds in character for the film. I don't suppose photos survive?
P.S. I apologize for the toolbar, but it came from YouTube: by sheer and genuine accident while clicking through looking for another scene, I hit this frame of Metropolis and understood it could not go to waste.
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I look forward.
(It probably doesn't hurt your learning.)