Giorgio Moroder Presents “Metropolis”. Fritz Lang and Giorgio Moroder, 1984.
😸
Edition screened: Included in Eureka! Masters of Cinema Metropolis “Ultimate Collector’s Edition” Blu-ray #16, released 2015. Scored, and with English subtitles, no dialogue track. Runtime approximately 83 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Moroder’s famous tinkering with Metropolis appealed to a huge group of young people in the 1980s and made them aware of the high art of German Expressionist filmmaking, be that awareness accompanied by comprehension or not. Moroder altered the original Metropolis by adding some color tinting, typical 1980s neon-looking special effects, and most significantly, a soundtrack of 80s disco music – that amorphously-edged slice from the homogeneous flow of disco that we were brow-beaten into calling New Wave back when we once had a collective love and it was a collective gas [cue hi-hat: Choock-a-doocka WHAM-a-doocka; Choock-a-doocka WHAM-a-doocka].
Moroder’s revision predates the discovery of significant original Metropolis footage thought lost, and the subsequent extensive restorations undertaken in the early 21st century. As such, Moroder’s 83-minute run-time is pared down from the short and bedraggled cut common in the 80s, not from the grand 150-minute spectacle common today. And while Lang’s Metropolis uses intertitle cards that tend to stay on the screen for a long time, Moroder removed these text panels and replaced them with English subtitles. As such, a great deal of Moroder’s shortening of the already short version can be attributed to removing intertitle cards - with no particular detriment to the masterwork film.
It frequently is said that MTV handicapped generations of western culture by eroding their attention spans and conditioning them to instant gratification (#BullShitNoWay!). But those concerns relate to the existences of individuals, and those souls are encouraged to move on and do better, Peace be with you. Far more detrimental to society at large was the implanting of the notion that everything in life can be a music video, and should be if properly conceived, and the parallel notion that bits and pieces of fine film or images of great architectural ruins are improved by pop music playing in the backforeground. Those young people of the 1980s are today’s corporate boobs who insist that every gas-pumping, shoe-buying, and produce-selecting moment of our already noisy lives be further adorned with continual pop music. Thus, the tubby guy wearing shower shoes and a Miami Dolphins T-shirt can visualize how cool he looks standing at the ATM in some nonexistent music video, all day, every day.
It is typical of Moroder’s era to be overly entertained by coincidental approximate synchronization between some pop song and a film clip shot seventy-five years earlier. This is the generation whose major cultural innovation was synching The Wizard of Oz with Dark Side of the Moon, after all. If viewed with sufficient cultural stays, Moroder’s doctoring of Metropolis is perfectly watchable as produced, and becomes even enjoyable with the sound turned off. Muting the sound is a bit like after shouldering the easy chore of babysitting a child who has all four limbs bound, then making the task more pleasant by introducing a cleave gag that provides not only relief from the noise but also the satisfaction of salvaging some control over a compromised environment.