Metroplis, # 86 of 101 Great Films

I love movies. I have since I went to the Drive – In with my parents to see

Support your local Sheriff.

Since then I have watched,  god only knows how many, but a safe guess is 1,000 films,

that may be more about the fact that I’m old than I watch a lot of films! 

For this segment of my Self- Indulgent Blog,

I’m going to list my 101 favorite films, why 101 - why not!

I think I understand films but I’m not a critic, or an academic. So sometimes I'm full of ....

Here is my list, there really isn't any criteria, except, a film has to be at least 10 years old, I need to think about  and revisit a film  away from its  original time frame.

other than that there are no other criteria, 

I would love to hear from everyone, so please email or post comments

No.  86

1926 Metropolis, Directed by Fritz Lang

German  Expressionist.

I don’t really know what that is, but I know it when I see it

And you see it in Fritz Lang’s 1927 science-fiction film “Metropolis”.

According to Wikipedia, German Expressionism was partly created by the German film industry to combat the more expensive Hollywood films.

Althought at the time Metroplis was the most espensive movie ever made.

You can tell a expressionist film by its strange visual style, extraordinary camera work, and some wonderfully demented set designs that may have been  created while on some serious mind altering drugs.

        Started near the end of WWI, expressionism wasn’t just confined to Germany, but didn’t spread to Hollywood until some of the great expressionist craftsmen moved  to America.

Karl Freund

Especially Karl Freund, the cinematographer for the 1931 Dracula, Karl was a pioneer at Universal using the expression style for their horror films of the 30s

The horror genre wasn’t the only one influenced by German expressionism, Film noir maybe the child of this style with its  dark sets and themes, and the  use of light in a more artistic way than most American films up until that time.

If you haven’t seen this wildly imaginative film make sure to get the 2010 reconstructed version

Right after its initial release, the German studio Universum Films, cut it substantially, and tragically some of that footage has been lost forever.

             The 2010 release from a 16mm print maybe as close as we get can get to the original, but even with the lost footage this is still a great movie, and very proletariat film.

The films narrative is simplistic, with its workers underground, and bosses in the sky, it definitely  wears its politics on its sleeve.

BUT  regardless of its narrative, it is an amazing film and still one of the great science fiction films of all the time.

Video exhibit for # 86- Metroplis

101 Great Films so far:

101 One False Move

100 Friends of Eddie Coyle

99 Tampopo

98 The Thing

97 Nanook of the North

96 The Battle of Algiers

95  The Third Man

94 Au Revoir Les Enfants

93 Meshes of the Afternoon

92 Alien

91 Young Frankenstein

90  Bull Durham

89 Los Olvidados

88 Two-Lane Blacktop

87 Ace in the hole