UPDATE 2017-02-17: This is not the final review of this film. It has been amended with an “Upon Further Consideration” article. Click here to read the newer review.
My thoughts about this film are rather difficult to explain. I feel obligated to call Fritz Lang’s Metropolis genius because it was so historically significant, and it is a very, very good-looking film, especially for its time period. However, I saw the restoration done in 1984 by music producer Giorgio Moroder, which features an ‘80s pop soundtrack. Don’t get me wrong, I like ’80s music, and while this isn’t some of the best I’ve heard, it’s not bad, and it fits the film well. The issue with this is that I know that I did not necessarily see the best restoration of Metropolis that I could have by seeing it this way, and I know that my thoughts of the film were very much effected by the ’80s music score/soundtrack, so I cannot fairly give my thoughts on Lang’s work since I did not see the film the way he intended for it to be seen. So, the question is, do I critique it as if its Lang’s film, or as Moroder’s adaptation of Lang’s film? Well, I’ll try for both.
Lang does an amazing job at taking full advantage of what was almost entirely a visual medium at the time by making a film that has its own distinct, gorgeous, and almost believable world, because the sets, props, and paintings used look better than what you get in a sci-fi film today that relies entirely on CGI. The story of the film was originally written as a book by Lang’s wife, but the two of them worked on the script for the movie together, so Lang was responsible for making the story work as a movie. Did he do that? In some ways yes, but just because the film is pretty and has good acting, that does not mean it has the best storytelling, and in this film the storytelling fails a couple of times. For example, a character is introduced early on in the film and one is led to believe that he will essentially be the sidekick, but shortly after the film gets going, he hardly has anything to do with the plot. Also, there were times when I had to look up what was happening in the story because I couldn’t follow it, and I wish at certain points there had been better explanations of what I was seeing and why it was happening. What’s worse is that the movie had times when it would use text to describe a significant event that the audience would want to see, instead of actually showing how the event happened, such as when Maria escaped from the wizard.
Now, I don’t know exactly why Giorgio Moroder wanted to restore this film and add ’80s music, but despite the fact that it doesn’t sound remotely like a movie that could actually sell tickets to the teenagers who listened to the music in the film at the time, it was a cool idea. As far as his restoration and compilation of the footage goes, it looks good to me, but I haven’t seen any other restoration of Metropolis to which I could compare it. How good is the music on its own? Some of it is pretty fun, although I don’t think I desperately need to have this soundtrack. Does it fit the film well? Yes and no. It does a great job of expressing the emotions of the scene, and the instrumental sections of the soundtrack really bring the film to life just perfectly. However, the lyrics in the songs do not always seem to fit the scene, but this is somewhat understandable because they only had so many songs they could do, so they repeat some songs throughout the film, and that means the lyrics can’t be relevant every time.
Overall, the original film, from what I could tell, was quite an amazing silent film that actually had some pretty good characters considering that they did not rely much on dialogue or physical comedy to make the characters interesting. Despite the limitations that come with silent films, Lang made a movie that expresses a good story in a cool way, and he made science fiction history, and film history, in doing so. Moroder managed to alter this classic in a way that felt very fitting, as if this score was what Lang must have intended because it works so well. Together, Moroder’s music and Lang’s directing succeed in sucking viewers right into the world of Metropolis.
