Fritz on Fridays: Voyage to Metropolis

On the first Friday of every month, this column by critic Joshua Polanski will feature a short review or essay on a film directed by Fritz Lang (1890-1976), the great Austrian “Master of Darkness.” Occasionally (but not too occasionally), Fritz on Fridays will also feature interviews and conversations with relevant critics, scholars and filmmakers about Lang’s influence and filmography. 

Voyage to Metropolis is cookie-cutter material as far as Blu-ray behind-the-scenes documentaries go — an ESPN-style highlight reel of the good stuff, a smattering of biography, a glimpse into the actual making-of and just enough opining to get a sense of its influence. The only original insights director Artem Demenok gives into Fritz Lang’s Metropolis on his feature-length Kino Lorber Blu-ray special feature are previously unseen BTS scenes and completely unimportant photographic snippets of the film’s opening in Berlin.

Viewers with a healthier degree of familiarity than me with the making of Metropolis and its various restoration efforts will find more to appreciate. There is no narrative per se, at least not one the sporadic and distracted editing can uncover. Instead, Demenok’s doc suffices as an encyclopedic entry on the subject, detailing with ease everything from the film’s reception in Nazi Germany to how the American edit became the default and, of course, the 2009 restoration after the discovery of the 16mm prints in Argentina. To my pleasant surprise, Demenok even (perhaps too) softly exposes the problems with Lang’s infamous “legend” of seeing New York and being moved by the Manhattan skyscrapers to the point of unadulterated inspiration. He stops short of fully giving Thea von Harbou credit for the film’s original idea — which is a historical fact — and that’s OK because she was a Nazi. She has enough things for which history must keep her accountable that it’s permissible to let this one slip. Fuck her. 

Continue reading at the Midwest Film Journal.