{"id":21933,"date":"2022-08-15T16:38:23","date_gmt":"2022-08-15T15:38:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=21933"},"modified":"2022-08-15T16:44:55","modified_gmt":"2022-08-15T15:44:55","slug":"metropolis-magazine-1927","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2022\/08\/15\/metropolis-magazine-1927\/","title":{"rendered":"Metropolis Magazine, 1927"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"metropolis1.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When Fritz Lang’s Metropolis<\/em> was released in Britain the distributors, Wardour Films Ltd, produced a 32-page guide to the film filled with production stills and brief pieces written by the cast and crew. I have a facsimile copy of this publication, a limited reprint by Phantasm Press<\/a>, but the original document is also available for reading or downloading at the Internet Archive<\/a>. Publications like this were the standalone equivalent of promotional pieces created for the readers of film magazines; Metropolis<\/em> was Ufa’s most expensive production to date so there would have been a need for serious promotion.<\/p>\n

\"metropolis2.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

None of this effort helped make the film a success, however. Lang’s epic is a masterpiece of direction and production design but Thea von Harbou’s script was the kind of absurd and naive fare you often get from writers incapable of projecting the complexities of the present day into their visions of the future. (HG Wells<\/a> was unsparing in his review of “the silliest film”.) A lack of audience enthusiasm prompted foreign distributors to take out their editing scissors, but cutting a quarter of the footage didn’t help either, especially when the cuts made nonsense of the motivations of Rotwang the inventor. One thing you can see in the programme is shots from sequences like the race-track scene which were subsequently removed and wouldn’t be seen in anything other than still form for many decades.<\/p>\n

Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 Blade Runner vs Metropolis<\/a>
\n\u2022 The Metropolis of Tomorrow by Hugh Ferriss<\/a>
\n\u2022 Metropolis!<\/a>
\n\u2022 Metropolis posters<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Fritz Lang’s Metropolis was released in Britain the distributors, Wardour Films Ltd, produced a 32-page guide to the film filled with production stills and brief pieces written by the cast and crew. I have a facsimile copy of this publication, a limited reprint by Phantasm Press, but the original document is also available for … Continue reading “Metropolis Magazine, 1927”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"New blog post: Metropolis Magazine, 1927","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7,43,20],"tags":[385,264,3267,1133],"class_list":["post-21933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-magazines","category-science-fiction","tag-fritz-lang","tag-hg-wells","tag-metropolis-film","tag-thea-von-harbou"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-5HL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21933\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}