It makes sense watching the 1927 film "Metropolis" in an old-timey venue like the Nevada Theatre (Sept. 5). Before the advent of talking pictures, this epic movie tantalized with ambitious special effects. It cast a shadow on the future of the real world and influenced the cinema world as well.
More than 80 years after its debut, "Metropolis" seems a hilariously overwrought, romantic science fiction. Yet, this film still carries foreboding and forbidding images. Those images are not many degrees of separation away from conditions we suffer today.
Yes, it's funny to see the melodrama of silent-era filmmaking. The hand wringing alone is enough to slap seriousness senseless. Hidden within its flagrant lack of subtlety lies many grand symbolic representations: The steam whistles blare the changing shifts as thousands of downtrodden workers march to dehumanizing rhythms. The workers toil at impossible to sustain (or understand) machinations.
Maria