FAUST AND IN METROPOLIS
METROPOLIS
COMMENTARY BY DAVID GERSTEIN
THE ORIGINAL STORY
Metropolis (1927), a film directed by Austria’s Fritz Lang and co-written by Lang and his wife, novelist Thea von Harbou, is named for its main location, a sprawling future city in 2026. Any visitor to this place might think all was well with hi-tech energy keeping Metropolis’ gears turning and its shining lights lit. The reality, however, is very different. Freder, the son of wealthy citymaster Joh Fredersen, discovers that his city is really a dystopia. The idle rich enjoy sports and fun while peasant workers toil underground, operating the huge machines that generate Metropolis’ energy.
When Maria, a young activist, brings poor children to see the rich at play, she is ushered away but Freder follows her and sees Metropolis’ grim working conditions firsthand, including a machine explosion that his father tries to hush up.
In catacombs beneath the city, Maria organizes the peasant workers, hoping to bridge the gap between rich and poor. But Fredersen, fearing the consequences, orders inventor Rotwang to build a “false Maria,” a robot double, who will lie to the workers and sow discontent. Rotwang, however, has long wanted revenge on Fredersen for marrying the woman Rotwang loved. False Maria becomes an instrument of this revenge: leading the workers to destroy the machines that run Metropolis, not knowing this will cause a devastating flood.
The angry workers, thinking their children have drowned, burn false Maria at the stake, revealing her as a robot. But the real Maria proves to have rescued the children and Freder engages Rotwang in a climactic battle on a cathedral rooftop, leading to the evil inventor’s defeat. In the end, Freder and Maria create a lasting peace between Fredersen and Metropolis’ poor workers, enabling all parties to lead the city forward together.
After its debut, Metropolis was long famous for being partially lost. The film was cut down by nearly half an hour for its American release, and all prints of the longer version seemed to go missing in the 1940s. The truncated edit was the only version to survive until 2008, when a near-complete original was located in Buenos Aires. In 2010, most of the lost footage was restored to the film, along with a new recording of composer Gottfried Huppertz’s original 1927 score.
THE ORIGINAL DIRECTOR
Fritz Lang (1890–1976) was born in Vienna, Austria, and as a college student pursued civic engineering, architecture, and art at his city’s famous Technical University. Later the young Lang would tour Europe, Africa, and Asia, study painting in Paris, and serve as a World War I soldier with the Austrian army in Russia and Romania.
War wounds led to Lang’s discharge in 1916, and it was while recovering that he first pursued acting and screenwriting, eventually moving to directing for the German studio UFA. Lang’s first wife died in mysterious circumstances; his second, novelist Thea von Harbou, spent many years as Lang’s screenwriter partner. Throughout the 1920s, Lang and von Harbou would collaborate on films that combined Expressionist imagery with fantasy, science fiction, and crime-thriller themes, including Dr. Mabuse the Gambler (1922) and Die Nibelungen (1924) based on Wagnerian opera as well as Metropolis.
While Metropolis was Lang’s greatest critical hit, its cost overruns bankrupted UFA, leading Lang to several shifts of studio. Then Germany’s new Nazi regime turned Lang’s life upside-down: the regime at once offered Lang government film work and threatened him as a half-Jewish person, leading to his divorce from von Harbou and departure for the United States.
Working for various American studios, Lang produced more than twenty films over two decades, including renowned anti-Nazi and film noir productions, including Scarlet Street (1946) and The Big Heat (1953). Before his retirement in the early 1960s, Lang also reintroduced his Dr. Mabuse character for a film series mostly directed by others.
While many of Lang’s films rank as genre favorites, Metropolis exerts an ongoing influence on pop culture: from sci-fi to real-life robotics, from comics to fashion. The film’s technological marvels must have seemed visionary in 1927; Lang effectively created the concepts of videophones, cyborgs, and robot doubles. The city of Metropolis inspired by Manhattan, but also by art deco motifs and France’s Notre Dame cathedral remains a model for megacities in modern blockbusters, while the pop-art icon of the stylish female android has led singers like Beyonce, Kylie Minogue, and Lady Gaga to appear on stage in robot-inspired costume.
The awesome futuristic city of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927), as created via a mixture of paintings and models. Image courtesy Heritage Auctions.
chapter one once upon a time, there was a city…
it’s truly wonderful, mr. petersen.
then be proud of it, mictor. it wuz yer gran’pop who created th’ master machine…
gosh… maybe I oughtta grow a mustache like pa and grandpa.
beeootiful sight. leaves yuh speechless, don’t it?
[haw! haw! haw!] no need fer dat, kid…
…an’ it was yer pop who made it powerful! its infinite energy makes mousetropolis shine… an’ now you’re in charge!
FAUST
COMMENTARY
BY CLAUDIO RIVA | TRANSLATION BY DAVID GERSTEIN
THE ORIGINAL STORY
The tragedy of Faust (segments published in 1790, 1806, 1832) was the defining masterpiece of German author Johann Wolfgang Goethe, who from 1772 worked intermittently on the project for almost 60 years.
Faust comprises an epic poem in two parts. We discover Faust as an elder alchemist who has spent decades studying philosophy, law, medicine, and theology, but has become disappointed with the limits of human learning. Faust hopes magic might bring him the knowledge that science cannot.
Mephistopheles a demon of the underworld offers Faust a devil’s bargain: he and his magic will serve Faust in life if Faust serves Mephisto in the afterlife. A suspicious Faust bets the demon can’t bring him a moment of truly transcendent happiness, and agrees to go to Hades only if and when that happens.
Mephisto takes the elderly scientist to a witch’s den, where mystical monkeys prepare a brew to restore Faust’s youth. Faust, at first squeamish, is won over by the image of a beautiful lady in a magic mirror, promising a renewal of the senses.
Soon after drinking the potion, Faust encounters Gretchen, a beautiful but somewhat naïve woman, and vows to woo her. Mephistopheles’ evil magic cannot make the pure Gretchen fall in love but Faust’s newly youthful, noble appearance enchants her anyway.
The couple’s love affair is marked by disaster. During a visit with Faust, Gretchen uses a sleeping pill to keep her mother napping, only for the pill to poison her. Valentine, Gretchen’s soldier brother, challenges Faust to a duel. Mephisto guides Faust to win the battle, but Valentine is slain.
A disillusioned Faust accompanies Mephistopheles to Walpurgis Night, a celebration for witches and sorcerers. Faust is losing all sense of morality; when Gretchen bears Faust a son, she is stricken by madness, slays her newborn and is imprisoned. Tragedy is underway: Faust becomes a wanted man, and Gretchen dares not escape from prison after her misdeeds. Saddened by Faust’s association with Mephistopheles, she takes her own life.
In the second part of the drama, after many adventures and a new love story with a magically-revived Helen of Troy, Faust unexpectedly finds his transcendent moment and loses his bet with Mephisto. But before his soul can be taken to Hades, a group of angels recognizes Faust’s desire to meet Helen as a righteous pursuit. The angels defeat Mephistopheles’ demons and lead Faust to Heaven, where Gretchen’s spirit awaits him.
THE ORIGINAL AUTHOR
“Les Dieux s’en vont [the gods are departing] but the kings are still with us.” With these words the great German writer Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) commented on the passing of author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832). Heine’s high praise reflects the esteem awarded to Goethe, a giant of world literature.
The prodigious young Wolfgang was born in Frankfurt to a wealthy family. At eight years of age, Goethe was already writing his first poems, studying six foreign languages, and taking piano and art lessons. At 16, Goethe enrolled in law courses at Leipzig University, but preferred to study fine arts, theatre, and literature. Falling ill with poliomyelitis, Goethe returned to Frankfurt in 1768. His first collections of poetry, Annette (1766, published 1770) and The Leipzig Songbook (1768), were released at this time.
Two years later Goethe resumed his law studies in Strasbourg; there, with other other young men of letters, he initiated the so-called Sturm und Drang (“storm and stress”) literary movement, the precursor of German romanticism. In 1774, Goethe published his first masterpiece: the epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, inspired by Goethe’s own tumultuous love affairs. Its main themes the impossibility of self-fulfillment and giving one’s life for love attracted an international audience, making Goethe a celebrity at 25. He began writing Faust, a generation-spanning project.
In 1775, Goethe became adviser to Karl August, Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, and helped to transform Weimar into a prestigious cultural center. From 1775–1785 Goethe also created many important works: the novel Wilhelm Meister’s Theatrical Program (published 1911), and the poems “Restless Love,” (1776), “Winter Journey in the Harz” (1778), and “Erlkönig” (“Elf King,” 1782).
In 1786 Goethe began a two-year tour of the Italian peninsula, absorbing classical inspiration. Upon his return to Weimar, Goethe studied physics and natural sciences, a passion that led to the treatises Metamorphosis of Plants (1790), Metamorphosis of Animals (1795), Contributions to Optics (1791), and Theory of Colors (1810).
Goethe spent his final decade writing Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years, or the Renunciants (1829) and completing Faust finished the second and final part a few months before his passing on the morning of March 22, 1832.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as immortalized on a 1932 German five-mark coin. Image courtesy Heritage Auctions.
do you kids know what day this is?
let’s guess!
the day you take us to the movies?
[hah!] nope! today we start spring cleaning!
let’s start with the attic! after you, infants!
take courage, men! get it over with and toss this junk!
“junk,” indeed! these are historic relics belonging to a valiant duck family line that goes back centuries!
he had to sit on it for three months after suffering… er, a painful injury while courageously fighting off the enemy!
attacked from the rear, eh?
are you nuts?!
don’t tell me this pillow is a priceless artifact! certainly! it belonged to d’ucktagnan, a french royal musketeer!
is this a cherished relic, too? yep! remember the famous words of that italian statesman, donaldiero capponi?
“we shall sound our trumpets… and we shall toll our bells!”
bingo! another illustrious ancestor! that banjo came from his music room, too!
it’s hard not to brag, but the duck family has always been a line of heroes!
then you came along… and the line stopped!
so who’s this geezer?
watch your mouth! show some respect for one of the duck family’s best and brightest… dr. donaldus faust!
never heard of him!
oy! how did you get so far in the junior woodchucks, being so ignorant?!
well, ignore no more! I’ll tell you just how dr. donaldus faust triumphed over the forces of evil!
instead of cleaning? suits us fine!
centuries ago in europe, there were two fiefdoms next to each other! one was run by the wealthy duke scrooge mac duich, who had three cubic acres of coins in his castle! the other belonged to the brawling beagle barons…