Discuss Fritz Lang's Metropolis and Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times
Very few movies portray the relationship between the government and civilian masses during trying moments such as Fritz Lang's “Metropolis”, and Charlie Chaplin's “Modern Times”. These are two critically acclaimed films made in the late 1920’s and mid 1930’s. The time period captured is the great depression, and examine the role of the governing authorities in relation to those governed.
“Metropolis” simply passes as one of the original science fiction movies in the world, and it has vivid imagery in it. Its’ main themes revolve around cultural exploitation and political issues facing the citizenry. It is set in Germany and tells the story of a metropolis where there are two classes of individuals who are the thinkers and the workers living side by side yet oblivious of each other. The city is run by a business dictator whose son falls for a lower class lady. The son called Freder has been brought up in luxury but later discovers the dehumanizing conditions in which the workers living down under are experiencing. To get access to the lady, he seeks help from a friend who is a demented genius, where he exchanges his place as a thinker with that of a worker. The workers adore him, seeing him as a liberator sent from above. The young lady named Maria is also liked by the workers since she is charismatic, and speaks about peace, and patience. The movie talks in general of an embryonic world where a few individuals control all means of production and the majority are left to languish in poverty as they work for the rich.
On the other hand, Charlie Chaplin's “Modern Times” is a satirical comedy produced in 1936 and has commentaries touching on the great depression of t...
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...industrialized and jobs are hard to come by as the state is not able to offer employment opportunities. It advocates for a socialist state which is able to take care of the masses. Chaplin hates capitalism as it only enables a few individuals to be wealthy as the rest struggle to earn a living.
Works Cited
Grunes, D. (2010), ‘A Short Chronology of World Cinema’, Amazon. www.filmeducation.org/metropolis/pdf/Metropolis_Themes_and_context.pdf Retrieved on 3/02/1014 http://www.ebertfest.com/four/metropolis_silent_rev.htm Retrieved on 02/02/2014
Ebert, R. (2010), ‘Review, Great Movies-Metropilis’, Retrieved from http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-metropolis-2010-restoration-1927 on 03/02/14
Austerlitz, S. (2010), ‘Modern Times: Exit the Tramp’, retrieved from http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/1656-modern-times-exit-the-tramp on 02/03/2014
The film illustrates the common social and sexual anxieties that the Germans were undergoing at that period of time. It also employs cinematic aesthetics alongside with new technology to create what would be considered as one of Germany’s first sound-supported films. Furthermore, it was the film that popularized its star Marlene Dietrich. The film is also known for combining elements of earlier expressionist works into its setting without becoming an expressionist film itself. It is important also to point out that the visual element has helped to balance the film easily against the backdrop the nightclub lifestyle that Lola leads the professor to fall into.
The presence of an overwhelming and influential body of government, dictating the individuals of contextual society, may potentially lead to the thoughts and actions that oppose the ruling party. Through the exploration of Fritz Lang’s expressionist film, Metropolis (1927), and George Orwell’s politically satirical novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1948), the implications of an autocratic government upon the individuals of society are revealed. Lang’s expressionist film delves into the many issues faced by the Weimar Republic of Germany following the “War to end all wars” (Wells, 1914), in which the disparity between the upper and lower classes became distinctively apparent as a result of the ruling party’s capitalistic desires. Conversely, Orwell’s,
This is a movie in another movie that has a story from the past that is repeated nowadays: the same conflicts between exploited and exploiters, enslavement, injustice, protection of the public against those who put a price, and also the story of how the union of many sometimes gets what seemed
Where Schlondorff, Wenders, Herzog, Fassbinder and Kluge once investigated the extremities of the German character and the Americana that infested West German culture through the New German Cinema of the late 60s, 70s and early 80s, the Germany of today has through its cinema acknowledged past hardships but with a more positive emphasis placed on the possibilities of forgiveness, redemption and hope for what can be made of tomorrow. Bibliography A Reversal of Fortunes? Women, work and change in East Germany. Rachel Alsop.
Literature and film have always held a strange relationship with the idea of technological progress. On one hand, with the advent of the printing press and the refinements of motion picture technology that are continuing to this day, both literature and film owe a great deal of their success to the technological advancements that bring them to widespread audiences. Yet certain films and works of literature have also never shied away from portraying the dangers that a lust for such progress can bring with it. The modern output of science-fiction novels and films found its genesis in speculative ponderings on the effect such progress could hold for the every day population, and just as often as not those speculations were damning. Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein and Fritz Lang's silent film Metropolis are two such works that hold great importance in the overall canon of science-fiction in that they are both seen as the first of their kind. It is often said that Mary Shelley, with her authorship of Frankenstein, gave birth to the science-fiction novel, breathing it into life as Frankenstein does his monster, and Lang's Metropolis is certainly a candidate for the first genuine science-fiction film (though a case can be made for Georges Méliès' 1902 film Le Voyage Dans la Lune, his film was barely fifteen minutes long whereas Lang's film, with its near three-hour original length and its blending of both ideas and stunning visuals, is much closer to what we now consider a modern science-fiction film). Yet though both works are separated by the medium with which they're presented, not to mention a period of over two-hundred years between their respective releases, they present a shared warning about the dangers that man's need fo...
The Great Depression is when the film industry boomed with new types of movies like: gangster films and musicals. They were both born in the Great Depression. Most films show the hardships of the time period. Some of the films display this very well for example Modern Times staring Charlie Chaplin. One of the more well-known gangster films was The Public Enemy.. These films have very different views of the time period but still have things in common. This paper will compare Modern Times and The Public Enemy.
Fritz Lang's Metropolis is a very powerful movie with various underlying meanings that allow the viewer to determine for himself. The movie itself is extremely difficult and hard to follow, although the essay "The Vamp and the Machine: Technology and Sexuality in Fritz Lang's Metropolis" written by Andreas Huyssen provided many helpful insights to aid in understanding the movie. Many of Huyssen's idea's are a bit extreme, but none the less the essay is very beneficial. His extreme views include ideas of castration and how it relates with the female robot, and sexulaity and how it relates technology. Although these ideas are extreme he does also provide many interesting ideas.
Sumiko Higashi, author of numerous books, sociologically takes apart media films and newsreels that were available during the years of World War II. Her claim focuses around the title of “melodramas” in which she categorizes these types of propaganda films. Furthermore, she uses the works from different authors, such as Foucault, Michael O’Malley, and others, to argue the melodrama...
Ruppert, Peter. “Technology and the Constructions of Gender in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.” (2000) [Accessed 18 December 2012]
Comedy came easy to Charlie Chaplin. “All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman, and a pretty girl.” But more that acting and directing, his comedy is what paved the road for him to being one of the most well known men in history. The era in which he made a lasting name for himself, 1920-1960, endured some of the toughest times in history from the Holocaust, World War I, the Great Depression, to World War II. But oddly enough it was through those times that that the world tuned into him most. “Chaplin had demonstrated that he believed comedy was the most effective when it was offset by a touch of pathos or sentiment” (Inge 62). He turned the turmoil they were living through into his inspiration. He used humanism to connect with his audience along with satire to make light of current events, however there was much truth to his comedy. .In conclusion, it was Charlie Chaplin’s ability to capture the audience in life’s most trying times that carved his name in history.
The art of filmmaking has been around for over a hundred years and now has over a hundred different specialized jobs in its field. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “key grip, gaffer, best boy, boom operator, and director of photography are just a few of the jobs in the field of filmmaking that are essential to the process of creating a movie or TV show” (From Script #1). But before any of these people are able to get a job, they must go through an average of four years of college in order to specialize in film (Zeke). Filmmaking is a very complex and involved career that is crucial to the pursuit of happiness on earth and the telling of history.
Classic narrative cinema is what Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson (The classic Hollywood Cinema, Columbia University press 1985) 1, calls “an excessively obvious cinema”1 in which cinematic style serves to explain and not to obscure the narrative. In this way it is made up of motivated events that lead the spectator to its inevitable conclusion. It causes the spectator to have an emotional investment in this conclusion coming to pass which in turn makes the predictable the most desirable outcome. The films are structured to create an atmosphere of verisimilitude, which is to give a perception of reality. On closer inspection it they are often far from realistic in a social sense but possibly portray a realism desired by the patriarchal and family value orientated society of the time. I feel that it is often the black and white representation of good and evil that creates such an atmosphere of predic...
The film “Modern Times,” directed by Charlie Chaplin, is set in the mid nineteen thirties. This time frame places the characters in the middle of the Great Depression and the industrial revolution. The film depicts the lifestyle and quality of living for people in this era by showing a factory worker who cannot take the monotony of working on an assembly line. The film follows the factory worker through many of his adventures throughout the film. The film’s main stars are Charlie Chaplin and Paulette Goddard.
As evident from “The Great Dictator” in its entirety, Charlie Chaplin was a fantastic writer and speaker. He had successfully convinced his audience that change is possible through his choice of words and charisma. This speech is nothing short of motivational and has many characteristics within it that would help people understand his point of view and also come into agreement with him, those being ethos, organization, and pathos in particular. Although this was given several decades ago, it remains relatable today in terms of how things like money and power have blinded people and caused so much misery and destruction for the benefit of a few.
James Agee once wrote in Life Magazine of Charlie Chaplin’s career as, “The finest pantomime, the deepest emotion, and the richest and most poignant poetry was in his work”. One thing that personally inspires me about Charlie Chaplin was his charisma. In every film he has been apart of, he always manages to make everyone in the room laugh whether using slapstick comedy or the use of simple gags. In this project, I will explore Chaplin’s upbringing, his great movie career, and why Chaplin was unwelcome in the United States during the Red Scare of the 1950’s.