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Fantasy Aspects, issue 2, November 1947
Page 23
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arranging to meet again on the morrow. Rowtang comes from hiding, pursues Maria. Her flight from Rowtang's flashlight in the styrian dark is really scary stuff. At last she is captured, taken to the laboratory. Laboratories in American scientifilms have become pretty well standardized in the past 10 or 15 years, patterning pretty much after the original "Frankenstein" lab. But the "Metropolis" lab was German conceived and about twice as complicated as any of them. And much more imaginative. There is one tremendous sequence, where, with halos of fluorescent light encompassing the robot, moving up and down and bathing it from head to foot with radiations, the physical form of unconscious Maria is transferred to the metallic body. Young Fredersen, attracted to the inventor's house by Maria's screams when she was struggling to escape participation in the experiment, has been a prisoner of Rowtang and unaware of what has gone on. Rowtang sends the robot-Maria to John Fredersen for inspection. Freder Fredersen at last escapes and, arriving at his father's office, sees what he takes to be his sweetheart in his father's absence. At this the world seems to explode in Freder's face (shown on the screen) and the floor opens up and he falls into a bottomless pit. In a delirium he dreams that Rowtang invites a number of aristocrats to see the robot-Maria perform, to convince them of her lifelike qualities. The robot looking exactly like Freder's flesh and blood sweetheart, does a licentious dance. The witnesses of this exhibition are hot-eyed, dry-lipped, convinced of Rowtang's genius in creating a simulacrum of a woman. Freder's delirium comes to an end as he sees statues of the 7 Deadly Sins come to life. As death approaches him, playing on a bone as upon a flute, he wakes. The picture's climax is approaching. The robot-Maria has returned to the catacombs to stir up revolt among the workers. She spurs them to the destruction of the machines, heedless of the fact that in doing so they will endanger their subterranean city. In these scenes I thot Maria superb. Maria was played by Brigitte Helm, who I understand was only 16 at the time. She later appeared in a number of films of a fantastic theme. Her acting as the machine controlled by the mad inventor was both evil and robotic. This is not to say that she walked like a sleepwalker, jerkily or mechanically; on the contrary she was intensively active and supple; but somehow -- inhuman. Like Catherine Moore's later Deidre, "---the taint of metal was upon her---." As electricity plays all over the screen and the great dynamos and other mechanisms explode, it is nite-time above and the lighting of Metropolis begins to assume crazy flashing patterns. The Master is alarmed. He is called to his televisor by the superintendent of the machines, who informs him that the workers have gone mad. A further consequence ----(Page 23)----
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arranging to meet again on the morrow. Rowtang comes from hiding, pursues Maria. Her flight from Rowtang's flashlight in the styrian dark is really scary stuff. At last she is captured, taken to the laboratory. Laboratories in American scientifilms have become pretty well standardized in the past 10 or 15 years, patterning pretty much after the original "Frankenstein" lab. But the "Metropolis" lab was German conceived and about twice as complicated as any of them. And much more imaginative. There is one tremendous sequence, where, with halos of fluorescent light encompassing the robot, moving up and down and bathing it from head to foot with radiations, the physical form of unconscious Maria is transferred to the metallic body. Young Fredersen, attracted to the inventor's house by Maria's screams when she was struggling to escape participation in the experiment, has been a prisoner of Rowtang and unaware of what has gone on. Rowtang sends the robot-Maria to John Fredersen for inspection. Freder Fredersen at last escapes and, arriving at his father's office, sees what he takes to be his sweetheart in his father's absence. At this the world seems to explode in Freder's face (shown on the screen) and the floor opens up and he falls into a bottomless pit. In a delirium he dreams that Rowtang invites a number of aristocrats to see the robot-Maria perform, to convince them of her lifelike qualities. The robot looking exactly like Freder's flesh and blood sweetheart, does a licentious dance. The witnesses of this exhibition are hot-eyed, dry-lipped, convinced of Rowtang's genius in creating a simulacrum of a woman. Freder's delirium comes to an end as he sees statues of the 7 Deadly Sins come to life. As death approaches him, playing on a bone as upon a flute, he wakes. The picture's climax is approaching. The robot-Maria has returned to the catacombs to stir up revolt among the workers. She spurs them to the destruction of the machines, heedless of the fact that in doing so they will endanger their subterranean city. In these scenes I thot Maria superb. Maria was played by Brigitte Helm, who I understand was only 16 at the time. She later appeared in a number of films of a fantastic theme. Her acting as the machine controlled by the mad inventor was both evil and robotic. This is not to say that she walked like a sleepwalker, jerkily or mechanically; on the contrary she was intensively active and supple; but somehow -- inhuman. Like Catherine Moore's later Deidre, "---the taint of metal was upon her---." As electricity plays all over the screen and the great dynamos and other mechanisms explode, it is nite-time above and the lighting of Metropolis begins to assume crazy flashing patterns. The Master is alarmed. He is called to his televisor by the superintendent of the machines, who informs him that the workers have gone mad. A further consequence ----(Page 23)----
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