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Seeing how this nation has had an interest in the moving image since 1895, they have never taken their eye off of the prize, producing some of the great classics both in the silent era such as Metropolis and Pandora’s Box to the recent award-winners Run Lola Run and The Lives of Others. This week’s sample will take on the first silent film in this series of reviews as well as a classic from the eighties.
Director: Fritz Lang
The qualifier ‘influential’ has been used so much that it has lost all of its meaning. As such it should only be reserved for films which have made a truly substantial impact on how we view cinema, like the silent masterpiece Metropolis.
At the risk of sounding like a troglodyte, it would be fair to say that for a silent movie to be able to maintain my interest for two hours it needs to be something impressive, and this marks one of only two that have been able to execute this feat (the other being The Battleship Potemkin). It deals with concepts that we would deem the product of modern consumerism, namely a dystopian science-fiction epic about the world having surrendered its dignity to capitalism, a storyline which would later go on to inspire George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.
What’s notable about Fritz Lang’s Metropolis is not the storytelling but the innovative nature of the special effects and the architecture of the sets. Being the most expensive film of all time upon release (with an inflation-adjusted budget of $207 million), something that can easily be discerned when faced with the majesty of the set pieces, Metropolis is still appealing to a modern viewer. The fact that it is 83 years old makes the production all the more remarkable.
Director: Wim Wenders
Wim Wenders’ visually stunning and astonishing angelic love story is without question one of the most beautiful films of the 1980s. It follows the story of the angel Damiel, a heavenly bureaucrat, recording and helping humanity but never truly understanding humanity, until he begins to fall in love and discover the trials and tribulations of mankind, who he surreptitiously watched for millennia.
Wings of Desire is one of the few films where its remarkable cinematography is central to the plot by seamlessly mixing black and white with vibrant colour. This use may be copied from the equally sublime English film A Matter of Life and Death, yet this film’s subtlety and the director's superb eye seems to make it its own. It emphasises the isolation of Damiel’s angelic world through the use of austere black and white, while using colour to depict his growing affinity for humanity. Yet it is also a film which is far more than a piece of cinematic trickery, with the angels and their ability to read thoughts giving a character to almost everyone he meets. It also does not shy away from Germany’s recent past; Peter Falk (who trades in his Colombo image) portrays an actor in a film about the Holocaust who can mysteriously sense Damiel and give advice.
Overall, Wings of Desire is a truly unique and magical experience which stays with the viewer long after they have seen it and which I would wholeheartedly recommend.
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