hondaboy

In the future, all "haunted house" movies ought to take place on intergalactic spaceships. Well, not really, but you have to admit the concept works - at least when the movie you're talking about is Alien. (Or maybe the most recent Friday the 13th flick, but I digress.)

Long story short, the crew towing a mining freighter (the Nostromo) back home is awakened from hibernation to investigate a distress signal sent from a nearby planet. Upon landing, the ship that presumably sent the signal is found to be lifeless and covered with an odd substance. Kane, the crew member volunteering to check out the lower hull of the dead ship, finds what appear to be eggs and is attacked by an odd alien being. Upon returning him to the ship for medical treatment - that is, getting the alien off his face - the crew wonders what fate might be in store for Kane and themselves. Luckily, the facehugger eventually detaches itself and dies, leaving Kane to wake up and rejoin his mates. And it's at just about that point that all hell breaks loose on the Nostromo...

Without giving too much more away, I should make one thing clear. Alien is not a kind, gentle movie about friendly creatures. The alien in Alien pretty much wants to kill you and everything you love. It appears to have minimal compassion for any living thing, least of all humans - which are, probably correctly, viewed as a threat.

And the alien isn't even the most important part of the movie. What is more intriguing is director Ridley Scott's conception of future gender relations. Aboard the Nostromo, "male" is the dominant theme for both sexes - after all, the uniform (shirt, pants, optional jacket or hat) is pretty much the same either way. Females, for the most part, are forced to think and act in the same way as males - Ripley's tough demeanor, especially in the first half of the film, is the best example of this ideal. Lambert represents a more traditional female ethos, but her fate shows that such a forgiving attitude will not be advantageous in the future.

And in that vein, there's one more interesting way to look at the film. The ship - nicknamed "Mother" by her crew - effectively serves as a technological counter to the entirely natural alien incubator on the "dead" ship. Both are adept at keeping their living cargo safe, and both are surprisingly mechanical in the way they do so. Obviously, this is to be expected from Mother (who is a digital entity, after all) but is interesting coming from a natural life form. But when one thinks about it, an evolution into which a creature exists only to feed and reproduce is maybe inevitable in the end.

Now, to rate the film. Alien is technically beautiful, both from a directorial-cinematic point of view and in a design sense. To be specific, great acting and camerawork allied to truly lifelike sets make you feel as if you're a crew member. Not to mention scaring the living daylights out of you at times. It's a true classic, both for the way in which it tackles the subject of interstellar life forms and for the fact that it's simply a brilliant piece of filmmaking.

Rating: 3.5 out of 4 stars (thus, a 7-star IMDb rating)

"What? It's black-and-white? From 1927? And German? Well, I'll never watch that."

Such would be the average response from the average person regarding Metropolis, Fritz Lang's masterwork. Be assured, it is not the average film.

As with most older films, we must first remember that what you see on screen had never been visualized in such a way before. Thus, the sheer thought of such stunning ideas as airborne walkways between buildings, entire cities underground, or even the ability to use TV cameras and "see" into other rooms (TV didn't hit the big time until the 1940s), was absolutely incredible.

And it's shocking that Lang's vision of our modern world would prove so accurate, 70-odd years hence. You will recall that skywalks are fairly common in large cities, airplanes have become far too prevalent, places like Walt Disney World actually do have "workers' cities" underground and TV - well, I won't go into TV. And the fact that all of the incredible effects still have the power to awe viewers today, without the use of complex animation or computer graphics, makes the film a treat to watch.

The plot is fairly formulaic by modern standards, though it was stirring stuff for the poor and disadvantaged majority of Germany's inhabitants in 1927. Young Freder Fredersen, privileged son of city leader John Fredersen, has an epiphany of sorts when he finds out about the subhuman treatment of the underground workers who keep the city of Metropolis alive. Disillusioned by his father's uncaring attitude toward them, Freder leaves his comfortable surroundings and decides to live underground. To his surprise, the young man discovers a small but influential resistance movement led by the beautiful and mysterious Maria.

Maria turns out to be the central point of the story once properly introduced, embodying obvious references to religion (as a way to appease the monotony of daily life). But, later on, she also embodies the problem of centralized power when under her (?) control, the workers finally revolt with perhaps an unintended result.

Freder, of course, represents the transformation of man into man-as-machine by uprooting himself from a palatial garden of Eden (literally) and descending into the workings of the massive power plant that keeps Metropolis running. Lang's concept of such a transformation is brilliantly realized in the towering control room where exhausted workmen robotically transfer back and forth along a series of dials and switches, acting only as a "human valvetrain" of sorts in an effort to appease the machine. Another device, the "clock-wheel", forces Freder to continually keep up with time as each second must be marked by the pull of a lever. Though implausible in design, the wheel is a visible indication of man's futile struggle to beat the clock and work harder.

If nothing else, Lang managed to promote the cause of the laborer, though the ending (as well as certain plot points leading to it) is fairly hard to believe given the apparently hopeless situation of the workers and the chilling indifference of the elite.

Metropolis is definitely worthwhile, not just for its groundbreaking technical achievements but also for its (sadly) historical impact. It must be mentioned that this was reported to have been Adolf Hitler's favorite film. And while his own plot to free Germany's workers from oppression perhaps began with a noble goal, Hitler's own maniacal and misguided views on race relations and political conduct proved to be horribly destructive for the world as a whole.

It would be unfair to say that Lang's impressive achievement managed to cause World War II all on its own, because such a murderous outcome was probably not what the director hoped would result. Like all films, Metropolis must be seen with an eye toward the times in which it was created. It was a fabulous commentary on an overly-technological society back then, and it remains so - perhaps being even more relevant today.

Four stars - a classic, and for good reason.

I finally saw this whole film on Tuesday as the primer for a course

on science fiction. Some might question this 14-minute short's

value as a sci-fi piece, but it does have all the important elements.

Allow me to explain.

For instance, there's the very concept itself - "a trip to the moon".

This was heady stuff at the time, considering the first manned

flight experiments (via the Wright brothers) had only just begun in

1902. And Melies' conception of how this might be achieved, by

being shot from a giant gun barrel in a hollow bullet, was probably

the most plausible way to achieve space travel back then. The

director even briefly goes into detail on how the gun barrel might

be constructed, with a very impressive stage set depicting a

massive foundry that belches steam and smoke as the huge die

is cast - and, perhaps unwittingly, setting the stage in a larger

sense for the century of innovation that was to come. (Somehow, I

doubt that magician-turned-cinematographer Melies had such lofty

goals in mind at the time, but one never knows.)

Then there's the early conception of what space must be like.

Since there would be no significant research into the ways of

space travel until the 1950s, the whole thing was pretty much up in

the air. Thus, Melies could only base his ideas on what he'd

already seen - Earth. So we have a Moon that is mainly a dark and

featureless desert (although with some intriguing geological

formations) and where breathable oxygen is in abundance. You'll

note also that the "astronomers" dress as any good scientist

would have back then - in formal eveningwear.

The Moon, of course, is the focal point here. People wanted to

know what it would be like, and Melies let them know the truth as

he saw it - again, based on Earthbound conceptions. Thus we

have the first appearance in film of "moon men", "aliens from outer

space" or whatever you'd call them. In any case, the astronomers

are unsurprisingly bewildered by them and fail to deal with them in

a productive way at first - but I shan't ruin the outcome for you.

Now, down to the bottom line. What we have here is not so much a

great film or even a classic, but an experiment (and not just at the

on-screen level). This film was more of a chance to see how far

the medium could move away from reality, and the idea of going

anywhere beyond Earth was as whacked-out as you could get at

the time. People loved it, and as mentioned before, the die was

now cast. After this point, filmmakers went ever farther and sought

to amaze and delight the viewer at every possible opportunity. By

simply going through some of the later cinematic creations

cataloged in this website, it's easy to tell whether or not they

succeeded.

One thing is very clear, however. Without this tiny bit of filmed

madness, I might not have had a website upon which to comment

on the movies at all. Remember that when you watch Episode II.

Highly recommended - 8 of 10 stars