#376 - Head, Hand, Heart

Michael and Us

Luke Savage and Will Sloan

Tv & Film

4.6 • 668 Ratings

🗓️ 26 October 2022

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In a distant future, a privileged ruling class lives in a city fuelled by an invisible army of workers who toil in barbaric conditions. Yes, this is the far-fetched scenario of one of the most iconic science-fiction films of all time, Fritz Lang's METROPOLIS (1927). We finally discuss the most famous of all Weimer-era movies, and debate whether or not the mediator between the head and the hand really is the heart. WATCH METROPOLIS IN FULL HERE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BBnMCAIuQg&ab_channel=SupremeOverlord LINK TO EPISODE #149: FROM CALIGARI TO HITLER (NOW UNLOCKED): https://www.patreon.com/posts/149-from-to-36101522

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Michael and us. I'm Will Sloan. Here is always with.
0:12.6	Luke Savage, welcome back, everyone. So, you know, we're going to be talking about Fritz Lang's
0:17.1	Metropolis on this episode at long last, right? Yeah, I mean, I think this is one of those,
0:22.6	you know, long time coming kind of things. I mean, because of the sort of remit that we've imposed
0:27.8	on ourselves for the show, sometimes we, I think we like to space out perhaps unconsciously the good
0:34.3	films, and this is certainly one of them, you know, so that they can be, you know,
0:38.1	the diamonds and the rough among all of the, you know, liberal and conservative kitsch that we
0:42.4	otherwise consume for this show. So yes, this one has been a long time coming. So I was doing
0:46.9	some sightseeing in Germany, and last week I saw two museums that might be relevant as we gear up for this conversation.
0:56.0	A few days ago I went to the New National Gallery, which is an art museum that focuses on modern art from 1900 to 1950.
1:04.0	Although, with a few noble exceptions, I think it's fair to say that modern art pretty much ceased in Germany starting in 1933 for a
1:13.1	generation. The stuff that was produced was produced pretty underground. As I said on the last
1:18.7	Patreon episode, in my old age, I'm becoming the sort of person who gets deeply emotional at art
1:23.9	galleries, and this was no exception. When you look at the German art from the 1920s,
1:29.5	a lot of it suggests, and this will not be a revolutionary insight, a lot of it suggests a country
1:35.2	that was both deeply traumatized by war, but also very unsentimental about the concept of war.
1:42.6	So, you know, you'll see a lot of horrible battlefield scenes,
1:46.0	a lot of pictures of death and disfigurement, often with a strong sense of gallows humor.
1:51.5	Otto Dix's paintings are very powerful examples of this. I recommend people look up his painting
1:56.7	of the Flanders battlefield. I'm very fond of Otto Dix, since I discovered him courtesy of that wonderful series,
2:03.2	Shock of the New.
2:04.3	This is also, though, a country where all the major art movements of the time flourished.
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