1927 Blog-a-Thon

Visit 1927 Blog-a-Thon to get to all the great 1927 Blog-A-Thon links.

What a year. Wings, Sunrise, The Jazz Singer, Hula, It, Cat and the Canary, College, Underworld, Flesh and the Devil, The General, King of Kings, Berlin: Symphony of a City, The Love of Jeanne Ney, Napolean, And...METROPOLIS! I've seen them all with the exception of Underworld, but my money is on Fritz Lang's Metropolis as the watershed moment in 1927 cinema. Now admittedly, I'm a Metropolis fanboy, but I suspect I am not alone in my love of this film. I will leave it to others to engage in scholarly film criticism, but if one gives kudos for imagery and imagination, ambitious scope and the fact that it was to become a film to be emulated and measured against since its release, Metropolis comes out a winner. I first saw it at the old Bleeker Street Cinema at a time when "Bird Lives", was still scrawled on the walls of the West 4th Street station in Greenwich Village. Fifteen or so years later I got a copy in Beta (opps - who knew that VHS would wipe Beta off the map). Then of course came the 1984 Morodor mash-up, which I admit to liking, followed by releases of several sub-par editions. Now we have the "to date" definitive edition available on DVD. It was issued in February 2003 after a limited theatrical release. BTW, if for some reason you are not well acquainted with film, check the link in the "You Can Get There From Here" list on this blog. There is a good Wikipedia entry as well. And, if you can find it, there is a great book titled "Metropolis, A Cinematic Laboratory for Modern Architecture", that is in German and English and was published in 2000 by Menges.

What follows is the series of twelve postcards that the German company Ross issued to coincide with the film. However, I have a feeling the the Ross folks didn't see the film before issuing the cards, because although they are sequentially numbered they have no relation to the film in terms of flow. That being said the images are great. I only wish Ross had made some of the stills of the amazing city of Metropolis as part of the set.















Now that you have seen the postcards, here is a selection of Metropolis Images that can be found around the web, assembled here for this 1927 Blog-a-Thon.