Fritz Lang Invents the Video Phone in Metropolis (1927)

in Film, Sci Fi, Technology | June 26th, 2015

On Mon­day, we brought you evi­dence that Stan­ley Kubrick invent­ed the tablet com­put­er in 1968’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Today, we go back forty years fur­ther into cin­e­mat­ic his­to­ry to ask whether Fritz Lang invent­ed the video phone in 1927’s Metrop­o­lis. In the clip above, you can watch a scene set in the home of Joh Fred­er­sen, stern mas­ter of the vast, futur­is­tic, tit­u­lar indus­tri­al city of 2026. In order to best rule all he sur­veys — and to com­plete the image of a 20th-cen­tu­ry dystopia — he lives high above the infer­nal roil of Metrop­o­lis, safe­ly ensconced in one of its ver­tig­i­nous tow­ers and equipped with the lat­est hulk­ing, wall-mount­ed, inex­plic­a­bly paper-spout­ing video phone tech­nol­o­gy.

Fred­er­sen, writes Joe Malia in his notes on video phones in film, “appears to use four sep­a­rate dials to arrive at the cor­rect fre­quen­cy for the call. Two assign the cor­rect call loca­tion and two small­er ones pro­vide fine video tun­ing. He then picks up a phone receiv­er with one hand and uses the oth­er to tap a rhythm on a pan­el that is relayed to the oth­er phone and dis­played as flash­es of light to attract atten­tion.”

Not con­tent to infer the mechan­ics of these imag­i­nary devices, Malia would go on to cre­ate the super­cut below, a sur­vey of video phones through­out the his­to­ry of film and tele­vi­sion, from Metrop­o­lis onward, includ­ing a stop at 2001:

The super­cut also includes a clip from Rid­ley Scot­t’s Blade Run­ner, whose (on the whole, aston­ish­ing­ly time­less) design I called out for using video phones in a video essay of my own. In real­i­ty, con­trary to all these 20th-cen­tu­ry visions of the far-flung future, video phone tech­nol­o­gy did­n’t devel­op quite as rapid­ly as pre­dict­ed, and when it did devel­op, it did­n’t spread in quite the same way as pre­dict­ed. Even the rich world of 2015 lacks bulky video phone box­es in every home and on every street cor­ner, but with voice over inter­net pro­to­col ser­vices like Skype, many in even the poor­est parts of the world can effec­tive­ly make bet­ter video phone calls than these grand-scale sci-fi pro­duc­tions dared imag­ine — then again, they do often make them on tablets more or less straight out of 2001.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Did Stan­ley Kubrick Invent the iPad in 2001: A Space Odyssey?

A 1947 French Film Accu­rate­ly Pre­dict­ed Our 21st-Cen­tu­ry Addic­tion to Smart­phones

Niko­la Tes­la Accu­rate­ly Pre­dict­ed the Rise of the Inter­net & Smart Phone in 1926

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch the First Russian Science Fiction Film, Aelita: Queen of Mars (1924)

in Film | June 25th, 2015

Despite the Sovi­et Union’s sup­pres­sion of a great many writ­ers and film­mak­ers, the com­mu­nist state nonethe­less pro­duced some of the finest film and lit­er­a­ture of the 20th cen­tu­ry. We are lucky, for exam­ple, to have Mikhail Bul­gakov’s The Mas­ter and Mar­gari­ta, which was nev­er pub­lished dur­ing the author’s life­time and was for many years there­after cen­sored or rel­e­gat­ed to samiz­dat ver­sions. A sim­i­lar fate almost befell the first Russ­ian sci­ence fic­tion film, Aeli­ta: Queen of Mars, a silent from 1924 that inspired such indis­pens­able clas­sics as Flash Gor­don and Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis. The film—which tops a Guardian list of “Sev­en Sovi­et sci-fi films every­one should see”—con­tributed to a rich cin­e­mat­ic vocab­u­lary with­out which it would be hard to imag­ine the aes­thet­ics of much sci­ence fic­tion in gen­er­al.

Direct­ed by Yakov Pro­tazanov in the the­atri­cal, futur­is­tic con­struc­tivist style that Fritz Lang bor­rowed, Aeli­ta tells the sto­ry of Los, an Earth engi­neer who builds a space­ship and trav­els to Mars to meet and fall in love with its queen.

Fur­ther plot devel­op­ments make clear that Lang may owe some­thing to the film’s sto­ry as well, involv­ing a tyran­ni­cal Mar­t­ian ruler, Aeli­ta’s father, who ruth­less­ly exploits his plan­et’s pro­le­tari­at. All­movie describes Aeli­ta as “the Marx­ist strug­gle reach­es out­er space” and indeed the film dra­ma­tizes an alien rev­o­lu­tion very close to the one that took place back on Earth.

Aelita

Part of the rea­son the film fell out of favor with the Sovi­et gov­ern­ment in lat­er decades—and irked crit­ics at the time—is its ambiva­lence about rev­o­lu­tion­ary pol­i­tics through its por­tray­al of Los as a dis­af­fect­ed intel­lec­tu­al. Alex­ei Tol­stoy—author of the film’s source novel—had few­er reser­va­tions. The so-called “Com­rade Count” won three Stal­in prizes after his return from a brief Euro­pean exile. Unlike the dis­si­dent crit­ic Bul­gakov, Tolstoy—a dis­tant rel­a­tive of both Leo Tol­stoy and Ivan Turgenev—has been described by his ene­mies as cyn­i­cal, oppor­tunis­tic and, lat­er, total­ly in thrall to Stal­in. His friends prob­a­bly described him as a loy­al par­ty man. (He is also cred­it­ed with being the first to ascer­tain the Naz­i’s use of gas vans.)

Aeli­ta the film made a favor­able impres­sion on its first audi­ences (see an orig­i­nal poster above). One of the first full-length films about space trav­el, it enabled ordi­nary Rus­sians to imag­ine what may have seemed to them like the near future of Sovi­et tech­nol­o­gy. And yet, writes Andrew Hor­ton in a lengthy essay on Aeli­ta, despite its rep­u­ta­tion, the sci-fi clas­sic is “nei­ther sci­ence fic­tion nor a pro-rev­o­lu­tion­ary film.” Con­tem­po­rary crit­ics and film­mak­ers felt that Pro­tazanov’s adap­ta­tion not only showed insuf­fi­cient com­mit­ment to the rev­o­lu­tion, but it also man­i­fest­ed “alleged con­ti­nu­ity with the bour­geois cin­e­ma of the Tsarist age”—a seri­ous charge in the age of social­ist real­ism and dis­rup­tive cin­e­mat­ic exper­i­ments like those of Dzi­ga Ver­tov.

In hind­sight, how­ev­er, Aeli­ta turns out to have been a film before its time, and indeed a work of clas­sic sci-fi, in its extreme­ly imag­i­na­tive use of tech­nol­o­gy, cos­tum­ing, and set design. With­out the fas­ci­na­tion it has always held for film buffs, it might have dis­ap­peared, giv­en its oppo­si­tion to Par­ty dog­ma: “The film prais­es domes­tic­i­ty and mar­ried life at a time when soci­ety was exper­i­ment­ing with the nature and mean­ing of rela­tion­ships,” Hor­ton writes, “It is a film that looks to rebuild­ing, con­sol­i­da­tion, progress and the future and rejects rev­o­lu­tion as an unachiev­able Utopi­an ide­al open to hijack.” All of this con­text can seem a bit heavy, but we need­n’t work too hard to untan­gle Aeli­ta’s ide­o­log­i­cal strands. Sim­ply enjoy the movie as an enter­tain­ing tech­ni­cal achieve­ment from which we can draw a line to lat­er sci-fi films like 1957’s Road to the Stars (above) and, from there, to mod­ern mas­ter­pieces like Stan­ley Kubrick­’s 2001.

Aeli­ta will be added to our list of 101 Silent Films, a sub­set of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via Ubuweb

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Metrop­o­lis: Watch a Restored Ver­sion of Fritz Lang’s Mas­ter­piece (1927)

Eight Free Films by Dzi­ga Ver­tov, Cre­ator of Sovi­et Avant-Garde Doc­u­men­taries

Sovi­et Ani­ma­tions of Ray Brad­bury Sto­ries: ‘Here There Be Tygers’ & ‘There Will Comes Soft Rain’

Sovi­et Artists Envi­sion a Com­mu­nist Utopia in Out­er Space

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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How German Expressionism Influenced Tim Burton: A Video Essay

in Film | June 23rd, 2015

Cin­e­ma Sem Lei has made a nice super­cut video essay that explores the influ­ence of Ger­man Expres­sion­ism on the films of Tim Bur­ton. There’s unde­ni­ably some direct quotes: The first shot com­par­ing the cityscapes of Metrop­o­lis and Bat­man Returns, the shad­ows on the wall of both The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari and The Corpse Bride, and the sim­i­lar­i­ties in the hair­cuts of Metrop­o­lis’ Rot­wang and Christo­pher Walken’s Max Shreck (the name a trib­ute to the title actor in Nos­fer­atu) again in Bat­man Returns. (Beetle­juice is noto­ri­ous­ly absent.)

But there’s also a sense that Cin­e­ma Sem Lei’s video is cut­ting off a crab’s legs to make it fit in a box. Not every­thing in Burton’s films has a direct link to Ger­man Expres­sion­ism, and to do so is to pre­tend that this silent movie style lie dor­mant between the 1920s and 1982, when Bur­ton cre­at­ed his first ani­mat­ed short, Vin­cent. (Watch it here.) It’s to ignore that Bur­ton most like­ly got his Expres­sion­ism, like many oth­er ’80s film­mak­ers, sec­ond and third hand.

Ger­man Expres­sion­ism didn’t result in that many films, but the ones that did have become famous for their vision­ary aes­thet­ic, stand­ing out visu­al­ly and intel­lec­tu­al­ly against the oth­er films of the day. When many of its direc­tors fled the Nazis and moved to Hol­ly­wood, the style began to influ­ence hor­ror movies and film noir. One oth­er place where Expres­sion­ism popped up was in the ani­mat­ed films of Warn­er Broth­ers, Dis­ney, and MGM, some­thing Bur­ton def­i­nite­ly grew up watch­ing. The com­ic exag­ger­a­tions in Tex Avery are noth­ing but expres­sion­ist, and the design of both the desert vis­tas of Chuck Jones’ Road Run­ner films, and his wild sci-fi designs bear the dis­tor­tions of Cali­gari’s sets.

So while we can see the angled rooftops and spindly stairs of Cali­gari in the shot of Burton’s Vin­cent sulk­i­ly climb­ing the stairs to his room, a more direct influ­ence was the art of Dr. Seuss, and while a skele­ton might play a bone as a flute in Murnau’s Faust, it’s Burton’s child­hood love of Ray Har­ry­hausen that you can see in the skele­ton band from Corpse Bride.

Also, it’s not known when Bur­ton may have seen these clas­sic silent films. Grow­ing up in the ‘70s he would have had to seek out prints, or look at stills in books about the his­to­ry of hor­ror. Once he got to CalArts to study, his access to films would have expand­ed beyond what was on tele­vi­sion.

But it’s inter­est­ing that in most inter­views, Bur­ton quick­ly diverts the dis­cus­sion if and rarely when asked about Ger­man Expres­sion­ism, but indulges when asked about what he watched as a child.

Once work­ing in the film indus­try, no doubt those Bur­ton brought on for his art direc­tors and cos­tume design­ers came with their own knowl­edge of his­to­ry, while music videos in the ear­ly ‘80s were also awash with Expres­sion­ist influ­ence mixed with mod­ernist design. Not to say that Bur­ton isn’t a sin­gu­lar vision­ary with a stack of influ­ences, but one who had grown up lone­ly, he soon found him­self among many who shared his par­tic­u­lar tastes, the film pro­duc­tion as a sec­ond fam­i­ly.

via Slate

Relat­ed con­tent:

Six Ear­ly Short Films By Tim Bur­ton

Watch 10 Clas­sic Ger­man Expres­sion­ist Films: From Fritz Lang’s M to The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari

Vin­cent: Tim Burton’s Ear­ly Ani­mat­ed Film

Tim Burton’s The World of Stain­boy: Watch the Com­plete Ani­mat­ed Series

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Did Stanley Kubrick Invent the iPad in 2001: A Space Odyssey?

in Film, Sci Fi, Technology | June 22nd, 2015

While it now bears embar­rass­ing marks of the 1960s here and there, the future envi­sioned by Stan­ley Kubrick­’s 2001: A Space Odyssey remains, on many lev­els, chill­ing­ly plau­si­ble. True, Pan Am Air­lines went under in the 1990s instead of launch­ing a space sta­tion like they’ve got in the movie, but in the small­er details, 2001 gets a lot right, at least inso­far as its real­i­ty resem­bles the one in which we find our­selves in the actu­al 21st cen­tu­ry. No less an aggre­ga­tion of brain­pow­er than Sam­sung thinks so too: in fact, they’ve gone so far as to cite Kubrick­’s sci-fi mas­ter­work before a judge as proof that the direc­tor invent­ed tablet com­put­ing.

“In 2011, an unusu­al piece of evi­dence was pre­sent­ed in court in a dis­pute between tech­nol­o­gy giants Apple and Sam­sung over the latter’s range of hand­held tablets, which Apple claimed infringed upon the patent­ed design and user inter­face of the iPad,” writes the British Film Insti­tute’s Samuel Wigley.

“As part of Samsung’s defence, the company’s lawyers showed the court a still image and clip show­ing the astro­nauts played by Gary Lock­wood and Keir Dul­lea eat­ing while watch­ing a TV show on their own per­son­al, mini-sized, flat-screen com­put­ers.”

kubrick tablet

Apple and Sam­sung have not, in recent mem­o­ry, played nice. Apple accused Sam­sung of “slav­ish­ly” copy­ing the design of the iPad for their own Galaxy tablet, a charge that in some ways aligns with Sam­sung and oth­er major Kore­an man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­nies’ rep­u­ta­tion for rapid­ly adapt­ing and even improv­ing upon prod­ucts devel­oped in oth­er coun­tries. Sam­sung’s defense? Watch 2001’s footage of its “News­pads” (above), and you can see that Kubrick invent­ed the tablet before either com­pa­ny — or, in the words of their attor­neys, he invent­ed a com­put­er with “an over­all rec­tan­gu­lar shape with a dom­i­nant dis­play screen, nar­row bor­ders, a pre­dom­i­nate­ly flat front sur­face, a flat back sur­face, and a thin form fac­tor.”

Even in their life­times, 2001 gave Kubrick and his col­lab­o­ra­tor Arthur C. Clarke, sci-fi emi­nence and author of 2001 the book, rep­u­ta­tions as some­thing like seers. “I’m sure we’ll have sophis­ti­cat­ed 3‑D holo­graph­ic tele­vi­sion and films,” Kubrick spec­u­lat­ed in a Play­boy mag­a­zine inter­view we fea­tured last year, “and it’s pos­si­ble that com­plete­ly new forms of enter­tain­ment and edu­ca­tion will be devised.” Cer­tain­ly the open­ing up of the realm of tablets has made new forms of enter­tain­ment and edu­ca­tion pos­si­ble, but I won­der: could he ever have imag­ined we would one day use our News­pads to watch 2001 itself?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In 1968, Stan­ley Kubrick Makes Pre­dic­tions for 2001: Human­i­ty Will Con­quer Old Age, Watch 3D TV & Learn Ger­man in 20 Min­utes

1966 Film Explores the Mak­ing of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (and Our High-Tech Future)

James Cameron Revis­its the Mak­ing of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

Howard Johnson’s Presents a Children’s Menu Fea­tur­ing Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch Hayao Miyazaki Animate the Final Shot of His Final Feature Film, The Wind Rises

in Animation, Film | June 19th, 2015

Hayao Miyaza­k­i’s The Wind Ris­es came out in 2013 to a great deal of acclaim and attention—as, I sup­pose, do all the movies his Stu­dio Ghi­b­li puts out, so painstak­ing­ly have they built up their rep­u­ta­tion for medi­um-tran­scend­ing depth, artistry, crafts­man­ship, and atten­tion to detail. But that fic­tion­al­ized bio­graph­i­cal sto­ry of Japan­ese World War II air­plane design­er Jiro Horikos­ki received even more notice than most due not just to the con­tro­ver­sial nature of its mate­r­i­al, but to its place as Miyaza­k­i’s sup­posed swan song, the last fea­ture film he would ever direct.

Then again, Hayao Miyaza­ki has spo­ken of many pos­si­ble retire­ments over the years, and no longer ani­mat­ing fea­ture films hard­ly means the end of his all-con­sum­ing impulse to cre­ate, which dri­ves him to con­tin­ue work­ing on Toky­o’s Ghi­b­li Muse­um and draw­ing the art for com­ic books, among oth­er projects. Cer­tain Miyaza­ki asso­ciates have pub­licly told us not to be sur­prised if the mas­ter one day emerges from this par­tic­u­lar “retire­ment,” but since the man him­self seems quite seri­ous about putting full-length pic­tures behind him, we can assume for now that the clip above shows him at work on the last bit of film ani­ma­tion in his career: The Wind Ris­es’ final shot.

The footage comes from last year’s The King­dom of Dreams and Mad­ness, a doc­u­men­tary on a moment in the life of Stu­dio Ghibli—and pos­si­bly one of the last moments in the life of Stu­dio Ghi­b­li, giv­en their announce­ment of a “brief pause” pro­duc­tion as a result of Miyaza­k­i’s retire­ment. On the sub­ject of the stu­dio’s future Miyaza­ki speaks blunt­ly in the doc­u­men­tary: “The future is clear: it’s going to fall apart. I can already see it. What’s the use wor­ry­ing? It’s inevitable.” But all things do, a fact which the finest works of Japan­ese art—Miyazaki’s films included—have always accept­ed. But they also take notice of what small things we can appre­ci­ate along the way to dis­so­lu­tion, as does Miyaza­ki him­self: “Isn’t ani­ma­tion fas­ci­nat­ing?” he asks, seem­ing­ly to him­self, as he walks away from the draw­ing board.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hayao Miyazaki’s Mag­i­cal Ani­mat­ed Music Video for the Japan­ese Pop Song, “On Your Mark”

Watch Sher­lock Hound: Hayao Miyazaki’s Ani­mat­ed, Steam­punk Take on Sher­lock Holmes

How to Make Instant Ramen Com­pli­ments of Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion Direc­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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See Flannery O’Connor’s Story “The Displaced Person” Adapted to a Film Starring a Young Samuel L. Jackson (1977)

in Film, Literature, Television | June 19th, 2015

There are strong peo­ple qui­et­ly will­ing to do “what needs to be done” for the pub­lic good, and then there are those who enjoy insin­u­at­ing that they are that sort of per­son, usu­al­ly as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for their self-serv­ing, fre­quent­ly racist or xeno­pho­bic actions. When the lat­ter reach­es for the Bible as back up, look out!

No one ever had more fun with this mon­strous type than the writer Flan­nery O’Connor, a devout Catholic with a knack for wrap­ping her char­ac­ters’ foul pur­pos­es in the “stink­ing mad shad­ow of Jesus.”

In her longest sto­ry “The Dis­placed Per­son,” the boor­ish, Bible-thump­ing Mrs. Short­ley is not the only bad­die. The refined Mrs. McIn­tyre, wid­owed mis­tress of the dairy oper­a­tion that employs the Short­leys and a cou­ple of African-Amer­i­can farmhands, is just as quick to indict those with whom she imag­ines her­self at cross-pur­pos­es.

Trans­fer them to the small screen, and every actress over 40 would be clam­or­ing for the chance to sink her teeth into one or the oth­er.

In 1977, PBS hired play­wright Hor­ton Foote to adapt “The Dis­placed Per­son” for “The Amer­i­can Short Sto­ry,” and the roles of Short­ley and McIn­tyre went to Shirley Stol­er and Irene Worth, both excel­lent.

(See above…it’s always so much more amus­ing to play one of the vil­lains than the hard­work­ing, uncom­plain­ing, tit­u­lar char­ac­ter, here a Pol­ish refugee from WWII.)

The audio qual­i­ty is not the great­est, but stick with it to see Samuel L. Jack­son, not quite 30, as the younger of the two farmhands.

O’Connor buffs will be inter­est­ed to know that Andalu­sia, the writer’s own Geor­gia farm, served as the loca­tion for this hour-long project. (No need to rent a pea­cock!)

Despite the state­ly pro­duc­tion val­ues that were de rigeur for qual­i­ty view­ing of the peri­od, the sto­ry retains the unmis­tak­able tang of O’Connor—it’s a bit­ter, com­ic brew.

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed Con­tent

Flan­nery O’Connor Reads ‘Some Aspects of the Grotesque in South­ern Fic­tion’ (c. 1960)

Rare 1959 Audio: Flan­nery O’Connor Reads ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’

Flan­nery O’Connor’s Satir­i­cal Car­toons: 1942–1945

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Meta Star Wars: All Six Films in One

in Film, Random | June 19th, 2015

We’ve shown our fair share of Star Wars mashups and fan films over the years. I cite for exam­ple:

The lat­est and maybe not great­est fan rework­ing of Star Wars (now avail­able on YouTube) lets you watch all six Star Wars films online. At once. With one film lay­ered upon the oth­er.

Is there some cul­tur­al val­ue to this lay­er­ing of films? Maybe only inso­far as it gives the keen observ­er the chance to find some meta trends run­ning through the films. One YouTu­ber com­ment­ed, “The real­ly inter­est­ing part is that they’re sim­i­lar­ly paced. If you skip around you’ll almost always find all talk­ing scenes lined up and all action scenes lined up. Just shows how for­mu­la­ic movies are (or at least how for­mu­la­ic George Lucas is).”

Feel free to drop your own obser­va­tions in the com­ments sec­tion below. And, by the way, the per­son who cre­at­ed this mashup has also made avail­able a full gallery of HD still frames on imgur here.

via Twit­ter

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and  share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

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Blade Runner Recut with the Sci-Fi Masterpiece’s Unused Original Footage

in Film, Sci Fi | June 16th, 2015

I recent­ly talked with a friend who’s plan­ning to sched­ule a screen­ing of Blade Run­ner at her film fes­ti­val. We dis­cussed the impor­tant deci­sion that any­one who wants to show Rid­ley Scot­t’s Philip K. Dick-adapt­ing mas­ter­piece faces: which Blade Run­ner? Sev­en dif­fer­ent offi­cial cuts exist: many would instinc­tive­ly choose the 2007 “final cut,” some might pre­fer the 1992 “direc­tor’s cut,” and a curi­ous minor­i­ty might even like to see the cut orig­i­nal­ly released in U.S. the­aters in 1982, fea­tur­ing the Har­ri­son Ford voiceover and hap­py end­ing that fans now con­sid­er ruinous.

But now we have yet anoth­er cut of Blade Run­ner, per­haps the most unusu­al of them all: a “new” ver­sion made out of shots that, even if you’ve seen every offi­cial cut of the film, you may nev­er have seen before. “Some enter­pris­ing souls have com­piled a B‑roll cut of the film, using all of the excised footage that was not incor­po­rat­ed in the pre­vi­ous cuts,” writes Nerdis­t’s Joseph McCabe. “There’s so much here that most Blade Run­ner fans have not seen before that it’s absolute­ly required view­ing. I found it worth watch­ing all forty-five min­utes just to hear Edward James Olmos’ gruff Gaff hilar­i­ous­ly exclaim, ‘I spit on meta­physics!’ ” Not to men­tion all the new views of the pic­ture’s still-strik­ing pro­duc­tion design.

That run­ning time, over an hour short­er than every oth­er cut, effec­tive­ly con­dens­es Blade Run­ner into a short film. It does­n’t play quite like any of the wide­ly seen ver­sions of the film, even though it retains the hat­ed nar­ra­tion and incon­gru­ous Hol­ly­wood end­ing of the Amer­i­can the­atri­cal cut. But the ele­ments that feel clunky, over-explana­to­ry, and audi­ence-dis­trust­ing in a two-hour Blade Run­ner some­how work bet­ter in this briefer ren­di­tion. (Cer­tain­ly Ford’s voiceover, awk­ward though it always sounds, helps this trimmed-down sto­ry cohere.) You haven’t real­ly seen Blade Run­ner, so many who love the movie feel, until you’ve seen every Blade Run­ner — but even now, I don’t think we’ve seen the last of them.

via Nerdist

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Art of Mak­ing Blade Run­ner: See the Orig­i­nal Sketch­book, Sto­ry­boards, On-Set Polaroids & More

The Blade Run­ner Pro­mo­tion­al Film

Blade Run­ner: The Pil­lar of Sci-Fi Cin­e­ma that Siskel, Ebert, and Stu­dio Execs Orig­i­nal­ly Hat­ed

The Blade Run­ner Sketch­book: The Orig­i­nal Art of Syd Mead and Rid­ley Scott Online

Philip K. Dick Pre­views Blade Run­ner: “The Impact of the Film is Going to be Over­whelm­ing” (1981)

Watch an Ani­mat­ed Ver­sion of Rid­ley Scott’s Blade Run­ner Made of 12,597 Water­col­or Paint­ings

The City in Cin­e­ma Mini-Doc­u­men­taries Reveal the Los Ange­les of Blade Run­ner, Her, Dri­ve, Repo Man, and More

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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