Hayao Miyazaki, The Mind of a Master: A Thoughtful Video Essay Reveals the Driving Forces Behind the Animator’s Incredible Body of Work

in Animation, Film | May 9th, 2022

“If the cin­e­ma, by some twist of fate, were to be deprived overnight of the sound track and to become once again the art of silent cin­e­matog­ra­phy that it was between 1895 and 1930, I tru­ly believe most of the direc­tors in the field would be com­pelled to take up some new line of work.” So wrote François Truf­faut in the nine­teen-six­ties, argu­ing that, of film­mak­ers then liv­ing, only Howard Hawks, John Ford, and Alfred Hitch­cock could sur­vive such a return to silence. Alas, Truf­faut died in 1984, the very same year that saw the release of Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind, the first ani­mat­ed fea­ture by what would become Stu­dio Ghi­b­li. Had he lived longer, he would cer­tain­ly have had to grant its mas­ter­mind Hayao Miyaza­ki pride of place in his small cat­a­log of mas­ter visu­al sto­ry­tellers.

“He does­n’t actu­al­ly write a script,” says Any-Mation Youtu­ber Cole Delaney in “Hayao Miyaza­ki: The Mind of a Mas­ter,” the video essay above. “He might write an out­line with his plan for a fea­ture, but gen­er­al­ly he draws an image and works from there.”

My Neigh­bor Totoro, for instance, began with only the image of a young girl and the tit­u­lar for­est crea­ture stand­ing at a bus stop; from that artis­tic seed every­thing else grew, like the enor­mous tree that Totoro and the chil­dren make grow in the film itself. Delaney also explores oth­er essen­tial aspects of Miyaza­k­i’s process, includ­ing the cre­ation of full worlds with dis­tinc­tive funi­ki, or ambi­ence; the incor­po­ra­tion of Ozu-style “pil­low shots” to shape a film’s space and rhythm; and the cre­ation of pro­tag­o­nists whose strong will trans­lates direct­ly into phys­i­cal motion.

“What dri­ves the ani­ma­tion is the will of the char­ac­ters,” says Miyaza­ki him­self, in a clip Delaney bor­rows from the NHK doc­u­men­tary 10 Years with Hayao Miyaza­ki. “You don’t depict fate, you depict will.” The mas­ter makes oth­er obser­va­tions on his work and life itself, which one sens­es he regards as one and the same. “I want to make a film that won’t shame me,” he says by way of explain­ing his noto­ri­ous per­fec­tion­ism. “I want to stay grumpy,” he says by way of explain­ing his equal­ly noto­ri­ous demeanor in the Ghi­b­li office. As for “the notion that one’s goal in life is to be hap­py, that your own hap­pi­ness is the goal… I just don’t buy it.” Rather, peo­ple must  “live their lives ful­ly, with all their might, with­in their giv­en bound­aries, in their own era.” The sur­pass­ing vital­i­ty of his films reflects his own: “Like it or not,” he says, “a film is a reflec­tion of its direc­tor,” and in these words Truf­faut would sure­ly rec­og­nize a fel­low auteurist-auteur.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Phi­los­o­phy of Hayao Miyaza­ki: A Video Essay on How the Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Reli­gion Shin­to Suf­fus­es Miyazaki’s Films

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

What Made Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Ani­ma­tor Isao Taka­ha­ta (RIP) a Mas­ter: Two Video Essays

How Mas­ter Japan­ese Ani­ma­tor Satoshi Kon Pushed the Bound­aries of Mak­ing Ani­me: A Video Essay

The Aes­thet­ic of Ani­me: A New Video Essay Explores a Rich Tra­di­tion of Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion

Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion Direc­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki Shows Us How to Make Instant Ramen

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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How Postwar Italian Cinema Created La Dolce Vita and Then the Paparazzi

in Film, History, Media | May 4th, 2022

Those who love the work of Fed­eri­co Felli­ni must envy any­one who sees La Dolce Vita for the first time. But today such a view­er, how­ev­er over­whelmed by the lav­ish cin­e­mat­ic feast laid before his eyes, will won­der if giv­ing the intru­sive tabloid pho­tog­ra­ph­er friend of Mar­cel­lo Mas­troian­ni’s pro­tag­o­nist the name “Paparaz­zo” isn’t a bit on the nose. Unlike La Dolce Vita’s first audi­ences in 1960, we’ve been hear­ing about real-life paparazzi through­out most all of our lives, and thus may not real­ize that the word itself orig­i­nal­ly derives from Fellini’s mas­ter­piece. Each time we refer to the paparazzi, we pay trib­ute to Paparaz­zo.

In the video essay above, Evan Puschak (bet­ter known as the Nerd­writer) traces the ori­gins of paparazzi: not just the word, but the often both­er­some pro­fes­sion­als denot­ed by the word. The sto­ry begins with the dic­ta­tor Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni, an “avid movie fan and fan­boy of film stars” who wrote “more than 100 fawn­ing let­ters to Amer­i­can actress Ani­ta Page, includ­ing sev­er­al mar­riage pro­pos­als.” Know­ing full well “the emo­tion­al pow­er of cin­e­ma as a tool for pro­pa­gan­da and build­ing cul­tur­al pres­tige,” Mus­soli­ni com­mis­sioned the con­struc­tion of Rome’s Cinecit­tà, the largest film-stu­dio com­plex in Europe when it opened in 1937 — six years before his fall from pow­er.

Dur­ing the Sec­ond World War, Cinecit­tà became a vast refugee camp. When peace­time returned, with “the stu­dio space being used and Mus­solin­i’s thumb removed, a new wave of film­mak­ers took to the streets of Rome to make movies about real life in post­war Italy.” Thus began the age of Ital­ian Neo­re­al­ism, which brought forth such now-clas­sic pic­tures as Rober­to Rossellini’s Rome, Open City and Vit­to­rio De Sica’s Bicy­cle Thieves. In the nine­teen-fifties, major Amer­i­can pro­duc­tions start­ed com­ing to Rome: Quo Vadis, Roman Hol­i­day, Ben-Hur, Cleopa­tra. (It was this era, sure­ly, that inspired an eleven-year-old named Mar­tin Scors­ese to sto­ry­board a Roman epic of his own.) All of this cre­at­ed an era known as “Hol­ly­wood on the Tiber.”

For a few years, says Puschak, “the Via Vene­to was the coolest place in the world.” Yet “while the glit­terati cavort­ed in chic bars and clubs, thou­sands of oth­ers strug­gled to find their place in the post­war econ­o­my.” Some turned to tourist pho­tog­ra­phy, and “soon found they could make even more mon­ey snap­ping pho­tos of celebri­ties.” It was the most noto­ri­ous of these, the “Volpe di via Vene­to” Tazio Sec­chiaroli, to whom Felli­ni reached out ask­ing for sto­ries he could include in the film that would become La Dolce Vita. The new­ly chris­tened paparazzi were soon seen as the only ones who could bring “the gods of our cul­ture down to the messy earth.” These six decades lat­er, of course, celebri­ties do it to them­selves, social media hav­ing turned each of us — famous or oth­er­wise — into our own Paparaz­zo.

Relat­ed con­tent:

“The Cin­e­mat­ic Uni­verse”: A Video Essay on How Films Cin­e­ma­tize Cities & Places, from Man­hat­tan to Nashville, Rome, Open City to Taipei Sto­ry

Fed­eri­co Felli­ni Intro­duces Him­self to Amer­i­ca in Exper­i­men­tal 1969 Doc­u­men­tary

Cin­e­mat­ic Exper­i­ment: What Hap­pens When The Bicy­cle Thief’s Direc­tor and Gone With the Wind’s Pro­duc­er Edit the Same Film

Cinecit­tà Luce and Google to Bring Italy’s Largest Film Archive to YouTube

Mus­soli­ni Sends to Amer­i­ca a Hap­py Mes­sage, Full of Friend­ly Feel­ings, in Eng­lish (1927)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Footage of Flappers from 1929 Restored & Colorized with AI

in Fashion, Film, History, Technology, Video - Politics/Society | May 4th, 2022

The flap­per is the Roar­ing 20s’ endur­ing emblem — a lib­er­at­ed, young woman with bobbed hair, rolled down stock­ings, and a pub­lic thirst for cock­tails.

(My grand­moth­er longed to be one, and suc­ceed­ed, as best one could in Cairo, Illi­nois, only to mar­ry an old­er man at the age of 17, and give birth to my father a few months before the stock mar­ket crashed, bring­ing the friv­o­li­ty of the decade to an abrupt halt.)

Our abid­ing affec­tion for the flap­per is stoked on F. Scott Fitzger­ald’s Jazz Age novel­la, The Great Gats­by, and its many stage and screen adap­ta­tions, with their depic­tions of wild par­ties fea­tur­ing guests like Miss Baedeck­er (“When she’s had five or six cock­tails she always starts scream­ing like that”) and Lucille (“I nev­er care what I do, so I always have a good time.”)


The vin­tage fash­ion blog Glam­our Daze’s new­ly col­orized footage of a 1929  fash­ion show in Buf­fa­lo, New York, at the top of this post, presents a vast­ly more sedate image than Fitzger­ald, or Ethel Hays, whose sin­gle-pan­el dai­ly car­toon Flap­per Fan­ny was wild­ly pop­u­lar with both young women and men of the time.

 

 

The scene it presents seems more whole­some than one might have found in New York City, with what Fitzger­ald dubbed its “wild promise of all the mys­tery and the beau­ty in the world”. The mod­els seem more eager ama­teurs than run­way pro­fes­sion­als, though lined up jaun­ti­ly on a wall, all exhib­it “nice stems.”

My young grand­moth­er would have gone ga ga for the cloche hats, tea dress­es, bathing suits, loung­ing paja­mas, golf and ten­nis ensem­bles, and evening gowns, though the Deep Exem­plar-based Video Col­oriza­tion process seems to have stained some mod­els’ skin and teeth by mis­take.

The orig­i­nal black and white footage is part of the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Carolina’s Fox Movi­etone News col­lec­tion, whose oth­er fash­ion-relat­ed clips from 1929 include pre­sen­ta­tions fea­tur­ing Wash­ing­ton debu­tantes and col­lege coeds.

Added sound brings the peri­od to life with nary a men­tion of the Charleston or gin, though if you want a feel for 20s fash­ion, check out the col­lec­tion’s non-silent Movi­etone clip devot­ed to the lat­est in 1929 swimwear — this is a mod­ernistic beach ensem­ble of ray­on jer­sey with diag­o­nal stripes and a sun back cut…

It’s the cat’s paja­mas. As is this playlist of hits from 1929.


Explore Glam­our Daze’s guide to 1920s fash­ion his­to­ry here.

Watch the orig­i­nal black and white footage of the Buf­fa­lo, New York fash­ion show here.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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A Creative Animation Documents What Happened When a 1970s Self-Help Seminar Turned Into a Nightmare (NSFW)

in Film, Life | May 2nd, 2022

Self-improve­ment is a won­der­ful thing, and we obvi­ous­ly embrace the idea here at Open Cul­ture. But cor­po­rate lead­er­ship train­ings and self-help sem­i­nars can often serve to break peo­ple down rather than build them up. The cult-like men­tal­i­ty one finds in such envi­rons should not sur­prise us: 1 in 5 busi­ness lead­ers have “psy­cho­path­ic ten­den­cies”; many self-help gurus actu­al­ly do become — or start out as — nar­cis­sis­tic cult lead­ers. In the short film above by film­mak­er Joey Izzo we see one cor­po­rate lead­er­ship train­ing course that imme­di­ate­ly devolved into a night­mar­ish scene of abuse and humil­i­a­tion.

Based on an inter­view with Gene Church — a par­tic­i­pant in the 1970 four-day lead­er­ship sem­i­nar in Palo Alto, Cal­i­for­nia — the film mix­es ani­ma­tion, pho­tog­ra­phy, and dra­mat­ic recre­ations filmed in 16mm, por­tray­ing “an uncon­ven­tion­al Mind Dynam­ics class where par­tic­i­pants were forced to find a ‘moment of truth’ through a num­ber of degrad­ing and often vio­lent acts,” writes Rob Mun­day at Short of the Week.

Par­tic­i­pants of the men-only encounter group each paid $1000 for the priv­i­lege. All of them were dis­trib­uters of a cos­met­ics brand called Hol­i­day Mag­ic, owned by William Penn Patrick, a mul­ti­mil­lion­aire John Bircher who unsuc­cess­ful­ly ran as a Repub­li­can for gov­er­nor of Cal­i­for­nia and who owned both Mind Dynam­ics and a cor­po­rate train­ing com­pa­ny called Lead­er­ship Dynam­ics Insti­tute.

Patrick offered his sem­i­nars both “for his peo­ple” and “who­ev­er want­ed to come,” says Church, and aimed to teach them “how to be suc­cess­ful, how to be a bet­ter hus­band, father, leader par­ent, on and on and on.” Over­promis­ing seems to be a hall­mark of fraud­u­lent self-improve­ment cours­es, and this one was no dif­fer­ent. What set it apart is the degree to which the par­tic­i­pants vol­un­tar­i­ly sub­ject­ed them­selves to what Church’s room­mate at his hotel called “a rather rough four days.” As they would learn, the true pur­pose of the course was to force its stu­dents to find their “moment of truth” through var­i­ous forms of beat­ing and tor­ture. One man was placed in a cof­fin, beat­en severe­ly, then locked in overnight; one was placed in a cage; one tied to a cross. These are just some of the hor­rors, accord­ing to the film.

Like some kind of sadis­tic Mil­gram exper­i­ment gone total­ly off the rails, the pro­gram enlist­ed all of the par­tic­i­pants to admin­is­ter beat­ings to each oth­er and pre­vent each from leav­ing. And like the Mil­gram exper­i­ment, the Mind Dynam­ics sem­i­nar stands as one of many object lessons in “the per­ils of obe­di­ence.” There are many more exam­ples of dark descents into cultish abuse in the self help world. Writer C.L. Tay­lor tells the more recent sto­ry of self-help busi­ness­man James Arthur Ray, who in 2011 was con­vict­ed of “three counts of neg­li­gent homi­cide when three peo­ple died dur­ing one of his ‘new age’ retreats.” These involved “sleep depri­va­tion, fire walk­ing, fast­ing, board break­ing and arrow break­ing,” and a sweat lodge cer­e­mo­ny that turned dead­ly.

The fact that peo­ple are often will­ing to relin­quish their auton­o­my in order grow as indi­vid­u­als says a great deal about the amount of help peo­ple per­ceive they need and the degree to which human beings can be manip­u­lat­ed by charis­mat­ic lead­ers. In most cas­es, those lead­ers have no busi­ness giv­ing advice in the first place. As one for­mer self-help “expert,” Michelle Good­man (who found her­self pushed into the are­na by her pub­lish­er) admits, “the dirty lit­tle secret of those in the advice busi­ness is that we wind up teach­ing oth­ers the lessons we most need to learn our­selves.” Her advice to those who came to her with prob­lems she could­n’t real­is­ti­cal­ly solve: “You should real­ly talk to a qual­i­fied pro­fes­sion­al about that.” To learn more about Church’s har­row­ing expe­ri­ence with Mind Dynam­ics, read his book The Pit: A Group Encounter Defiled.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Is Charles Bukows­ki a Self-Help Guru? Hear Five of His Bru­tal­ly Hon­est, Yet Odd­ly Inspir­ing, Poems and Decide for Your­self

The Sci­ence of Well-Being: Take a Free Online Ver­sion of Yale University’s Most Pop­u­lar Course

Behold Octavia Butler’s Moti­va­tion­al Notes to Self

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

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Watch Andrei Tarkovsky’s Films Free Online: Stalker, The Mirror & Andrei Rublev

in Film | April 30th, 2022

The stench of Vladimir Putin and his inva­sion of Ukraine should­n’t taint every­thing Russ­ian, espe­cial­ly some of its finest cin­e­ma. So we’ll give you this heads up: Mos­film, the largest and old­est film stu­dio in Rus­sia, has post­ed sev­er­al major films by Andrei Tarkovsky (1932–1986), on its offi­cial YouTube channel. Above, you can watch Stalk­er, which we’ve cov­ered amply here on Open Cul­ture. Below, stream The Mir­ror, Andrei Rublev, and Ivan’s Child­hood. Stream oth­er Mos­film movies here.

The Mir­ror

Andrei Rublev

Ivan’s Child­hood

Solaris

The Pas­sion Accord­ing to Andrei

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mas­ter­ful Polaroid Pic­tures Tak­en by Film­mak­er Andrei Tarkovsky

Tarkovsky’s Advice to Young Film­mak­ers: Sac­ri­fice Your­self for Cin­e­ma

Andrei Tarkovsky Calls Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey a “Pho­ny” Film “With Only Pre­ten­sions to Truth”

Slavoj Žižek Explains the Artistry of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Films: Solaris, Stalk­er & More

Watch Stalk­er, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mind-Bend­ing Mas­ter­piece Free Online

Andrei Tarkovsky Cre­ates a List of His 10 Favorite Films (1972)

 

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Frank Lloyd Wright: America’s Greatest Architect? –A Free Streaming Documentary

in Architecture, Film | April 27th, 2022

From Time­line comes a free stream­ing doc­u­men­tary called Frank Lloyd Wright: Amer­i­ca’s Great­est Archi­tect?: 

Frank Lloyd Wright is Amer­i­ca’s great­est ever archi­tect. But few peo­ple know about the Welsh roots that shaped his life and world-famous build­ings. Now, lead­ing Welsh archi­tect Jonathan Adams sets off across Amer­i­ca to explore Frank Lloyd Wright’s mas­ter­pieces for him­self. Along the way, he uncov­ers the tem­pes­tu­ous life sto­ry of the man behind them, and the secrets of his rad­i­cal Welsh back­ground . In a career span­ning sev­en decades, Frank Lloyd Wright built over 500 build­ings, and changed the face of mod­ern archi­tec­ture.

Frank Lloyd Wright: Amer­i­ca’s Great­est Archi­tect? will be added to our list of Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent

How Frank Lloyd Wright’s Son Invent­ed Lin­coln Logs, “America’s Nation­al Toy” (1916)

12 Famous Frank Lloyd Wright Hous­es Offer Vir­tu­al Tours: Hol­ly­hock House, Tal­iesin West, Falling­wa­ter & More

Frank Lloyd Wright Cre­ates a List of the 10 Traits Every Aspir­ing Artist Needs

Frank Lloyd Wright Reflects on Cre­ativ­i­ty, Nature and Reli­gion in Rare 1957 Audio

The Mod­ernist Gas Sta­tions of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe

The Frank Lloyd Wright Lego Set

A is for Archi­tec­ture: 1960 Doc­u­men­tary on Why We Build, from the Ancient Greeks to Mod­ern Times

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

in Film, Sci Fi | April 19th, 2022

kubricklist

Image by Moody Man, via Flickr Com­mons

1968. Rev­o­lu­tion was in the air and the future seemed bright. That year, Stan­ley Kubrick released his mas­ter­piece 2001: A Space Odyssey – a big-bud­get, exper­i­men­tal rumi­na­tion on the evo­lu­tion of mankind. The film was a huge box office hit when it came out; its mind-bend­ing meta­physics res­onat­ed with the culture’s new­found inter­est in chem­i­cal­ly altered states and in spir­i­tu­al­i­ty.

In the Sep­tem­ber issue from that year, Play­boy mag­a­zine pub­lished a lengthy inter­view with Kubrick. Even at a time when pub­lic fig­ures were sup­posed to sound like intel­lec­tu­als (boy, times have changed), Kubrick comes across as insane­ly well read. Dur­ing the course of the inter­view, he quotes from the likes of media crit­ic Mar­shall McLuhan, Win­ston Churchill, and 19th Cen­tu­ry poet Matthew Arnold along with a hand­ful of promi­nent aca­d­e­mics.

Kubrick is char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly cagey about offer­ing any expla­na­tions of his enig­mat­ic movie but he does read­i­ly expound on philo­soph­i­cal ques­tions about God, the mean­ing of life (or lack there­of) and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of extrater­res­tri­al life. But per­haps the most inter­est­ing part of the 17-page inter­view is his vision of what 2001 might look like. It’s fas­ci­nat­ing to see what he got right, what might be right a bit fur­ther into the future, and what’s com­plete­ly wrong. Check them out below:

“With­in ten years, in fact, I believe that freez­ing of the dead will be a major indus­try in the Unit­ed States and through­out the world; I would rec­om­mend it as a field of invest­ment for imag­i­na­tive spec­u­la­tors.”

“Per­haps the great­est break­through we may have made by 2001 is the pos­si­bil­i­ty that man may be able to elim­i­nate old age.”

“I’m sure we’ll have sophis­ti­cat­ed 3‑D holo­graph­ic tele­vi­sion and films, and it’s pos­si­ble that com­plete­ly new forms of enter­tain­ment and edu­ca­tion will be devised.”

“You might have a machine that taps the brain and ush­ers you into a vivid dream expe­ri­ence in which you are the pro­tag­o­nist in a romance or an adven­ture. On a more seri­ous lev­el, a sim­i­lar machine could direct­ly pro­gram you with knowl­edge: in this way, you might, for exam­ple, eas­i­ly be able to learn flu­ent Ger­man in 20 min­utes.”

“I believe by 2001 we will have devised chem­i­cals with no adverse phys­i­cal, men­tal or genet­ic results that can give wings to the mind and enlarge per­cep­tion beyond its present evo­lu­tion­ary capacities…there should be fas­ci­nat­ing drugs avail­able by 2001; what use we make of them will be the cru­cial ques­tion.”

“The so-called sex­u­al rev­o­lu­tion, mid-wifed by the pill, will be extend­ed. Through drugs, or per­haps via the sharp­en­ing or even mechan­i­cal ampli­fi­ca­tion of latent ESP func­tions, it may be pos­si­ble for each part­ner to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly expe­ri­ence the sen­sa­tions of the oth­er; or we may even­tu­al­ly emerge into poly­mor­phous sex­u­al beings, with male and female com­po­nents blur­ring, merg­ing and inter­chang­ing. The poten­tial­i­ties for explor­ing new areas of sex­u­al expe­ri­ence are vir­tu­al­ly bound­less.”

“Look­ing into the dis­tant future, I sup­pose it’s not incon­ceiv­able that a semi­sen­tient robot-com­put­er sub­cul­ture could evolve that might one day decide it no longer need­ed man.”

For such a famous­ly pes­simistic film­mak­er, Kubrick’s vision of the future is remark­ably groovy – lots of sex, drugs and holo­graph­ic tele­vi­sion. He wasn’t, of course, the only one out there who thought about the future. You can see more bold pre­dic­tions below:

Isaac Asi­mov Pre­dicts in 1964 What the World Will Look Like Today — in 2014

Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dicts the Future in 1964 … And Kind of Nails It

Wal­ter Cronkite Imag­ines the Home of the 21st Cen­tu­ry … Back in 1967

The Inter­net Imag­ined in 1969

Mar­shall McLuhan Announces That The World is a Glob­al Vil­lage

Note: Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Novem­ber 2014.

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

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If Fritz Lang’s Iconic Film Metropolis Had a Kraftwerk Soundtrack

in Film | April 13th, 2022

The case of the copy­right his­to­ry of Fritz Lang’s influ­en­tial sci-fi mas­ter­piece Metrop­o­lis is as con­vo­lut­ed as the his­to­ry of its film print. Lang’s vision, and his orig­i­nal almost-three-hour cut was doomed to cen­sor­ship right from the start. The Nazis took out its more social­ist scenes. It’s been edit­ed, col­orized, put back togeth­er and restored. Wikipedia cur­rent­ly lists nine dif­fer­ent ver­sions. Sim­i­lar­ly, who owns the film had shift­ed from dis­trib­u­tors back to pub­lic domain, then *out* of pub­lic domain the more orig­i­nal footage was redis­cov­ered. And then comes 2023, where Metrop­o­lis will once again land in the pub­lic domain, at least in Amer­i­ca. Will we see as many legal bat­tles as we will see new remix­es and re-scores? Prob­a­bly a bit of both.

Its orig­i­nal orches­tral score is avail­able, but many fans also seek out a score more befit­ting its futur­ist ori­gins. Some­thing more elec­tron­ic.

In fact, the four-minute clip above is YouTu­ber “Kar­maGer­many’s” 2009 fan-made edit using the music of Kraftwerk. If any band of the late 20th cen­tu­ry was born to be paired with Lang’s tech­no­log­i­cal vision, it’s the Fab Four from Düs­sel­dorf. Their icy roman­tic melodies strike the right bal­ance between Metrop­o­lis’ bat­tle, then syn­the­sis, of machin­ery and the human heart. And, look Kraftwerk even cre­at­ed a song called “Metrop­o­lis,” which becomes the actu­al score above. 

Like watch­ing the Wiz­ard of Oz while Dark Side of the Moon plays, Kraftwerk’s “Metrop­o­lis” seems writ­ten for the film, with its open­ing fan­fare over the shots of the future city wak­ing up, then how it switch­es to its motorik beat as the work­ers begin their alien­at­ing fac­to­ry day. (We haven’t done a side-by-side of the extant cut of the film, so there very well may be some edit­ing at play here.)

Now, while this is just a fan’s very well made use of the band’s full cat­a­log (it dives back into the band’s spaci­er ear­ly work for the films more ten­der moment), oth­ers have gone a more offi­cial route. Kraftwerk con­tem­po­rary and mem­ber of Clus­ter, Dieter Moe­bius record­ed a four-part, 40-minute suite Musik für Metrop­o­lis. It was released posthu­mous­ly in 2015, and it is one of his spook­i­er works.

Pri­or to that, tech­no DJ and com­pos­er Jeff Mills (no rela­tion) com­posed an hour-long score in 2000 that also had its own accom­pa­ny­ing edit, and mar­ried his career in both ambi­ent and futur­is­tic elec­tron­ic beats.

If the Kraftwerk re-edit whets your tech­no whis­tle, that clip was just the open­ing scene of the 90-minute fan edit from John McWilliam. His notes: “Orig­i­nal­ly two and a half hours long it has been reduced down to one hour 23 min­utes to pace it up includ­ing remov­ing the sub­ti­tle cards between shots and plac­ing them over [the] pic­ture instead.”

The last instruc­tion from McWilliam could apply to what­ev­er score you choose, as long as it’s for Metrop­o­lis: “Best watched on a big-ass TV hooked up to a big-booty sound sys­tem.”

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Kraftwerk’s First Con­cert: The Begin­ning of the End­less­ly Influ­en­tial Band (1970)

The Case for Why Kraftwerk May Be the Most Influ­en­tial Band Since the Bea­t­les

Watch Metrop­o­lis’ Cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly Inno­v­a­tive Dance Scene, Restored as Fritz Lang Intend­ed It to Be Seen (1927)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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