Portrayals of the Future in the Past

Recognize this image? It's a still from a film.


How about this one?

Same film.

It reminds me of this scene from a movie produced 80 years later:


Professor X observed that George Lucas must have been inspired by the earlier flick when he filmed Star Wars. It's funny how we attribute all things related to a movie to the director, isn't it? What about the art director or the visual and special effects people? But I digress...

We went to the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle recently, and Super Son saw this poster for a 1927 silent film:
I really didn't know anything about the film, but was sufficiently intrigued to borrow it from the library once we returned home. The four of us gathered around the magic picture machine last evening to have a communal viewing experience.

Activist/author Susan Sontag once commented “Science fiction films are not about science. They are about disaster, which is one of the oldest subjects of art." Metropolis certainly has its share of disaster. We're transported to a dystopia of exploited, exhausted drudge workers who toil so that the privileged class can party hearty. It was fascinating to watch this classic, although I must confess we did stoop to making up some pretty hilarious dialogue as the silent actors spoke at length, heavily emoting. So many scenes had virtually no intertitles, or if they did, there'd be only a sentence of dialogue provided for many minutes of talking. The acting was often highly exaggerated, and movement sometimes almost resembled a ballet. Much of the film was slightly crude; it felt heavy handed.

Still, it was compelling. There's a good synopsis of the story here. Consider the similarities between this scene of a Metropolis shift change.

Click the pic to see the video clip

and this 2009 youtube video post, Cubicle Life Call Centers.


More thoughts on this tomorrow. I have a sink full of dirty dishes, a laundry room full of dirty clothes, and a to do list a mile long.