Comments on: Reading Comics and Watching Metropolis

By: astrongmaybe

astrongmaybe — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 15:49:43 +0000

Novakant, am with you on the relative merits of Metropolis and M. It's worth checking out Spione (1928) too - it's been recently transformed by archival discoveries and a stunning restoration job by the Murnau foundation. If you're into the close-up grotesquerie ("Red! Green! Red! Green!") in M, there's tons more of that there.

By: JJO

JJO — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 15:29:55 +0000

#4: That’s Hedley!

Oh, wait … different movie.

By: John Holbo

John Holbo — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 02:19:33 +0000

Thanks for the correction, Tiny. Yes, that seems right.

novakant. Yes, but it’s a GOOD bad film.

By: novakant

novakant — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 00:41:33 +0000

Metropolis was one of those films I immediately thought was utter rubbish (cool VFX though), but felt compelled to find at least worthy – was I glad when I found out that Lang himself didn’t like it either (Bogdanovich interview). M is awesome, though.

By: Tiny Hermaphrodite

Tiny Hermaphrodite — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:54:40 +0000

As I said it's a translation error. Here is the original german article. Search for "des Schmalen".

By: christian h.

christian h. — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:21:22 +0000

Yeah, that seems likely, as he’s called “Schmale” not “der Schmale”.

By: John Holbo

John Holbo — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 22:48:15 +0000

Oh, sorry. I do know what ‘Schmale’ means. I just thought we were discovering he was actually named ‘Mr. Thin’.

By: Grand Moff Texan

Grand Moff Texan — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 21:55:35 +0000

Now, if we could just find that swim scene with Heddy Lamar …
.

By: christian h.

christian h. — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 21:43:10 +0000

Ahem. “Thin Man” is simply a translation for “Schmale”, “schmal” being an adjective meaning “thin” or “narrow”.

By: bill benzon

bill benzon — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 20:40:07 +0000

More on Metropolis at David Bordwell’s site:

http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/?p=2558

By: Tiny Hermaphrodite

Tiny Hermaphrodite — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 20:28:04 +0000

No John, ‘Der Schmale’ means ‘The Thin Man’ in German. It’s a (slight) translation error.