It\u2019s another week here at BCB After Dark: the hippest hangout for night owls, early risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. Come on in out of the cold. It\u2019s always good to see you. Let us check your coat. We still have a few tables available. The hostess will seat you now. Bring your own beverage.<\/p>\n
BCB After Dark\u00a0is the place for you to talk baseball, music, movies, or anything else you need to get off your chest, as long as it is within the rules of the site. The late-nighters are encouraged to get the party started, but everyone else is invited to join in as you wake up the next morning and into the afternoon.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
Last week I asked you if you thought free agent Sh\u014dta Imanaga will be back with the Cubs in 2026.<\/a> I suppose the odds of that increased greatly when the Cubs gave Imanaga a qualifying offer last week<\/a>, which wasn\u2019t on the table yet when last we met.<\/p>\n In any case, 59 percent of you think The Throwing Philosopher will be wearing Cubbie blue next year.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the part where we talk about movies and listen to jazz. We\u2019re into our second week of the BCB Winter Science Fiction Classic and there\u2019s still time to get in on the fun. But you are free to skip these parts if you want. You won\u2019t hurt my feelings.<\/p>\n Tonight we have the great pianist Thelonious Sphere Monk and his quartet on Polish television in 1966. Joining Monk is Charles Rouse on tenor sax, Lawrence Gale on bass and the drummer is Benjamin Riley.<\/p>\n You voted in the BCB Winter Science Fiction Classic and the contest between Godzilla and Invasion of the Body Snatchers couldn\u2019t have been more close. In fact, the vote finished in a tie! I told you not to do that, because that means I have to vote to break the tie, and I hate choosing between my movies.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n But choose I must, so I\u2019ve decided that Godzilla (1954) is moving on to the second round. I grew up watching Godzilla movies on cable television on Saturday nights, as well as all kinds of other Kaiju films. I never saw this original Japanese version until recently because it simply wasn\u2019t allowed to be shown in the US until 2004, with the exception of a few film festivals. (I did see the Raymond Burr version as some point in my youth.) But the original Godzilla is still the best Godzilla. The oxygen destroyer takes down the pod people.<\/p>\n Tonight we have a silent movie showdown! One film is almost certainly the first science fiction film ever made and the other is one of the all-time classics of silent cinema.<\/p>\n 2. Metropolis<\/strong> (1927). Directed by Fritz Lang. Starring Gustav Fr\u00f6hlich, Brigitte Helm, Alfred Abel and Rudolf Klein-Rogge.<\/p>\n If you asked people to name three silent pictures, I would estimate that at least ninety percent of them would mention Metropolis. Often called the first great science fiction epic, it created many of the tropes that we still associate with the genre today.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Metropolis is the story of a city of the future (the book says 2026, so get ready) where the rich live in an art deco utopia. These images of giant skyscrapers, elevated trains and the like were inspired by Lang\u2019s first trip to New York in 1924. The city of Metropolis is run by an industrialist\/dictator Joh Fredersen (Abel). His son Freder (Fr\u00f6lich) lives a life of Dionysian bliss, unconcerned by pretty much anything.<\/p>\n But this utopia is built on the oppression of the lower classes, who toil beneath the surface in inhumane factories. One day, Freder\u2019s partying is interrupted by Maria (Helm), who brings the children of the depths to the surface so that they can see their wealthy \u201cbrothers.\u201d Freder is immediately smitten with Maria and puzzled by what\u2019s going on underneath the city, so he chases down after her to the caverns below.<\/p>\n Clearly this is a story about inequality and authoritarianism. But Maria is no Marxist, either, although the film has been accused of it. (Falsely, in my mind, as well as Lang\u2019s.) Maria preaches a basically Christian message of peace and brotherhood between the upper and lower classes to be brought forth by a \u201cmediator.\u201d Using the story of the Tower of Babel, she concludes that \u201cThe Mediator Between the Head and the Hands Must Be the Heart,\u201d which is the slogan that is repeated a few times throughout the film. Even Lang didn\u2019t think that made much sense, but it was in the book.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, Joh Frederen\u2019s wife and Freder\u2019s mother, Hel, died in childbirth. But Hel had two loves, Joh and Rotwang (Klein-Rogge), the inventor. Rotwang has built a maschinenmensch or a robot that will be a recreation of Hel. Joh Fredersen, upset with his son\u2019s obsession with Maria and the lower classes, orders Rotwang to cast the robot into Maria\u2019s image.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n The first thing that will strike you about Metropolis is the incredible art deco and German expressionism set design. The above-ground city is gorgeous and the underground is a vision of hell as a factory. The special effects are stunning for the era. James Whale definitely borrowed from Rotwang\u2019s laboratory for Henry Frankenstein\u2019s lab. Cinematographer Eugen Sch\u016ffftan\u2019s \u201cSch\u00fcfftan process\u201d for combining live-action with miniatures with the use of mirrors got its first extensive use in Metropolis. Alfred Hitchcock would use the same technique two years later in Blackmail.<\/p>\n Like robots, the workers all move with the synchronization of a machine. Lang reportedly used around several thousand extras and nearly killed some of them in the flooding scenes. Moral qualms aside, the last hour of Metropolis is a wild ride.<\/p>\n However, 17-year-old Brigitte Helm steals the show with her dual part in her first professional acting job. As the saintly and virginal Maria (get it?), she is the guardian of all the children of the underground. She preaches brotherhood and speaks of a \u201cmediator\u201d to come that will unite the two social classes. As the robot, she\u2019s the Whore of Babylon, driving rich men crazy with lust (and six other deadly sins) and leading the workers in a revolution that, if completed, would end up killing them all by flooding the caverns. The robot just wants to watch the world burn.<\/p>\n As Christian as this all sounds, Freder is way too much of a doofus to be a Christ figure. Freder\u2019s heart is in the right place, but he\u2019ll have to settle for just being the \u201cmediator\u201d whose love for Maria and sense of justice transcends any class or family loyalty. He goes on a journey to rescue the real Maria and defeat the robot Maria.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Despite being perhaps the most expensive films ever made at the time and having all the trappings of a thrilling epic, Metropolis wasn\u2019t a hit when It came out. It got mostly positive reviews, but audiences perhaps weren\u2019t accustomed to the science fiction conventions that Metropolis was creating. This led to the film getting chopped up and re-edited through the years. The already shaky plot became indecipherable with edits that cut the running time to try to make it more appealing. Metropolis had its fans, but they were mostly attracted to the sets and Helm\u2019s whacked-out performance as the robot.<\/p>\n Luckily, in 2008, a nearly-complete copy of the film was found in Argentina. There were about ten minutes missing from that copy, but 148-minute restored version is the one that you should watch. I\u2019d strongly suggest watching the film on Kanopy, which is free with registration and a public library card. But there are some complete copies on YouTube which aren\u2019t too bad as well. I\u2019ve found several other versions on some ad-supported streaming services that are a two-hour version from previous restorations, which cuts out big parts and the plot stops making much sense in those versions. Also, some of them have some really weird musical accompaniment, although I suppose you can always turn off the sound.\u00a0(Then there is the 1984 Giorgio Moroder 90-minute version with 1980s rock stars singing original songs for the soundtrack. I\u2019ve never seen it and it\u2019s apparently very hard to find these days because of music rights issues.)<\/p>\n Metropolis has lasted almost 100 years now because it is a visionary piece of filmmaking. It finished 67th in the most recent BFI Sight & Sound poll of the greatest films of all-time. Its influence on future science fiction films is immeasurable. Remember, evil robots disguised as humans wasn\u2019t clich\u00e9 in 1927. The films that imitated Metropolis did that.<\/p>\n Here is a trailer for the 90th anniversary production of Metropolis. If you aren\u2019t familiar already with how absolutely terrific this film looks, this will give you a glimpse of that.<\/p>\n 2. A Trip to the Moon<\/strong> (Le Voyage dans la Lune) (1902) Directed by Georges M\u00e9li\u00e8s. Starring Georges M\u00e9li\u00e8s, Bluette Bernon, Fran\u00e7ois Lallement and others.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n A Trip to the Moon is widely considered to be the first science fiction film ever made. It\u2019s a pioneering work of film by one of the earliest masters of the artform. I believe in the one film studies class that I took in college, we watched it in the first week of class\u2014maybe the second or third film we saw.<\/p>\n At first glance, A Trip to the Moon might seem primitive. Many of the techniques that we associate with film hadn\u2019t been invented yet. For example, the entire 14-minute film is shot from the point of view of someone watching a stage play from the audience. There are no point-of-view shots and no close-ups. The props also look like something from a 19th Century stage production made out of painted wood. They moved around with a complex set of gears and pulleys. The fact that it\u2019s only 14 minutes long is indicative of its time\u2014the multi-reel feature film as we know it today was still a decade away.<\/p>\n Heck, even intertitles were brand new and hadn\u2019t been widely adopted yet. M\u00e9li\u00e8s uses none of them here. Someone was supposed to stand on the stage and narrate each showing, along with music and sound effects. There\u2019s no one official script or music\u2014it was up to the exhibitors to decide how they wanted to present the show.<\/p>\n Yet A Trip to the Moon is remarkably creative with the limitations that they had. The sets are intricate and imaginative and certainly the way they move was unheard of for the time. The shot of the man on the moon with an artillery shell in his eye is still famous today. After the stars come out on the moon\u2019s night, faces pop out of them, Laugh-In style. The Moon Goddess floats above them while the scientists sleep.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n In many ways, A Trip to the Moon is more of a fairy tale than a science fiction story, but it\u2019s also a piece of biting satire in ways that we may not pick up on today. A group of self-important scientists debate how to reach the moon, settling on getting inside what is basically a giant artillery shell. After they get out (and the shell famously lands in the Man in the Moon\u2019s eye), they settle down for a nap. After awakening, they meet the Selenites, or the moon people, and they promptly kill them with their umbrellas. The Selenites explode into dust when hit with an umbrella, apparently. This obviously angers the Selenites, who capture the scientists and take them to their chief. The scientists break free, kill the chief and run back to their ship, which naturally falls back down to earth, where the scientists are greeted as heroes and large statues are built to them.<\/p>\n A Trip to the Moon is an anti-Imperialist piece of art. It should be lost on no one that the Selenites look very much like how a racist children\u2019s storybook would portray African tribes at the time. The first thing the scientists do after encountering the Selenites is start killing them, just as the French might on an imperial mission to the heart of Africa. After barely escaping with their lives, they make sure to honor themselves with statues and parades. A Trip to the Moon is mocking one of the biggest issues of 1902, the so-called \u201cscramble for Africa\u201d and the men who attribute greatness to their ability to just little else but kill people in a strange and wonderful land.<\/p>\n But there\u2019s no point in me going on more about this when you can just watch the film yourself. It\u2019s under 15 minutes. You\u2019ve got no excuse not to watch.<\/p>\n