L'IDÉE (France, 1934)
Written, directed and photographed by Berthold Bartosch.
Music by Arthur Honegger; Based on woodcuts by Franz Masreel.

One of the few examples of the serious use of the drawn film, L'IDÉE stands out as one of the most interesting of all the films produced during France's great avant-garde era, which started in the early twenties and continued for some ten years, when lack of organisation and purely commercial problems caused the movement to die out. Epstein, Cocteau, Dali, Dulac and Buñuel had all done much extremely interesting work in the production of experimental and decidedly non-commercial films, but it was Bartosch who realised the tremendous potentialities of the drawn film, or cartoon, when used seriously as a means of expression.

L'Idée is a fervent plea for Communism - a plea with little subtlety, and which, in spite of the abstract nature of the film, leaves little doubt as to how Bartosch intended that it should be interpreted. The film in fact emblazons the slogan "Down with Capitalism" across the screen from the first scene to the last in no uncertain manner! From a purely political viewpoint, opinions of the film will obviously vary considerably. The film was in fact banned in this country because of its political bias. But it is not the place, nor the purpose, of this Society to discuss and analyse the ethical issues of Communism. Judged solely as a film, L'Idée is outstanding - an experiment in the transference of theories to the screen, and their presentation in an entirely visual form. There is no commentary - sub-titles are non-existent – the whole theme of the film is conveyed in terms of purely visual symbolism. As an essay in the abstract, L'Idée is one of the most successful productions in its own field. It has none of the dreary repetition of Dulac’s surrealist film The Seashell and the Clergyman, none of the ambiguous expressionism of Menilmontant. Its symbolism is admittedly confusing at times – due partly perhaps to the fast-moving development which permits but little time to digest and analyse each sequence, and also to the complex presentation of Communistic theories which may not readily be recognisable to many audiences. Nevertheless, the film has an eloquence and clarity of purpose which could hardly have been improved upon by the addition of dialogue or commentary.

Throughout, a nude woman symbolises truth. She champions the workers and the poor, and battles the powers of evil – represented in vehement terms by decadent-looking capitalists. The capitalists, shocked, scornful & afraid, clothe her, but she rejects the control they seek to impose, and returns to the oppressed who in their poverty repulse her, failing to recognise that Truth is their only friend and ally. A worker is executed, and only Truth watches by his grave, indestructible, a silent witness to the futility of the man's death. Industrialism tries to make a slave of truth - a hypocritical church attempts to capture her - but always the attempt fails. Always truth scorns the avaricious and the powerful, and turns instead to the worker.

Arthur Honegger's music is an important adjunct to Bartosch's script – it catches admirably the varying moods of the film, and its alternating tempos. As the workers march en masse to their death, hopelessly, fatalistically, the harsh steady music reflects the ruthless, unemotional calculations of plutocracy; music that finally changes to a note of hope and triumph as Truth rises from the corpses of the murdered workers and lives on.

METROPOLIS (Germany, 1926) Directed by Fritz Lang for UFA. Script by Thea Von Harbou
The Cast:-
John Masterman (Alfred Abel) Frederic, his son (Gustav Froelich) Maria (Brigitte Helm) Rotwang (Rudolph Klein-Rogge) Slim (Fritz Rasp) Joseph, Secretary to Masterman (Theodore Loos) Grot, foreman of the Heart Machine (Heinrich George)

Metropolis, like L'Idée, also deals with the struggle between labour and capital, but while the theme is similar, the treatment is vastly different. For all its serious, social significance, METROPOLIS is notable chiefly as an example of top-flight screen melodrama, a film in which Lang builds suspense steadily in his accustomed style until he reaches a climax which even today stands out in its spacious spectacle of mob turmoil and berserk rioting. Lang intended the film as a prophecy of the rise of the Nazi regime; a warning of the dangers of a system which permits one man to rule supreme, to enslave the people and crush revolt with terror and violence. (This message is repeated in Das Testament Des Dr. Mabuse, made by Lang in 1932, and due for screening by this Society next season.) Possibly however the film is too great a success as pure melodrama for its political significance to be as clear as Lang might have wished. Today it stands as one of the finest films of Germany's great period. Unlike Nibelungen, Der Golem and Waxworks, which, though interesting, are today badly dated in technique and approach, Metropolis is undated - it remains as fresh and impressive as when first shown, no doubt because the worker-vs.-capitalist struggle is a theme that is perennially topical, and because the futuristic settings retain their novelty and cannot be associated with any set period of time. Then too there is the fact that it is only over the past ten years that Nazism reached the climax that Lang predicted in the film, a fact that gives the film today a topicality denied its original presentation!

The struggle between industrialism and the plain worker is conveniently simplified by having the hero - son of the ruthless dictator of Metropolis – rebel against the methods of his father. He joins the workers in their dark, underground section of the city, while his father continues to direct operations amid the luxury and light afforded only to the rich & powerful. Father and son clash, their personal struggle reflecting the other struggle between a bad social system and the slavery of its victims. Maria, a girl champion of the workers (similar in conception to the figure of Truth in L'Idée) preaches a policy of non-violence, assuring the devoted workers that only a liaison between hand and brain can bring then their freedom. She speaks from a pulpit at the back of which stand lofty crosses which serve to emphasise the fact that she is not merely a political speaker, but the embodiment of high idealism. After a holocaust of death and destruction in the picture's climax, when the workers all but destroy themselves as they revolt against their masters, labour comes to a better understanding with the capitalist. The dictator democratically shakes hands with a factory foreman, while the girl places a hand on the shoulders of each. A superfluous subtitle explains that life is wonderful when the heart acts as mediator between hand and brain. Maria and the hero form a romantic alliance; the dictator smiles benignly on his now faithful subjects ... and yet the film cunningly insinuates that the poor workers are now just as badly off as before. The dictator now having changed his tactics substitutes sound psychology for brute force, and wields just as much control & power as before!

Technically the film still impresses, and the clever model work often attains surprising realism. The brilliant laboratory sequence wherein the scientist creates a robot has all the suspense, excitement and electrical trickery of the much-later "Frankenstein" and the photographic treatment throughout is outstanding, with the emphasis, as was usual in the German film of that period, on clever use of light, shadows and montage. One especially remembers the sequence where Rotwang chases the girl through a maze of dark underground passages, and the close-up of his black gloved hand coming out of the darkness to snuff out the small light from her candle. The acting is comparatively restrained and convincing, somewhat surprisingly in view of the fantastic nature of the plot, and the general tendency to overact in Germanic cinema of that time. The cast includes the names of many of Germany's top actors - Rudolph Klein-Rogge and Alfred Abel, who co-starred in Lang's two Mabuse films, Brigitte Helm, who after her success in Metropolis, her first film, appeared in Love of Jeanne Ney, L'Atlantide and others, Theodore Loos, and Fritz Rasp, remembered for his performances in Love of Jeanne Ney and The Brothers Karamazov.