Customer Reviews

Metropolis

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This book is part of the Classic and Modern Film Scripts series. The book contains three parts. The first is an analysis of the movie by Paul M. Jensen, and is a rather good look at the movie and the history of its release. The second is an article by Siegfried Kracauer entitled Industrialism and Totalitarianism, and looks at the story within the movie from a Marxist viewpoint. Thankfully, this tediously tiresome article is extremely short.

The bulk of the book is given over to a script of the movie, created by watching the movie and writing down what happens. It is enhanced with some quotations taken from the Metropolis novel written by Thea von Harbou.

Overall, I found the script to be OK, but not as good as I had hoped. First of all, being a script, the Thea von Harbou sections seem out of place, and really do nothing to turn the barebones script into a more well-rounded story. They are scattered hither and thither throughout, as if added as an after-thought.

And most damning, the script is based on the original, hacked-up release version of the movie that was available at the time. Since that time, various people (most notably Giorgio Moroder) have taken recently recovered scenes from other versions of the movie, making for a more complete version of the movie. This book does not reflect those additions, which is rather disappointing.

So, if you are a huge fan of Metropolis, and are looking for anything to buy connected with the movie, then you will like this book. (Especially the many black-and-white still pictures scattered throughout the script.) But otherwise, I do think that, like me, you will find this book disappointing. I just don't recommend this book.