birthday showoff

Stephen and I have a little tradition going where, for birthdays, anniversary and Valentine's Day, we get all creative with Photoshop in making cards for each other. I like noticing how often we come up with similar angles, similar themes, similar approaches while working separately on each other's cards. This year has been like that. At least with our birthday cards. First, we both went a little overboard. Second, we both went for a movie theme and multiple pages. Third, we both alluded to (this one's not surprising) Stephen's recent injury and recovery. Stephen's card to me (it was actually a second card - he made me two!) referenced With a Song in my Heart, one of his favorite movies. He cast himself as the suffering star Susan Hayward and me as her plucky nurse, Clancy, played by Thelma Ritter. You can check out his blog post about it here.

For my birthday card to him, which I'll be giving to him at dinner tonight, I chose one of my own favorite movies, one that I believe has become as much a favorite for him as With a Song in my Heart has become for me. Or anyway, I hope so. Here is Stephen's recovery from injury a la Metropolis. It's mostly just pictures. After all, it's a silent movie.

And one more small one for the back of the card:

metropolis word cloud

A friend of mine, Rick Jolly, who is a poet sometimes takes his writings, or the writings of others, and sticks it in the website Wordle and makes a word cloud. A word cloud through Wordle removes the most simple words and takes the rest and arranges them at random. The more often you use a word, the larger it comes out. It sounds like fun, but if you're a word junkie like me what you get is something amazing and beautiful.

On impulse one day recently, Rick stuck my Metropolis ramble blogpost in and zipped me up two separate word clouds...


Look at this thing! Tiny bits of poetry just randomly sprayed all over it. "Doubting created irony" "Flood silent machine" You can run your eyes all over the page and find beauty created by sticking a few words together. This may sound strange but looking at this word cloud, after having composed the original post with all its structure and connections, made me "get" poetry in a way I don't know that I have before. "Time distanced distended" Yow, lovely!

He did a second that ran the words up and down as well as side to side...


Look how "blink" sits in the cup of "story."

Something beautiful happens with the tiny, single words just sitting by themselves here and there.

wait.

tell.

lovely.

And next to Machine: oh

The first cloud puts "god" next to "archetypes." The second puts "god" next to "reality."

Every time I start looking, I fall inside and can't get out. Plus I love the fact that this little exercise combines past (language) and future (computers) kind of the way the movie does.

I planned to post these over the weekend and then had trouble with the scan. I'm glad I waited because I got a bonus for the waiting. Rick looked at those word clouds again and decided to compose a poem based on them. Take a look--and then click this link to take a gander at Rick's poetry page on MySpace!

those two represent a much needed uprising
creative maria served a nice lunch of irony
the way forward for a future awaits a bit of dialogue
leaves on feel, films absorbed, neglecting the god archetypes
always on feel for the burnt stake places
the writers machine effectively opens a human maria
winds the watch face moment
irritates a silent ramble for the good maria's soundtrack movie entrance
takes the least world away from history
theater screens stake to waves an actress
as something really human floods the silent machine
conducts a string of electricity stripped
a thinning, stylistically alone man
cracks a look back at something too long past lovely
gives rotwang's music fiend a full hair of
feeling fabulous in time's tenements
constructs a cool sequence of
iconic metropolis upended-
the distance of a night distended often our
beautifully lifting but strange discussions
whole from a brilliant film
like a black wish robot who seems to stop
for profound desk discussions
slick floor needs get an excellent ooze on
happens to fredersen's favorite machine
keeps the cityscape going for the thin Thursday soul
saying oops! at yoshiwara!

That lush scene needs may be doubting their burnt theater parts
That fredersen saw the distanced archetypes watching the night feeling inside them
Like a robot who somehow absorbed all the film's dialogue-
the story maker blinks as waves take maria's friend
slick icons swim back on feel
time lifting abel's tenement moments
fuel the movie problems
the artist constructs a god of cityscapes
witnesses see the reality matched
wished enough to leave the actress
a huge experience of broadness
music machine on course, going to lunch of course,
the iconic creative cracks the day
as rotwang's electricity yipes the flood
of the least long people
stepping often on one lovely illusion
the dirigibles of soul fully manifest a wink world thing
like writers rambling past for the big film discussion
ended alone, each soul takes the outside entrance back in
beautifully thinning, a sort of opening for a
powerful, screen face moment, neglecting all the hair rules,
the lights look strange when they run in rotwang's parade
to their own personal city soundtrack
as strange children double watch the way
while they seem to sit for a cool sequence,
a string of silent moments
stirring a black desk uprising
touching ooze happens

metropolis

I'm neglecting my ramble about Metropolis. There's always so much going on. As it is, I feel like I'll need to just let this ramble... ramble a bit and not worry so much about making great, brilliant statements--so I can at least get it out there.

I saw it twice at Cinema 21. As exciting as it was to see it on the big screen, I did what I always do when I see old films on the big screen. I kept trying to stop myself from being absorbed in the movie so that I could experience the moment of seeing it huge. Somehow, I get so sucked into a film that in a way it doesn't matter whether I see it big or small. I had to

oh wait. spoilers.

I had to just tell myself, stop--Machine Man Maria's about to get burnt at the stake--watch this--really watch this. And then I'd try to really watch it and would sit there doubting that I was really seeing it fully. On that screen. Outside of my head.

Had a nice discussion today with a friend who was saying the broadness of the characters and the silent movie acting style distanced him too much from the human story. I totally get that, and often have problems when I'm distanced from the human story, but there's something about silent film. Instead of feeling distanced I feel... the whole thing is iconic. A parade of archetypes. And maybe because of the lack of much dialogue and maybe because silent film was that one step away from theater, I think a good silent film can give you that parade of archetypes in a way that's really effective and satisfying.

It's like not just stepping back from a story but lifting off from it, as if you're in one of those biplanes or dirigibles floating by means of string through that spectacular Metropolis cityscape, and you're seeing the story of something bigger. Not Freder and Maria but what they represent. Every very personal story of people is also the story of what they represent, of course, but there's something cool that happens when those details of reality are stripped away. If it's done well.

Style is part of it. These years down the line, the look of Metropolis is a part of history, and seeing it, you get the illusion of touching that part of history. Which is all about icons too.

I love how that past takes its vision of the future and creates its world. Metropolis is lush and extravagant. And the music! So beautifully matched, stylistically, and so effective. I have to say, toward the end, the soundtrack didn't seem to be matched up with the movie. We'd leave Yoshiwara, blink to another scene, and we'd have the Yoshiwara theme go a second or two past where it should have ended. There were moments where I liked what happened with this--where the music took on an irony with the scene, but the cuts in strange places were irritating. Especially since I'm so focused on the music when watching. Some of my favorite moments come when the music and the visual fit together beautifully, like when the waves of electricity are running all over Rotwang's laboratory and up and down the Machine Man and there's such surprising beauty in the music. Or just the opening when the title sort of constructs itself on the screen and then morphs into the pumping of the machine. That is so powerful.

Favorite moments. Robot Maria laughing as she's burnt at the stake. Robot Maria conducting the uprising--her distended arms and the famous "wink." The very start of the flood when, in this version, the music is silent for a moment and this slick, black ooze of water starts through a crack in the ground. The moment when the first two children step down out of one of the tenements during the flood. So, so chilling. The whole Moloch sequence, of course (here's the name in Hebrew: מול), and the fabulous cityscapes (double of course). The moment when Fredersen sits at his desk and you see the crazy swimming lights of the city all over his face and the space around him. The moment when he runs his hands through his thinning hair... had a lovely discussion with a friend who's an actress who was absolutely floored by Alfred Abel's Joh Fredersen. Wish I could bring back all the discussions I've had, especially Thursday night--such an excellent (champagne fuelled) discussion--two writers, one actress, one film maker and one fine artist--that night alone was enough to fuel my creative soul for the rest of summer. Where was I? Moments. Rotwang's entrance--hair, hand, eyebrow. Maria's face--my god, who is the Renaissance painter who created her face? I mean it. When I look at her, I know she looks like she was painted by some specific master, but I can't place it. Anyway, Maria's face isn't a moment. Where was I?

Oops, what time is it? This is a long lunch. Yipes. Better get back to the machine.

no no no i won't

... this I vow tonight - I will not - hear me, NOT - watch Metropolis a fourth time

in a row.

Sunday - the film
Monday - the film with the commentary
Tuesday - oh god, alone in the apartment, and I watched it a third time...

Tonight, no. I swear it.

There's something in me that says, since this is the Big Number One silent picture in film history, I should not like it. No, my sophistocated tastes should have me obsessing over some obscure piece of brilliance no one's ever heard of - not boring, popular old Metropolis.

But I love love love

it.

The magnificent, futuristic cityscapes with little toy biplanes on strings flying through. And robot-Maria / Hel laughing as she burns at the stake is the loveliest bit of fiendish I've seen in a long time.

But I think my favorite moment is when Rotwang - evil scientist and builder of the robot-Maria - tells Joh Fredersen - the dude - the builder and ruler of Metropolis - that soon no one will be able to tell the difference between a "machine-man and a mortal" - and Fredersen runs his hand through his thinning hair. One little move that shows the weakness and the humanity of mankind.

Beautiful.