What is very affecting to me, in watching that clip of the opening credits, is the name "Karl Freund". This great cinematographer forged an incredible career for himself (building on his work for Ufa) in the USA. What an incredible visual artist this man was!!
Listening to that ancient recording of the music for "Metropolis" I am reminded of its constant shifts between major and minor keys. I wonder if this could be a musical representation of the thematic dualities of head and heart?
What is very affecting to me, in watching that clip of the opening credits, is the name "Karl Freund". This great cinematographer forged an incredible career for himself (building on his work for Ufa) in the USA. What an incredible visual artist this man was!!
Listening to that ancient recording of the music for "Metropolis" I am reminded of its constant shifts between major and minor keys. I wonder if this could be a musical representation of the thematic dualities of head and heart?
Sorry have only just seen this post, but yes I agree, Karl Freund's camera work certainly is a huge part of the films visual brilliance, and perhaps occasionally for me not as stated as the films other contributors. The score as a whole appears to be very thematic for everything that goes on within the film so I guess it is plausable that this was something Lang/ Huppertz had in mind?
For anyone who is interested... have done a slightly improved video with these 78 record recordings, slowed the film a little as well as very very slightly speeding up the recording.
Getting back to Gottfried Huppertz's original score, the DVD/BlueRay of the restored version (still not quite complete, apparently) does feature a brand-new (and conceivably superior) recording of the near-complete score. Hey, that's the advantage of silent movies - no dialog, no sound f/x, just music.
However, as a standalone listening experience, even Huppertz's fine score is repetitive to the point of nausea. The condensed version released by Capriccio (also with Frank Strobel as conductor) makes for a much more exciting listening experience.
However, as a standalone listening experience, even Huppertz's fine score is repetitive to the point of nausea
Well I guess it was never supposed to be a stand alone listening experience in its entirety - after all, it is designed to accompany the film. I agree however if you are going to listen to the score on its own the Capriccio release is the best option, certainly contains all of the best sections and sounds great! I guess these 78 recordings however are the more acurate representation of how the score sounded back in the day, ignoring the limitations of the format they were recorded on.
I'd love to see a version of this film with Abel Korzeniowski's "Metropolis: Symphony of Fear" as the audio track. I'd also love to see a full release of that on album, as the version available as an iTunes podcast is quite disappointing when compared to the quality of the music.
Incidentally, here is the audio from the original 1927 78rpm that was released by Vox, with Huppertz himself introducing and conducting several of his themes from the film:
One of the very first "soundtrack albums!"
There were two discs.......both discs included on this video with the relevant scenes. These being the Eternal gardens and dance scenes. Quality not quite as good as the first disc however.
