Showing posts with label black/White. Show all posts
Showing posts with label black/White. Show all posts

Behind the Lens (1940)




This movie is part of the collection: Prelinger Archives

Producer: Handy (Jam) Organization
Sponsor: Chevrolet Division, General Motors Corporation
Audio/Visual: Sd, B&W
Keywords: Perception: Vision; Motion pictures: Production; Motion pictures: Scientific
Creative Commons license: Public Domain

Metropolis (1927)



directed by Frtiz Lang

No words can describe how amazing this movie is! A true masterpiece of science fiction cinema. It is mind blowing how all this was achieved in 1927.


"The mediator between head and hands must be the heart!"


Synopsis for Film Class: 
SPOILER ALERT

The dystopian society in Metropolis is split into the privileged Upper Class and the poor working Lower Class. Freder, the son of the Master of the city Joh Fredersen, meets the mysterious Maria, and follows her underground where he discovers the inhumane conditions of the workers that run the machines. Appalled, Freder tells his father, who finds out his workers have secret underground meetings run by Maria. Joh instructs the scientist Rotwang to give a robot he made the face of Maria, so as to use her as a tool to incite unrest amongst the workers. The false Maria inspires the workers to destroy the machines, but eventually they turn on her and burn her at stake. Freder then battles a crazed Rotwang to save the real Maria. Balance is finally restored when Freder becomes the mediator between the Upper and Lower classes, the “heart” between “the head and hands.”


I thought Brigitte Helm was so very beautiful in her role of Maschinenmensch (machine-human).


source

City Lights (1931)


Directed and starring Charlie Chaplin

A tramp falls in love with a blind flower girl. She in turn mistakes him for a kind, wealthy gentleman. 

SPOILER ALERT.

The tramp later prevents a drunken millionaire from committing suicide and is rewarded handsomely. When the millionaire wakes up sober, he rejects the tramp. 

 The tramp soon finds out the flower girl is ill, and takes on jobs to earn money to pay her rent and cure her blindness. When he meets the millionaire again, the tramp gets mixed up in a burglary attempt. Accused of theft, he narrowly escapes. He gives the flower girl some money before being caught and thrown in jail. 

 The tramp is a shadow of his former self when released from prison. In a twist of fate he meets the flower girl, now cured of her blindness. The movie ends with the girl recognizing the tramp as her suitor through the touch of his hand. 

Astro Boy (1960) Episode 1



Classic!