METROPOLIS -- or Yesterday's Long Lost Tommorow

Today, at the time of this writing, 6 January, is the Feast of the Epiphany, which celebrates the adoration of the Magi, the sorcerer-kings of the East, who had read in the conjunctions of the stars that a new king was born of Jewry, and trekked from the astronomical towers and cryptic libraries of Babylon to find him, beyond expectation, in the hovel of a cabinet maker.

Tradition names this as the last day of the Twelve Days of Christmas, the Twelfth Night, which of old was celebrated with a masquerade, servants dressed as masters, women as men and suchlike. The famed Shakespeare play, where Roselind goes garbed as Ganymede commemorates this cross-dressing antic.

It is therefore a fitting day to discuss the restoration of the 1927 silent film METROPOLIS. It is fitting because the film includes visions as prophetic as anything an astrologer could dream, including a tower fittingly called “Neubabelsberg” or “The New Tower of Babel” and including the Twelfth Night masquerade deception of a machine man dressed as a maiden.

It is fitting finally because Santa Claus left, as part of my rich Xmas loot, my own copy of this film, which I have been eagerly yearning, if not salivating, to own, ever since I heard the rumor of it.

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