Film

Les anges du péché (1943)

Redemption stories are everywhere. Take a character down on her luck; watch her stagger through the mud of life for two hours; then rejoice as she comes out clean on the other side of her trials. Such stories are common because they reflect a deep desire in human beings to rise above the temporal cares and tribulations of life and grasp onto to something pure and real and true.

Filmmakers have been exploring and capitalizing on this universal human desire since the cinematic medium was invented. But few have explored redemption with as much formal interest, and, in certain cases, rigor, as Robert Bresson did in his first feature, Les anges du péché (The Angels of Sin).

The story follows a group of nuns as they bring two new members, Anne-Marie and Thérèse, into their family. This particular community of nuns specializes in serving imprisoned women while they are in prison, and offering them a place in the convent when they are freed. Anne-Marie comes to the sisters from a bourgeois life. With no prison in her background, she stands apart from most of the nuns. Thérèse on the other hand, begins the film as the most feared inmate in the prison. Only through Anne-Marie, an instrument of grace in the film, does Thérèse finally find her redemption. What makes Bresson’s film both interesting and excellent is not in his choice of tales, but rather in how he executes this telling of that old redemption story.

Undergirding Anne-Marie’s redemptive function is a maxim she receives, the maxim being a short quotation that each nun will seek to embody throughout the year. Anne-Marie’s maxim comes from Catherine of Siena, who wrote, “If you hear the word that ties you to another human being, do not listen to any others that follow—they are merely its echo.” The redemption in Les anges du péché only occurs when, as in the quote from Catherine, one person is tied to another. Redemption requires identification and union. Bresson illustrates these requirements in numerous ways throughout the film, but one scene stands out from among the rest (at least until the ending, which I won’t give away here, but which certainly underlines and continues what Bresson sets up in the following scene).

The scene in question takes place nearly halfway through the movie’s run time. The connection between Anne-Marie and Thérèse has already been established, the former somewhat pridefully, though genuinely, expressing her desire to raise up Thérèse from her lowly state. Only Thérèse has unexpectedly—at least as far as Anne-Marie is concerned—rejected the offer of help. Anne-Marie returns to the convent undaunted by this setback, and enters the chapel to pray that her desires will be fulfilled. The screen captures below offer a sense of the two shots following the close-up of Anne-Marie’s prayer, a wide shot of Anne-Marie bowing to pray in the chapel, and a well-designed tracking shot of Thérèse in a hallway, on her way to kill the man who wronged her.

Bresson’s mise-en-scene connects these two women beautifully. The echo of the banister in the first shot appears in shadow in the second. This visual element sets up the tension between the women, at once connecting and distinguishing the women. Could the use of shadow in the second shot indicate that Thérèse’s state is somehow lesser than Anne-Marie’s? Bresson heightens the contrast between the women by the difference in setting, rich and comfortable in the former, barren and stark in the latter. Yet even with this contrast, Bresson manages, at the same time to frame it with an underlying unification between the women, as Thérèse moves into the stairwell to occupy the exact space in the frame that Anne-Marie occupied in the previous shot.

At once distinct from and identified with one another, Anne-Marie and Thérèse occupy drastically different places in their lives, though despite that, their fates are inextricably linked one to another. Bresson makes this formal connection in the most significant scene of the movie (at least until the ending), the scene that will determine the ultimate fate of both of these women, a moment of life and death. Redemption will ultimately occur through this union, and because of it. In this darkest of moments for Thérèse, she shares a deep connection with Anne-Marie, even if, at this point, Thérèse has not reciprocated. In this brief sequence, we see a prayer being answered; we see the deep meaning of Christian love and concern for another person; and we see grace on the move, even as a woman guns down another human being. Both the mystery and the clarity of redemption are on full display in these two shots—a microcosm of the entire film, and of life.

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Inglourious Basterds follows the exploits of a fictional squad of U.S. soldiers appointed to kill Nazis behind enemy lines during World War II. Each of the Basterds happens to be Jewish-American, giving the film the feel of a kind of revenge fantasy. The story bears that out, as the Basterds move through France on their way to Paris, where they participate in an attempt to take out all of the Third Reich’s highest officials at a movie premiere.

Without a doubt, the movie entertains. Its accessible storyline, inviting locations (especially the movie theater), and flashier moments (like the shot that drops below the floorboards in the first scene) consistently engage. Christoph Waltz also turns in a fun performance as the Nazi “Jew Hunter,” while nearly all of the film’s characters get their share of comedic moments. Director Quentin Tarantino clearly loves the movies, and there’s a heightened cinematic feel to all of the action, a stylized presentation that means to consciously push viewers out of the real world and into Tarantino’s more cartoonish vision of reality.

Due to the consistently ironic tone of the film, Inglourious Basterds possesses a certain measure of falsehood. Film critic James Agee offers a helpful comment in his 1943 review of The Moon is Down, a Nazi film based on a novel by none other than John Steinbeck:

I respect Steinbeck’s insistence that both the Nazis and their enemies are human beings, but too many things get in the way of any proof of the fact. . . . Irony, I am told, comes from eironikos, which could be translated as false naiveté. Steinbeck’s ‘little people’ use it so much that they become false and naïve out of all conscious proportions. So the irony itself becomes unpalatable, and the people become dehumanized victims of a well-intended, unconscious patronage. Worse still they become stagy . . . (Agee On Film, 18)

Agee’s particular definition of irony as false naiveté is not the case in IB. However, as a clear example of purposefully ironic filmmaking, IB leads to similar results as The Moon is Down. Each of the two male leads in IB—Christoph Waltz and Brad Pitt—play their characters in over-the-top fashion, indicating a comic tone in decidedly un-comic surroundings. This begins almost immediately as Waltz’s Nazi officer questions the French farmer in such an excessively delightful tone. After carrying this joyous attitude throughout the interview, he concludes by playfully calling for Shoshanna as she runs in terror from the home, her family just murdered before her eyes.

The same is true for Pitt’s character, though in a slightly different manner. Whereas Waltz’s Nazi comes off almost as a comic madman, Pitt infuses his character with a cowboy quality—including a ridiculous Southern accent—that seems ignorant of or apathetic toward the moral seriousness of his squad’s brutality. He revels in the revenge his squad perpetrates on those “Naa-zees,” mixing both comedy and bloodlust in his pursuit of the enemy.

These two characters set the ironic tone for the film. We enter this world through their eyes and experiences. And because Tarantino lays it on so thick and so consistently throughout the movie, the characters become, in the words of Agee above, “dehumanized victims,” and “stagy.” The characters in this cartoonish world are something less than human. They exist not as individuals who make their own choices in recognizably human fashion, but as puppets that exist to provide a thrill or a laugh—often both at once. This end reality doesn’t set Tarantino’s film apart from much else that comes out of Hollywood these days. But because of the way he gets there and because of the unique setting of this film, the use of such an ironic seems problematic at best.

Director Quentin Tarantino has stated that he thinks his ending undercuts the revenge fantasy, believing that in the final reckoning the dying Nazis morph from their status as evil incarnate to simple human beings. As he says,

I set up scenes and I jerk you off to have a climax. And in this movie I jerked you off and I fucked with the climax… At some point those Nazi uniforms went away and they were people being burned alive. I think that’s part of the thing that fucks with the catharsis. And that’s a good thing.

It may be true that on a purely narrative level, the climactic scene in the movie theater subverts any bloodlust the audience might have had for Nazis as they rooted for the Basterds. The Basterds mow down the high-ranking Nazis with machine guns. Fire consumes those hoping to escape in the other direction. Bombs explode and obliterate the rest. This is cold-blooded killing, and on a grand scale.

In my view, the turn Tarantino thinks his film makes is not actually present. Maybe it would have been, had any other group taken the place of the Nazis. But the weight of the overwhelmingly ironic presentation, along with the cultural baggage that comes with Nazis in the twenty-first century, is just too heavy to throw off with a simple narrative turn in the last few minutes of a film.

The Book of Eli (2009)

The Book of Eli stars Denzel Washington as a well-armed man carrying the last existing Bible across the United States to a mysterious place of safety. The film sports three slick action sequences, two excellent performances from Washington and Oldman, and one flat-out preposterous twist. Added together, Eli makes for an enjoyable evening, though one that requires either muddled thinking or an exorbitant amount of good will to follow its narrative turns throughout.

The film, marketed heavily in religious circles, is most interesting to me for its treatment of the Bible. Oldman’s villain, Carnegie, says the most about it, often referring to the power of its words to demand control and allegiance of the common people. Washington’s character doesn’t talk about the book as much as illustrate how he uses it—reading it every night and displaying the ability to recite biblical passages from memory. Eli wants the words of the book to have an impact on his own actions, even going so far as to express regret at one point that he hasn’t followed the Bible’s teachings more closely. For one man, the Good Book is a tool to exert power over others; for the other, it serves as a tool for the empowerment of self and others.

Despite this contrast in perspectives between the two main characters, the film presents a unified, Protestant-leaning vision of the role of this book, one that eschews both the importance and the goodness of institutional religion and sets up the individual as the sole arbiter of truth. The only discussion institutional religion comes from the villain, Carnegie, who wants to set up franchises of his degenerate town in other parts of the country. He needs the book to accomplish his plan, but this hierarchical vision is looked down upon. No doubt that derives largely from Carnegie’s evil intentions. But it is of interest that Eli provides no contrasting group, guided by goodness.

Instead, Washington’s hero, Eli, represents a more organic form of spirituality, one that walks the road alone, occasionally meeting with others and experiencing some form of community through random acts of kindness or out of mutual interest. It also matters that the book doesn’t end up with a religious body with an interest in disseminating the book for its spiritual value. Rather, it lands in an institution that seeks to disseminate important texts of all kinds, religious or not.

Watching the film and seeing this more individualistic mentality played out on the screen, I was reminded of a passage from an ancient Christian text, written by Irenaeus:

For [the Church] is the entrance to life; all others are thieves and robbers. On this account we are bound to avoid them, but to make choice of the thing pertaining to the Church with the utmost diligence, and to lay hold of the tradition of the truth. For how stands the case? Suppose there arise a dispute relative to some important question among us, should we not have recourse to the most ancient Churches with which the apostles held constant intercourse, and learn from them what is certain and clear in regard to the present question? For how should it be if the apostles themselves had not left us writings? Would it not be necessary, [in that case,] to follow the course of the tradition which they handed down to those to whom they did commit the Churches? (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.4.1)

Irenaeus’s point here is a simple one: the Church is the arbiter of truth, for she protects the message of the book. The Church helps the individual read the book well. The Church reminds the book’s reader that it was not written in a vacuum. Striking out on one’s own leads to danger and misinterpretation. Or worse, to becoming a thief or a robber. Irenaeus understood that just having the book, or even reading the book, was not enough. Those who love the God of the book need the protection of the institution, of the Church, to keep them on track.

My fellow Protestants might rejoice when they see the book saved, which would be, in such a hypothetical world, a good thing in and of itself. But the victory, for this believer, rings somewhat hollow without the institution of the Church to disseminate the message.

A Man Escaped (1956)

Susan Sontag, in her essay, “Spiritual Style in the Films of Robert Bresson,” argues that “All of Bresson’s films have a common theme: the meaning of confinement and liberty.” A Man Escaped develops this theme more explicitly than in any other of his works, making it the best entry point into Bresson’s oeuvre.

The film details the imprisonment of a Free French rebel in World War II and typical of Bresson’s style, it contains lengthy sections of wordless action—the prisoner Fontaine plotting escape alone in his cell, leaving his cell for a meal, or waiting in line to dump his waste bucket. Bresson punctuates these scenes with evocative sound; the intense focus on physical and mundane tasks compels the viewer to look within the characters to understand.

But there Bresson places a second roadblock. In A Man Escaped, as in all of his films after Les Dames du Boulogne, the actors do not emote. Blank looks and unemotional responses populate the characters in the prison. Bresson resists the temptation to allow his characters to explain their deepest feelings and motivations. Such psychological speculation is simply out of the question.

By making these kinds of stylistic choices, Bresson drives the viewer to grapple with the spiritual realities of the narrative. In other words, as the main story focuses on the mundane, leaving the characters opaque, Bresson invites the viewer into spiritual contemplation. Rather than dictating particular thoughts or feelings to the audience, A Man Escaped opens a space for the viewer to interact and engage with the profound mysteries of human life, of our desire for freedom, and of the presence of God amid our struggles.

Lord, Save Us from Your Followers (2008)

Christians can be jerks sometimes. Or judgmental. Or hypocritical. Or unjust. Or prideful. The list goes on. Some will read the preceding statements and get defensive. Others will think it’s not stated strongly enough.

Wherever you find yourself on the spectrum in your regard for Christians, Dan Merchant, an Evangelical Christian himself, couldn’t get around the negative impression so many seem to have about Christians these days. Public debate and comment involving Christians speaking out on social, political, and economic issues has left behind the more collegial attitudes of yesteryear and replaced them with what can only be termed a toxic atmosphere.

That’s the impetus behind Dan Merchant’s film, Lord, Save Us from Your Followers, which was originally released in the months leading up to the 2008 presidential election in the United States. Merchant acutely points out that people on both sides of the broader cultural debate going on in our country feel oppressed and cornered by each other. As an Evangelical himself, Merchant spends most of his film focusing on Christians, reminding viewers of such foolishness as Pat Robertson’s claim that Hurricane Katrina was a result of the extra-sinful people of New Orleans or Fred Phelps and his demeaning and destructive “God hates fags” campaign.

Merchant is ashamed of the activity of many Christians in the public square, and rightly so. The film seems fuzzy and scattered in its first half as Merchant details the problems, bouncing from scholars to famous personalities to average people on the street. However, the focus narrows in the second half as Merchant advocates for Christians to take a different approach to the world at large. His logic goes like this: If Christians are followers of Jesus, and Jesus was characterized by humility and grace and compassion for all people, then maybe the followers of Jesus should take on a more humble, gracious, and compassionate posture toward all people, especially those that disagree with them.

Merchant peppers the latter half of his film with examples of Christians actively working out this approach in the world today, people like Rick Warren and the lead singer of U2, Bono, who both give a great deal of time and money to various humanitarian works in Africa; a local group of Christians in Portland, Oregon who provide basic services and clothing for the homeless every week; and the filmmaker himself, who sets up a “confession booth” at a festival for gay and lesbian people.

Ironically, Merchant uses his confession booth not to hear the confessions of people at the festival, but to confess his own sins, and the sins of the church at large. The apologies start off a bit awkwardly, but the act of humbling himself through apology provides Merchant the opportunity to have conversations with those who visit the booth. These are revealing moments—two people facing one another in a room by themselves. While Merchant received a variety of responses, his act of humility was clearly moving to many who entered the booth. Fears and trials and hurts bubbled to the surface as human beings shared their hearts with one another.

The last half of Merchant’s film shows Christians communicating and connecting with people. It shows Christians treating people like people, regardless of race, economic status, gender, or sexual orientation. Merchant’s film advocates for a more compassionate approach from a group of people who should know better, but who too often do not.

Christians can be jerks sometimes. Maybe the existence of Merchant’s film in the world will make that a little less common. I hope so.

The Song of Bernadette (1943)

The Song of Bernadette, Henry King’s 1943 film about a young woman who believes she has visions of a mysterious lady in a grotto, has much to recommend it—the technical nuance, the less-sentimental-than-expected portrayal of miraculous events, and a fine performance by the lead actress, Jennifer Jones.

That said, let’s state up front: this is a film about a saint. As such, the dramatic conflict comes less from within Bernadette, and more from the resistance she meets outside herself. I say less because while a saintly figure, Bernadette is also a young woman, and as such is given to bouts of frustration. But in spite of her youth, after seeing the vision she never doubts it, she always answers in perfect concert with the mysterious lady’s intentions in mind, and she carries a kind of tranquil manner about her.

In the events and characters that swirl around Bernadette, the film goes to great pains to create doubt, whether by the filming of certain events, or by the incessant questions raised by the bishop and certain government officials. This works to a large degree in keeping the narrative engaging, though cutting ten or twenty minutes from the 140+ minute-film wouldn’t hurt.

Without a doubt, the film is straight-up hagiography, which is not at all meant as a criticism, but rather as a descriptive term. Personally, I don’t tend to go in for these kinds of stories, but in the case of Bernadette, the film wore down most of my defenses. The key factor in this has to be the innate simplicity that Jones brings to the role of Bernadette—there’s an appealing naivete about the young woman that engaged me.

The world I live in has too little simplicity in it. Everything’s complicated, so some say. Well, yes and no. Everything is complicated, but like that very statement—and depending on how you look at life—many things are simpler than they seem. Bernadette was a nice reminder of what a simple life lived in simple faith might look like.

Meshes of the Afternoon (1943)

In 1943, Maya Deren and Alexander Hamid made a 14-minute experimental film called Meshes of the Afternoon. While the scenes play out in mysterious and elliptical fashion, the title presents at least one clear direction for the film: the woman who stars in the film—played by Deren herself—walks around her neighborhood and home on a sunny afternoon, but is trapped, or enmeshed, in the domesticity of suburban life.

With abrupt cuts, repeated images, and bold symbols, the film addresses questions of traditional gender roles, ossified social structures, the isolation inherent in society, and the deep fears that threaten to overtake us all. The opening scenes of the film, following the woman as she walks down her street and into her home, refrain from showing her entire body or face. Instead we get glimpses of a flower she carries, her feet as she walks, her hands as she swings them, or her shadow as it flits across blank walls.

Deren shows us a woman not fully in the world—a mere shadow in the walled and isolated environment in which she finds herself. When a man eventually appears in her home, he is more a stranger or intruder than he is a comfort or companion. One recurring image makes the struggle of the heroine clearest: from outside her window, the camera watches her as she stares through the glass. But across the window in reflection are the branches and leaves from a tree just outside. Even here, in a moment of mental escape from the domestic snares laid for her, the woman remains trapped.

Told with dream logic, including repeated scenes of the woman dozing in an overstuffed chair, the film presents a terrifying portrait of her gradual breakdown. Long before Freddy Krueger used nightmares to kill teenagers in the real world of cheap slasher flicks, Deren and Hamid showed their audiences that the dreamy existence of 1940s suburban life was far more dangerous than it appeared. Meshes of the Afternoon questions humanity’s ability to continue to exist in a world built to isolate us from one another, where fear has become the primary means of relating to one another and death the only avenue of escape.

100 “American” Movies

What is America? How would I describe it if the only language I had were the movies? These were the questions put to me recently by a friend. These same questions led me to compile the following list of 100 movies that I would use to introduce an outsider to the United States. To complete the list, I wanted a multiplicity of voices from different eras. I wanted movies that represented a variety of genres, in particular making an effort to include comedy. Sometimes you know a place or its people best when you can begin to appreciate their comic rhythms.

Of course, this list is far from perfect, limited in particular by what I’ve actually seen. But it’s a starting point. In light of that, the question that interests me most involves you: What movies do you think serve as an introduction to America? Come up with a title or ten and leave a comment. I’d love to see what you suggest.

1. Birth of a Nation (Griffith, 1915)
2. The Immigrant (Chaplin, 1917)
3. Greed (von Stroheim, 1924)
4. The Gold Rush (Chaplin, 1925)
5. The Crowd (Vidor, 1927)
6. The General (Keaton, 1927)
7. I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (LeRoy, 1932)
8. Steamboat Round the Bend (Ford, 1935)
9. Modern Times (Chaplin, 1936)
10. My Man Godfrey (La Cava, 1936)
11. Make Way For Tomorrow (McCarey, 1937)
12. Gone with the Wind (Fleming, 1939)
13. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Capra, 1939)
14. Young Mr. Lincoln (Ford, 1939)
15. Grapes of Wrath (Ford, 1940)
16. Sergeant York (Hawks, 1940)
17. Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
18. The Magnificent Ambersons (Welles, 1942)
19. The Ox-Bow Incident (Wellman, 1943)
20. Meet Me in St. Louis (Minnelli, 1944)
21. Mildred Pierce (Curtiz, 1945)
22. They Were Expendable (Ford, 1945)
23. The Best Years of Our Lives (Wyler, 1946)
24. It’s a Wonderful Life (Capra, 1946)
25. Paisan (Rossellini, 1946)
26. Red River (Hawks, 1948)
27. Ace in the Hole (Wilder, 1951)
28. High Noon (Zinnemann, 1952)
29. Shane (Stevens, 1953)
30. The Sun Shines Bright (Ford, 1953)
31. Night of the Hunter (Laughton, 1955)
32. Rebel Without a Cause (Ray, 1955)
33. On the Waterfront (Kazan, 1956)
34. The Searchers (Ford, 1956)
35. The Wrong Man (Hitchcock, 1956)
36. 12 Angry Men (Lumet, 1957)
37. The Incredible Shrinking Man (Arnold, 1957)
38. Sweet Smell of Success (Mackendrick, 1957)
39. West Side Story (Wise, 1961)
40. The Manchurian Candidate (Frankenheimmer, 1962)
41. To Kill a Mockingbird (Mulligan, 1962)
42. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Kubrick, 1964)
43. Bonnie and Clyde (Penn, 1967)
44. The Graduate (Nichols, 1967)
45. Salesman (Maysles, 1968)
46. Easy Rider (Hopper, 1969)
47. M*A*S*H (Altman, 1970)
48. Patton (Schaffner, 1970)
49. Dirty Harry (Siegel, 1971)
50. McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Altman, 1971)
51. The Godfather (Coppola, 1972)
52. American Graffiti (Lucas, 1973)
53. Blazing Saddles (Brooks, 1974)
54. The Conversation (Coppola, 1974)
55. The Godfather Part II (Coppola, 1974)
56. All the President’s Men (Pakula, 1976)
57. Harlan County U.S.A (Kopple, 1976)
58. Network (Lumet, 1976)
59. Taxi Driver (Scorcese, 1976)
60. Killer of Sheep (Burnett, 1977)
61. Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979)
62. Manhattan (Allen, 1979)
63. First Blood (Kotcheff, 1982)
64. The Right Stuff (Kaufman, 1983)
65. Scarface (DePalma, 1983)
66. Tender Mercies (Beresford, 1983)
67. The Natural (Levinson, 1984)
68. Places in the Heart (Benton, 1984)
69. Red Dawn (Milius, 1984)
70. Stand By Me (Reiner, 1986)
71. Wall Street (Stone, 1987)
72. Hoosiers (Anspaugh, 1988)
73. Platoon (Stone, 1988)
74. Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (Herek, 1989)
75. Christmas Vacation (Chechik, 1989)
76. Do the Right Thing (Lee, 1989)
77. Goodfellas (Scorcese, 1990)
78. Miller’s Crossing (Coen, 1990)
79. Boyz n the Hood (Singleton, 1991)
80. Dazed and Confused (Linklater, 1993)
81. Groundhog Day (Ramis, 1993)
82. Rudy (Anspaugh, 1993)
83. Safe (Haynes, 1995)
84. Dead Man Walking (Robbins, 1995)
85. L.A. Confidential (Hansen, 1997)
86. The Last Days of Disco (Stillman, 1998)
87. The Straight Story (Lynch, 1999)
88. George Washington (Green, 2000)
89. Zoolander (Stiller, 2001)
90. 25th Hour (Lee, 2002)
91. In America (Sheridan, 2002)
92. Spellbound (Blitz, 2002)
93. Take Out (Baker, 2004)
94. Good Night and Good Luck (Clooney, 2005)
95. Grizzly Man (Herzog, 2005)
96. The New World (Malick, 2005)
97. United 93 (Greegrass, 2006)
98. When the Levees Broke (Lee, 2006)
99. Taxi to the Dark Side (Gibney, 2007)
100. Milk (Van Sant, 2008)

Metropolis (1927)

Upon its release in 1927, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis was cut to pieces by editors who thought it too long for audiences. For the past eighty-three years, the film has been in a seemingly never-ending rebuilding process, one that has approached completion with the newest restoration, just broadcast in Germany by the Murnau Foundation. I say approached because, even after more than eight decades, the film is still missing the entirety of one key scene—a fight late in the film between Frederson and Rotwang. However, with this newest restoration, two entire subplots have been added back into the film, bringing the film as close as it’s ever been in modern times to Lang’s original, majestic vision.

The plot concerns the life of Freder, son of the man who runs the entire city. Early on Freder becomes captivated with the world of the workers below ground and gradually morphs into a savior of sorts for the city, healing the long-standing division between the rich and the poor, the powerful and the powerless. Several subplots revolve around the central narrative, the most compelling of them involving Rotwang, a man who has created a robotic woman that can take whatever form he gives it, and who has designs of his own on the city. The 2010 restoration also restores two other subplots that give coherence to the overall plot—one involving a worker’s life above ground after Freder trades places with him, and another involving The Thin Man, a stooge sent by Freder’s father to keep tabs on the young man. None of this added material feels extraneous, as Lang’s film remains expertly paced.

What has always been most impressive about Metropolis is its grand vision of a futuristic world, one where humanity has achieved great heights of technological progress while at the same time has sunk into the depths in its treatment of one another. Lang reproduces this apparent paradox quite literally, conceiving of giant skyscrapers reaching into the sky and virtually blocking out the heavens, as well as multi-level skyscrapers entirely below ground whose foundations dig deep into the earth.

Everything in the world of Metropolis has a touch of the human creative spirit in it. Even a garden from an early sequence looks constructed and manicured. The world that has been created is certainly majestic, but it is also threatened with destruction because of the deep division that exists among its people. The world has turned in on itself, and finds itself in need of some recalibration.

In hope, Lang envisions a world where both powerful and powerless can come together in a spirit of unity and mutual benefit. But how does the film portray these people breaking out of this strictly human existence? Lang uses religious symbolism in significant ways to bring about the change that eventually occurs, envisioning machines as devilish gods or temples, making the heart of the rebellion come out of Christian meetings that take place below the lower city, or staging the final dramatic conflict in and around a towering cathedral in the midst of the city. All of these point to a reality beyond that of the tangible inventions that make up the Metropolis. For these people, peace comes not through human ingenuity and progress, but through the willingness to sacrifice and a mutual embrace of humility in the face of something greater than themselves.

Eighty-three years on and Metropolis remains a vital film. Its vision of the future, its understanding of human nature, and its nod to the importance of the transcendent ensure that it will be around for another eighty-three years to delight and challenge viewers in each new generation.

Make Way for Tomorrow (1937)

Leo McCarey’s Make Way for Tomorrow has been one of those Holy Grail type films—a movie with an excellent reputation, but one that has been completely unavailable on home video in the U.S. That’s all changed thanks to the recent Criterion release of the film on DVD. It looks fantastic, but even more importantly, it lives up to the hype.

Married for fifty years with five children, Barkley and Lucy Cooper have been caught in the throes of the Great Depression. They’ve lost their house. Calling four of their five children to them for the announcement (the fifth lives in far off California), the parents matter-of-factly deliver the news to a shocked and slightly put out group of kids. Quickly Bark gets shuffled off to one kid’s house while Lucy goes to another’s—no one seems to have enough room for both of them—in the hopes that a third child will take them both in after a few months. But that time never comes.

The film spends its first hour detailing this separation, its painful consequences for the elderly couple, and the upheavals it introduces into the lives of their children. After so many years in the presence of one another, both Lucy and Bark have developed comfortable patterns in their lives. So when Lucy, used to keeping house, tries and fails at helping out around her new home, she angers her son, his family, and even their housekeeper. When Bark takes ill for longer than usual, he becomes nearly helpless, wanting only the care of his wife to the frustration of his frazzled daughter. The kids have little time or patience for any of it. One disappears completely from the film after the announcement. Another refuses to take them both after promising to do so. The two who keep the parents never lose an opportunity to find a way to move them on to another location.

While the kids come out of all this looking worse than the parents (and rightly so), McCarey wisely avoids portraying any of them too negatively. They each possess their own flaws, the filmmakers recognizing the inherent difficulties of normal people living in confined spaces with one another. Nothing overly dramatic is needed to underline this point because this film portrays well-drawn characters that are fully alive. The conflicts, therefore, arise naturally.

However, the shift that takes place for the final half-hour moves this film from astutely observed family drama to, plain and simple, masterpiece. From a group of dour, irritated, aggravated, and impatient people living in various cities, the film brings the old couple back together in New York City for one fleeting day—Bark is soon to be shuttled off to a daughter’s house in California. Bark and Lucy enjoy several hours together without their kids and in the city, reminiscing about their last trip there—fifty years before, on their honeymoon. All of a sudden, the confined spaces of the first hour open up magnificently with a walk outdoors, a car ride, a posh hotel, and a dance that tops off the magical moment.

It is in the contrast between two worlds that the film holds its greatest power. Gone is the spirit of bitter ungratefulness; now is the time for kindness and thanksgiving. Gone is the yearning for what cannot be seen; now the object of affection is in full view. Gone is the absence of one’s greatest love; now it is completely present.

While this half-hour is certainly powerful, McCarey’s film is too smart to avoid the inevitable. Part of the power of that magical thirty minutes comes from the knowledge that it will all soon end. When it does, McCarey handles the moment with such grace and simplicity that it brings a tear even at the remembrance of it. As Lucy stares off somewhere beyond the frame at the train pulling her husband away from her, a haunting pallor spreads across her face as the hope of the recent moment fades.

What will tomorrow bring? Of that we can never be certain, the final image seems to say. And so we rely on the memory of moments now past in the anticipation that we might live to have others—maybe, we hope, even tomorrow.