The 1927 Film Metropolis Created a Dystopian Vision of What the World Would Look Like in 2026–and It Hits Close to Home

Ultra-tall high-ris­es against dark skies. A huge dis­tance between the rich and the poor. Rob­ber barons at the helm of large-scale indus­tri­al oper­a­tions that turn man into machine. Machines that have become intel­li­gent enough to dis­place man. These have all been stan­dard ele­ments of dystopi­an visions so long that few of us could man­age to imag­ine a grim future with­out includ­ing at least a cou­ple of them. We’ve all seen these ele­ments used before, and they owe much of their stay­ing pow­er to the impact they first made in Fritz Lang’s cin­e­mat­ic spec­ta­cle Metrop­o­lis, which pre­miered 98 years ago. Many imi­ta­tions have since passed through pop­u­lar cul­ture, most of which haven’t mas­tered the tech­niques that gave the orig­i­nal its pow­er.

“Set in a futur­is­tic urban dystopia, the film por­trays a divid­ed soci­ety where the wealthy elite live in lux­u­ri­ous sky­scrap­ers while the oppressed work­ing class toil under­ground,” writes Pruethicheth Lert-udom­pruk­sa at the IAAC blog. “The film explores themes of class strug­gle, social inequal­i­ty, and the dehu­man­iz­ing effects of indus­tri­al­iza­tion.”

One of those the­me’s strongest icons is the Tow­er of Babel, a loom­ing sky­scraper that “sym­bol­izes the stark divi­sion between the priv­i­leged and the oppressed.” As Paul Bat­ters writes at the Sil­ver Screen Clas­sics blog, “like the zig­gu­rats of Ur, the pyra­mids and tem­ples of Egypt,” that build­ing and oth­er ele­ments real­ized by the film’s ground­break­ing visu­al design add up to a tit­u­lar “city that dom­i­nates human­i­ty.”

The loss of human­i­ty is the prime con­cern of the Junkies video essay at the top of the post, which explains sev­er­al ways Lang and his col­lab­o­ra­tors con­vey that phe­nom­e­non through light, shad­ow, and per­spec­tive — light, shad­ow, and per­spec­tive being the main tools avail­able to a black-and-white silent film. The One Hun­dred Years of Cin­e­ma video essay just above cov­ers more such aspects of the pic­ture’s con­struc­tion, as well as its his­tor­i­cal con­text: “In nine­teen-twen­ties Europe, a rad­i­cal form of nation­al­ism called fas­cism was com­ing to promi­nence, and six years after the film’s release, Lang found him­self exiled to Amer­i­ca for his refusal to join the Nazi par­ty.”

For quite some time, the ver­sions of Metrop­o­lis that peo­ple could see were cen­sored or oth­er­wise incom­plete cuts; only in 2008 did it under­go a com­plete restora­tion. But now, it’s eas­i­er than ever to see that its “win­ning com­bi­na­tion of cam­era shots and angles, light­ing con­trasts, and shot com­po­si­tion real­ly do well to depict human­i­ty as becom­ing sub­servient to tech­nol­o­gy. And so, per­haps today, more so than in 1927, it is eas­i­er to read the mes­sage that Lang is try­ing to por­tray through the cin­e­mat­ic devices he employs.” Watch­ing the impov­er­ished work­ers of Metrop­o­lis become part of the machine they work for, while its idle rich “become part of the machine by sub­mis­sion [to] plea­sure,” we might reflect upon the astute­ness of the choice to set the film’s sto­ry in the year 2026.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Fritz Lang First Depict­ed Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence on Film in Metrop­o­lis (1927), and It Fright­ened Peo­ple Even Then

Watch Metrop­o­lis’ Cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly Inno­v­a­tive Dance Scene, Restored as Fritz Lang Intend­ed It to Be Seen (1927)

Behold Beau­ti­ful Orig­i­nal Movie Posters for Metrop­o­lis from France, Swe­den, Ger­many, Japan & Beyond

Fritz Lang Invents the Video Phone in Metrop­o­lis (1927)

Read the Orig­i­nal 32-Page Pro­gram for Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis (1927)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Man Ray’s Surrealist Cinema: Watch Four Pioneering Films From the 1920s

Man Ray was one of the lead­ing artists of the avant-garde of 1920s and 1930s Paris. A key fig­ure in the Dada and Sur­re­al­ist move­ments, his works spanned var­i­ous media, includ­ing film. He was a lead­ing expo­nent of the Ciné­ma Pur, or “Pure Cin­e­ma,” which reject­ed such “bour­geois” con­ceits as char­ac­ter, set­ting, and plot. Today we present Man Ray’s four influ­en­tial films of the 1920s.

Le Retour à la Rai­son (above) was com­plet­ed in 1923. The title means “Return to Rea­son,” and it’s basi­cal­ly a kinet­ic exten­sion of Man Ray’s still pho­tog­ra­phy. Many of the images in Le Retour are ani­mat­ed pho­tograms, a tech­nique in which opaque, or par­tial­ly opaque, objects are arranged direct­ly on top of a sheet of pho­to­graph­ic paper and exposed to light. The tech­nique is as old as pho­tog­ra­phy itself, but Man Ray had a gift for self-pro­mo­tion, so he called them “rayo­graphs.” For Le Retour, Man Ray sprin­kled objects like salt and pep­per and pins onto the pho­to­graph­ic paper. He also filmed live-action sequences of an amuse­ment park carousel and oth­er sub­jects, includ­ing the nude tor­so of his mod­el and lover, Kiki of Mont­par­nasse.

Emak-Bakia (1926):

The 16-minute Emak-Bakia con­tains some of the same images and visu­al tech­niques as Le Retour à la Rai­son, includ­ing rayo­graphs, dou­ble images, and neg­a­tive images. But the live-action sequences are more inven­tive, with dream-like dis­tor­tions and tilt­ed cam­era angles. The effect is sur­re­al. “In reply to crit­ics who would like to linger on the mer­its or defects of the film,” wrote Man Ray in the pro­gram notes, “one can reply sim­ply by trans­lat­ing the title ‘Emak Bakia,’ an old Basque expres­sion, which was cho­sen because it sounds pret­ty and means: ‘Give us a rest.’ ”

L’E­toile de Mer (1928):

L’E­toile de Mer (“The Sea Star”) was a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Man Ray and the sur­re­al­ist poet Robert Desnos. It fea­tures Kiki de Mont­par­nasse (Alice Prin) and André de la Riv­ière. The dis­tort­ed, out-of-focus images were made by shoot­ing into mir­rors and through rough glass. The film is more sen­su­al than Man Ray’s ear­li­er works. As Don­ald Faulkn­er writes:

In the mod­ernist high tide of 1920s exper­i­men­tal film­mak­ing, L’E­toile de Mer is a per­verse moment of grace, a demon­stra­tion that the cin­e­ma went far­ther in its great silent decade than most film­mak­ers today could ever imag­ine. Sur­re­al­ist pho­tog­ra­ph­er Man Ray’s film col­lides words with images (the inter­ti­tles are from an oth­er­wise lost work by poet Robert Desnos) to make us psy­cho­log­i­cal wit­ness­es, voyeurs of a kind, to a sex­u­al encounter. A char­ac­ter picks up a woman who is sell­ing news­pa­pers. She undress­es for him, but then he seems to leave her. Less inter­est­ed in her than in the weight she uses to keep her news­pa­pers from blow­ing away, the man lov­ing­ly explores the per­cep­tions gen­er­at­ed by her paper­weight, a starfish in a glass tube. As the man looks at the starfish, we become aware through his gaze of metaphors for cin­e­ma, and for vision itself, in lyri­cal shots of dis­tort­ed per­cep­tion that imply hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry, almost mas­tur­ba­to­ry sex­u­al­i­ty.

Les Mys­tères du Château de Dé (1929):

The longest of Man Ray’s films, Les Mys­tères du Château de Dé (the ver­sion above has appar­ent­ly been short­ened by sev­en min­utes) fol­lows a pair of trav­el­ers on a jour­ney from Paris to the Vil­la Noailles in Hyères, which fea­tures a tri­an­gu­lar Cubist gar­den designed by Gabriel Guevrekian. “Made as an archi­tec­tur­al doc­u­ment and inspired by the poet­ry of Mal­lar­mé,” writes Kim Knowles in A Cin­e­mat­ic Artist: The Films of Man Ray, “Les Mys­tères du Château de Dé is the film in which Man Ray most clear­ly demon­strates his inter­dis­ci­pli­nary atti­tude, par­tic­u­lar­ly in its ref­er­ence to Stéphane Mal­lar­mé’s poem Un coup de dés jamais n’aboli­ra le hasard.”

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in April, 2012.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Man Ray Designs a Supreme­ly Ele­gant, Geo­met­ric Chess Set in 1920 (and It’s Now Re-Issued for the Rest of Us)

Man Ray Cre­ates a “Sur­re­al­ist Chess­board,” Fea­tur­ing Por­traits of Sur­re­al­ist Icons: Dalí, Bre­ton, Picas­so, Magritte, Miró & Oth­ers (1934)

Man Ray’s Por­traits of Ernest Hem­ing­way, Ezra Pound, Mar­cel Duchamp & Many Oth­er 1920s Icons

Four Sur­re­al­ist Films From the 1920Watch Dreams That Mon­ey Can Buy, a Sur­re­al­ist Film by Man Ray, Mar­cel Duchamp, Alexan­der Calder, Fer­nand Léger & Hans Richter

Spike Jonze Creates a New Short Film (aka Commercial) for Apple

?si=UQ0XdCH-cVGe26AC

With his icon­ic Super Bowl ad in 1984, Rid­ley Scott began a tra­di­tion of accom­plished film­mak­ers cre­at­ing adver­tise­ments for Apple. In the years since, we’ve seen David Finch­er shoot an ad pro­mot­ing the iPhone 3GS, Michel Gondry direct a spot show­cas­ing the iPhone’s cin­e­mat­ic fea­tures, and Spike Jonze craft a mem­o­rable ad for the Home­Pod. Now, Jonze returns with a new com­mer­cial (above) for the Air­Pods 4 with Active Noise Can­cel­la­tion. The five-and-a-half-minute film, titled “Some­day,” stars Pedro Pas­cal and it fol­lows–writes Vari­ety–his char­ac­ter as he “nav­i­gates an emo­tion­al jour­ney of mov­ing on after a breakup. When the grief-strick­en man ini­ti­ates Active Noise Can­cel­la­tion on his Air­Pods 4, his world trans­forms: The cold, win­try palette flips into a vibrant dream­scape, and every­thing and every­one becomes part of the music.”

With a few clicks of the mouse and for $149.99, you, too, can trans­port your­self to your own sound-and-col­or filled world. It’s that easy.…


Relat­ed Con­tent 

Rid­ley Scott on the Mak­ing of Apple’s Icon­ic “1984” Com­mer­cial, Aired on Super Bowl Sun­day in 1984

Direc­tor Michel Gondry Makes a Charm­ing Film on His iPhone, Prov­ing That We Could Be Mak­ing Movies, Not Tak­ing Self­ies

Steve Jobs Nar­rates the First “Think Dif­fer­ent” Ad (Nev­er Aired)

Hunter S. Thompson’s Edgy 1990s Com­mer­cial for Apple’s Mac­in­tosh Com­put­er: A Med­i­ta­tion on Pow­er

Watch Dziga Vertov’s A Man with a Movie Camera: The 8th Best Film Ever Made

Of all the cin­e­mat­ic trail­blaz­ers to emerge dur­ing the ear­ly years of the Sovi­et Union – Sergei Eisen­stein, Vsevolod Pudovkin, Lev KuleshovDzi­ga Ver­tov (né Denis Arkadievitch Kauf­man, 1896–1954) was the most rad­i­cal.

Where­as Eisen­stein – as seen in that film school stan­dard Bat­tle­ship Potemkin – used mon­tage edit­ing to cre­ate new ways of telling a sto­ry, Ver­tov dis­pensed with sto­ry alto­geth­er. He loathed fic­tion films. “The film dra­ma is the Opi­um of the peo­ple,” he wrote. “Down with Bour­geois fairy-tale scenarios…long live life as it is!”  He called for the cre­ation of a new kind of cin­e­ma free of the counter-rev­o­lu­tion­ary bag­gage of West­ern movies. A cin­e­ma that cap­tured real life.

At the begin­ning of his mas­ter­piece, A Man with a Movie Cam­era (1929) – which was named in 2012 by Sight and Sound mag­a­zine as the 8th best movie ever made – Ver­tov announced exact­ly what that kind of cin­e­ma would look like:

This film is an exper­i­ment in cin­e­mat­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tion of real events with­out the help of inter­ti­tles, with­out the help of a sto­ry, with­out the help of the­atre. This exper­i­men­tal work aims at cre­at­ing a tru­ly inter­na­tion­al lan­guage of cin­e­ma based on its absolute sep­a­ra­tion from the lan­guage of the­atre and lit­er­a­ture.

Glee­ful­ly using jump cuts, super­im­po­si­tions, split screens and every oth­er trick in a filmmaker’s arse­nal, Ver­tov, along with his edi­tor (and wife) Eliza­ve­ta Svilo­va, crafts a dizzy­ing, impres­sion­is­tic, propul­sive por­trait of the new­ly indus­tri­al­iz­ing Sovi­et Union. The lengths to which Ver­tov goes to cap­ture this “cin­e­mat­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tion of real events” are star­tling: His cam­era soars over cities and gazes up at street­cars; it films machines chug­ging away and even records a woman giv­ing birth. “I am eye. I am a mechan­i­cal eye,” Ver­tov once famous­ly wrote. “I, a machine, am show­ing you a world, the likes of which only I can see.”

Yet Vertov’s stroke of genius was to expose the entire arti­fice of film­mak­ing with­in the movie itself. In A Man with a Movie Cam­era, Ver­tov shoots footage of his cam­era­men shoot­ing footage. There’s a recur­ring shot of an eye star­ing through a lens. We see images from ear­li­er in the movie get­ting edit­ed into the film. This sort of cin­e­mat­ic self-reflex­iv­i­ty was decades ahead of its time, influ­enc­ing such future exper­i­men­tal film­mak­ers as Chris Mark­er, Stan Brakhage and espe­cial­ly Jean-Luc Godard who in 1968 formed a rad­i­cal film­mak­ing col­lec­tive called The Dzi­ga Ver­tov Group.

A Man with a Movie Cam­era is noth­ing short of exhil­a­rat­ing. Check it out above.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Novem­ber 2014.

Jonathan Crow is a writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Dzi­ga Vertov’s Sovi­et Toys: The First Sovi­et Ani­mat­ed Movie Ever (1924)

Eight Free Films by Dzi­ga Ver­tov, Cre­ator of Sovi­et Avant-Garde Doc­u­men­taries

Hear Dzi­ga Vertov’s Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Exper­i­ments in Sound: From His Radio Broad­casts to His First Sound Film

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Watch Alfred Hitchcock’s Groundbreaking, Six-Minute Trailer for Psycho (1960)

The ear­ly trail­er for Alfred Hitch­cock­’s Psy­cho above describes the film as “the pic­ture you MUST see from the begin­ning… or not at all!” That’s good advice, giv­en how ear­ly in the film its first big twist arrives. But it was also a pol­i­cy: “Every the­atre man­ag­er, every­where, has been instruct­ed to admit no one after the start of each per­for­mance of Psy­cho,” declares Hitch­cock him­self in its print adver­tise­ments. “We said no one — not even the man­ager’s broth­er, the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States or the Queen of Eng­land (God bless her).” Even in 1960, ordi­nary movie­go­ers still had the habit of enter­ing and leav­ing the the­ater when­ev­er they pleased. With Psy­cho’s mar­ket­ing cam­paign, Hitch­cock meant to alter their rela­tion­ship to cin­e­ma itself.

As for the trail­er’s form and con­tent, audi­ences would nev­er have seen any­thing like it before. Con­tain­ing no actu­al footage from the film — and indeed, con­sti­tut­ing some­thing of a short film itself — it instead offers a tour of its main loca­tions per­son­al­ly guid­ed by Hitch­cock. Those are, of course, the Bates Motel and its pro­pri­etor’s house, “which is, if I may say so, a lit­tle more sin­is­ter look­ing, less inno­cent-look­ing than the motel itself. And in this house, the most dire, hor­ri­ble events took place.”

In his telling, these build­ings are not film sets, but the gen­uine sites of heinous crimes, about which he proves only too hap­py to pro­vide sug­ges­tive details. We com­plain that today’s trail­ers “give the movie away,” and that seems to be Hitch­cock­’s enter­prise here.

But after these six min­utes, what, in a world that had yet to see Psy­cho, would you real­ly know about the movie? It would seem to involve some sort of gris­ly mur­ders, and you’d sure­ly be dying, as it were, to know of what sort and how gris­ly. Who, more­over, could fail to be star­tled and intrigued by Hitch­cock­’s sud­den reveal of a scream­ing blonde woman behind the motel-room show­er cur­tain? Hitch fans might have rec­og­nized her as Vera Miles, who’d been in The Wrong Man in 1956 and the first episode of Alfred Hitch­cock Presents the next year. They might also have noticed the name of no less a movie star than Janet Leigh, and won­dered what she was doing in such a sen­sa­tion­al­is­tic-look­ing genre pic­ture. One thing is cer­tain: when they final­ly did take their seat for Psy­cho — before show­time, of course — they had no idea what they were in for.

Relat­ed con­tent:

16 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online

Watch 25 Alfred Hitch­cock Trail­ers, Excit­ing Films in Their Own Right

Alfred Hitchcock’s Strict Rules for Watch­ing Psy­cho in The­aters (1960)

Who Cre­at­ed the Famous Show­er Scene in Psy­cho? Alfred Hitch­cock or the Leg­endary Design­er Saul Bass?

Hitch­cock (Antho­ny Hop­kins) Pitch­es Janet Leigh (Scar­lett Johans­son) on the Famous Show­er Scene

Alfred Hitchcock’s 7‑Minute Mas­ter Class on Film Edit­ing

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Watch the Only Time Charlie Chaplin & Buster Keaton Performed Together On-Screen (1952)

Char­lie Chap­lin and Buster Keaton were the two biggest com­e­dy stars of the silent era, but as it hap­pened, they nev­er shared the screen until well into the reign of sound. In fact, their col­lab­o­ra­tion did­n’t come about until 1952, the same year that Sin­gin’ in the Rain dra­ma­tized the already dis­tant-feel­ing advent of talk­ing pic­tures. That hit musi­cal deals with once-famous artists cop­ing with a chang­ing world, and so, in its own way, does Lime­light, the film that final­ly brought Chap­lin and Keaton togeth­er, deal­ing as it does with a washed-up music-hall star in the Lon­don of 1914.

A spe­cial­ist in down­trod­den pro­tag­o­nists, Chap­lin — who hap­pened to have made his own tran­si­tion from vaude­ville to motion pic­tures in 1914 — nat­u­ral­ly plays that star­ring role. Keaton appears only late in the film, as an old part­ner of Chap­lin’s char­ac­ter who takes the stage with him to per­form a duet at a ben­e­fit con­cert that promis­es the sal­va­tion of their careers. In real­i­ty, this scene had some of that same appeal for Keaton him­self, who had yet to recov­er finan­cial­ly or pro­fes­sion­al­ly after a ruinous divorce in the mid-nine­teen-thir­ties, and had been strug­gling for trac­tion on the new medi­um of tele­vi­sion.

Though Lime­light may be a sound film, and Chap­lin and Keaton’s scene may be a musi­cal num­ber, what they exe­cute togeth­er is, for all intents and pur­pos­es, a work of silent com­e­dy. Chap­lin plays the vio­lin and Keaton plays the piano, but before either of them can get a note out of their instru­ments, they must first deal with a series of tech­ni­cal mishaps and wardrobe mal­func­tions. This is in keep­ing with a theme both per­form­ers essayed over and over again in their silent hey­day: that of the human being made inept by the com­pli­ca­tions of an inhu­man world.

But of course, Chap­lin and Keaton’s char­ac­ters usu­al­ly found their ways to tri­umph at least tem­porar­i­ly over that world in the end, and so it comes to pass in Lime­light — moments before the hap­less vio­lin­ist him­self pass­es on, the vic­tim of an onstage heart attack. In the real world, both of these two icons from a bygone age had at least anoth­er act ahead of them, Chap­lin with more films to direct back in his native Eng­land and Europe, and Keaton as a kind of liv­ing leg­end for hire, called up when­ev­er Hol­ly­wood need­ed a shot of what had been redis­cov­ered — not least thanks to TV’s re-cir­cu­la­tion of old movies — as the mag­ic of silent pic­tures.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Char­lie Chap­lin & Buster Keaton Go Toe to Toe (Almost) in a Hilar­i­ous Box­ing Scene Mash Up from Their Clas­sic Silent Films

Dis­cov­er the Cin­e­mat­ic & Comedic Genius of Char­lie Chap­lin with 60+ Free Movies Online

A Super­cut of Buster Keaton’s Most Amaz­ing Stunts

When Char­lie Chap­lin First Spoke Onscreen: How His Famous Great Dic­ta­tor Speech Came About

30 Buster Keaton Films: “The Great­est of All Com­ic Actors,” “One of the Great­est Film­mak­ers of All Time”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

When Charlie Chaplin First Spoke Onscreen: How His Famous Great Dictator Speech Came About

Char­lie Chap­lin came up in vaude­ville, but it was silent film that made him the most famous man in the world. His mas­tery of that form primed him to feel a degree of skep­ti­cism about sound when it came along: in 1931, he called the silent pic­ture “a uni­ver­sal means of expres­sion,” where­as the talkies, as they were then known, “nec­es­sar­i­ly have a lim­it­ed field.” Nev­er­the­less, he was too astute a read­er of pub­lic tastes to believe he could stay silent for­ev­er, though he only began to speak onscreen on his own terms — lit­er­al­ly, in the case of Mod­ern Times. In that cel­e­brat­ed film, his icon­ic char­ac­ter the Tramp sings a song, but does so in an unin­tel­li­gi­ble hash of cod French and Ital­ian, and yet still some­how gets his mean­ing across, just as he had in all his silent movies before.

That scene appears in the Cin­e­maS­tix video essay above on “the moment the most famous silent come­di­an opens his mouth,” which comes not in Mod­ern Times but The Great Dic­ta­tor, Chap­lin’s 1940 send-up of the then-ascen­dant Adolf Hitler. In it, Chap­lin plays two roles: the nar­row-mus­ta­chioed Hitler par­o­dy Ade­noid Hynkel who “speaks” in a tonal­ly and rhyth­mi­cal­ly con­vinc­ing ersatz Ger­man, and a Tramp-like Jew­ish Bar­ber interned by Hynkel’s regime whose only lines come at the film’s very end.

Dressed as the dic­ta­tor in order to escape the camp, the Bar­ber sud­den­ly finds him­self giv­ing a speech at a vic­to­ry parade. When he speaks, he famous­ly does so in Chap­lin’s nat­ur­al voice, express­ing sen­ti­ments that sound like Chap­lin’s own: inveigh­ing against “machine men with machine minds,” mak­ing a plea for lib­er­ty, broth­er­hood, and good­will toward men.

Though it may have been Chap­lin’s biggest box-office hit, The Great Dic­ta­tor isn’t his most crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed pic­ture. When it was made, the Unit­ed States had yet to enter the war, and the full nature of what the Nazis were doing in Europe had­n’t yet come to light. This film’s rela­tion­ship with actu­al his­tor­i­cal events thus feels uneasy, as if Chap­lin him­self was­n’t sure how light or heavy a tone to strike. Even his cli­mac­tic speech was only cre­at­ed as a replace­ment for an intend­ed final dance sequence, though he did work at it, writ­ing and revis­ing over a peri­od of months. It’s more than a lit­tle iron­ic that The Great Dic­ta­tor is main­ly remem­bered for a scene in which a com­ic genius to whom words were noth­ing as against image and move­ment for­goes all the tech­niques that made him a star — and indeed, for­goes com­e­dy itself.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Char­lie Chaplin’s Final Speech in The Great Dic­ta­tor: A State­ment Against Greed, Hate, Intol­er­ance & Fas­cism (1940)

Char­lie Chap­lin Finds Com­e­dy Even in the Bru­tal­i­ty of WWI: A Scene from Shoul­der Arms (1918)

The Char­lie Chap­lin Archive Opens, Putting Online 30,000 Pho­tos & Doc­u­ments from the Life of the Icon­ic Film Star

How Char­lie Chap­lin Used Ground­break­ing Visu­al Effects to Shoot the Death-Defy­ing Roller Skate Scene in Mod­ern Times (1936)

Char­lie Chap­lin & Buster Keaton Go Toe to Toe (Almost) in a Hilar­i­ous Box­ing Scene Mash Up from Their Clas­sic Silent Films

Dis­cov­er the Cin­e­mat­ic & Comedic Genius of Char­lie Chap­lin with 60+ Free Movies Online

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Watch the Sci-Fi Short Film “I’m Not a Robot”: Winner of a 2025 Academy Award

Vic­to­ria Warmer­dam, the writer and direc­tor of the short film, “I’m Not a Robot,” sum­ma­rizes the plot of her 22-minute film as fol­lows: The film “tells the sto­ry of Lara, a music pro­duc­er who spi­rals into an exis­ten­tial cri­sis after repeat­ed­ly fail­ing a CAPTCHA test—leading her to ques­tion whether she might actu­al­ly be a robot. Through a dark comedic lens, [the film] explores themes of iden­ti­ty, self-deter­mi­na­tion, love, and tech­nol­o­gy in a world where the line between human­i­ty and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence is becom­ing increas­ing­ly blurred.” This past week­end, “I’m Not a Robot” won the Oscar for Best Live Action Short, mark­ing the first time a Dutch short film received this hon­or. Dis­trib­uted by The New York­er, “I’m Not a Robot” can be viewed free online. We’re adding it to our col­lec­tion of 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Glass: The Oscar-Win­ning “Per­fect Short Doc­u­men­tary” on Dutch Glass­mak­ing (1958)

The Clas­sic 1956 Oscar-Win­ning Children’s Film, The Red Bal­loon

Watch This Year’s Oscar-Win­ning Short The Neighbor’s Win­dow, a Sur­pris­ing Tale of Urban Voyeurism

Watch 66 Oscar-Nom­i­nat­ed-and-Award-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Shorts Online, Cour­tesy of the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

More in this category... »
Quantcast