I watched Metropolis and Amadeus a couple weeks ago. Both were very interesting movies but I had different experiences with each. Let me talk about Metropolis first.
Metropolis is a German silent film made in 1927, and by now the story is a fairly familiar tale. In the future, there is a great city. It is beautiful and rich. The city is run by a man named Jo Frederman, and he is primarily concerned with keeping the economy running. The economy, of course, is run on the backs of ignorant laborers who work machines all day and barely survive their lives of numbing drudgery. The wealthy men live above ground in tall buildings and big apartments, and their sons live lives of leisure playing games at the coliseum, dancing in the pleasure district, and frolicking in the Eternal Garden.
The laborers live below ground in cramped and bland tenements. They operate huge dangerous machines by day, but spend their nights listening to woman preach about the coming mediator who will lift up out their drudgery. The woman, Maria, takes a group of children above ground one day and meets Freder Frederson, the son of Jo Frederson. Freder falls for Maria at first sight and decides to seek her out below ground. He sees and experiences the lives of the working men, hijinks ensue, and turns out he's the mediator they've been waiting for.
"Hijinks ensue" is pretty much like "yada, yada, yada" in the sense that it covers a lot of ground.
Nonetheless, the movie was fun. What is really impressive about it is the special effects, which look good even today. Specifically, several parts of the film were shot using a mirror technique that allowed the filmmakers to combine live action and full sized sets with matte paintings and miniatures. The matte paintings are not particularly unusual, but the miniatures are very cool. The coliseum where the sons of the rich play games and the underground tenements of the laborers look very real. Not too shabby for an 81 year old film.
Now on to Amadeus. Amadeus won Best Picture in 1984 and F. Murray Abraham won best actor for his portrayal of Antonio Salieri. Essentially, it is a picture about rivalry and envy, and how you can hate what you love. Much of the story is fictional, but it is based on a long history of stories that draw a rivalry between Salieri and Mozart. It begins with Salieri in his dotage confessing to killing Mozart, and most of the film operates as a flashback wherein Salieri relates the story to a priest who has come to hear his last confession.
Salieri is a few years older than Mozart, and eventually becomes court composer for the Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Salieri spends his life in devotion to music. He is chaste and respectful and humble. He admires Mozart even before he meets him, and more importantly, he loves Mozart's music. The problem is that he meets Mozart, a childish and lecherous drunk. Mozart's facility with music is, as we all know, extraordinary and far surpasses Salieri's, and more over, he produces such beautiful compositions without hardly trying.
Various bits of rivalry occur. Salieri blocks Mozart from getting a job in the Emperor's court; Mozart embarrasses and mocks Salieri at various points. But eventually, Salieri sets on his plan to kill Mozart: He anonymously commissions a requiem, a death mass, from Mozart, and plans upon it's completion to kill Mozart and play it at his funeral, passing the work off as his own. He'll steal Mozart's work and kill him, and the music will restore his reputation.
Of course, it doesn't quite go off as intended. Instead, Mozart continues to work on other things, operas and symphonies, without finishing the requiem. When Mozart falls ill while conducting an opera, Salieri takes him home to rest. But instead of rest, he uses the chance to help Mozart finish the requiem and they spend the night working furiously. In the morning, Mozart is found dead. Salieri has killed Mozart by forcing him to work, but that was not his intention--Salieri was in love with Mozart's genius and basked in it even as he was killing him.
Famously, at the end of the movie with the tale complete, Salieri declares, "I speak for all mediocrities in the world. I am their champion. I am their patron saint!" The themes are really striking in that way, and the movie is rather enjoyable. It is obvious why it won Best Picture--it is a large production and a period piece. It focuses on famous men in old European cities--it allows Hollywood to do its thing to the fullest extent.
I made an interestingly little mistake when I watched the movie, however. It was one of the older double sided DVDs. Before dual layer DVDs existed, they would occasionally imprint half the movie on one side of the disc and half on the other sort of like a record. I wasn't paying attention when I put it in and so I started in the middle. Eventually, I decided it wasn't right, but only after watching about an hour of the movie.
The odd thing was that I really liked it. The second side starts with the scene where Salieri dresses up in a rather mysterious mask and goes to Mozart's apartment to commission the requiem. Since that is the major plot point in the movie, the second half works as a film in itself, and it's not the same film. Watching the second half alone, you have to work a little more to bring yourself up to speed in understanding the plot. Without the back story established in the first half of the movie, the narrative is much more spartan and intense.
An unusual mistake, but definitely an experience.
