Research/Quotes on Modern Times & Metropolis

Modern Times
Ebert on Modern Times:

1. His name is enshrined among the greatest geniuses of film; the French have a movie magazine titled simply Charlie, and Vachel Lindsay said a long time ago, "The cinema IS Chaplin."

2. "Modern Times" was Charlie's first film after five years of hibernation in the 1930s. He didn't much like talkies, and despite the introduction of sound in 1927, his "City Lights" (1931) was defiantly silent.

3. With "Modern Times," a fable about (among other things) automation, assembly lines and the enslaving of man by machines, he hit upon an effective way to introduce sound without disturbing his comedy of pantomime: The voices in the movie are channeled through other media.

Wiki on Modern Times:
4. Modern Times was deemed "culturally significant" by the Library of Congress in 1989, and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Industry

Metropolis
Ebert on Modern Times:

1. The movie has a plot that defies common sense, but its very discontinuity is a strength. It makes "Metropolis" hallucinatory--a nightmare without the reassurance of a steadying story line. Few films have ever been more visually exhilarating.

2. Generally considered the first great science-fiction film, "Metropolis'' (1926) fixed for the rest of the century the image of a futuristic city as a hell of scientific progress and human despair.

3. From this film, in various ways, descended not only "Dark City'' but "Blade Runner,'' "The Fifth Element,'' "Alphaville,'' "Escape From L.A.,'' "Gattaca,'' and Batman's Gotham City.

4. What many of these movies have in common is a loner hero who discovers the inner workings of the future society, penetrating the system that would control the population. Even Batman's villains are the descendants of Rotwang, giggling as they pull the levels that will enforce their will. The buried message is powerful: Science and industry will become the weapons of demagogues.

5. Lang filmed for nearly a year, driven by obsession, often cruel to his colleagues, a perfectionist madman, and the result is one of those seminal films without which the others cannot be fully appreciated.

6. "Metropolis'' does what many great films do, creating a time, place and characters so striking that they become part of our arsenal of images for imagining the world.