Orwell, of course, was the main inspiration for Apple’s “1984” Super Bowl ad by Ridley Scott, but it also riffed on Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, which is perhaps more influential from a visual perspective than any other work of art ever. Sure, Lang’s plot was overheated, but, my god, those images. You can’t truly be literate about media without having seen it.
The Apple spot “went viral” thirty years ago, even though it was shown only once, and there was yet no infrastructure for it to be propelled by person to person. What careered around the world wasn’t the actual spot but verbal descriptions of it. It was the collision of a new thing (computers) and an old thing (oral history). And soon enough, the centralized media was smashed, though that didn’t make the world perfect. Tyranny doesn’t disappear; it just attempts to reinvent itself.
Steve Jobs introduces the commercial at the 1984 Apple keynote.
World War II ended in 1945, but the battle waged on for Jean-Luc Godard, who saw the Allied victory affording America with the opportunity for post-war cultural imperialism. That dynamic courses beneath the surface of Godard’s Contempt, a bitter but ingenious CinemaScope drama that ranks as one of the very best films from Godard’s amazing string of masterpieces during the 1960s.
An adaptation of Ghosts at Noon, Alberto Moravia’s novel of matrimonial discord, Contempt takes place on the set of a tortured film production in Italy. Fritz Lang, playing a version of himself, has been hired to make a big-screen adaptation of the Odyssey by Jeremy Prokosch (Jack Palance), a crass, uncultured vulgarian with a god complex. Disatisfied with the art film that Lang has turned in, Prokosch summons playwright Paul Javal (Michel Piccoli) for rewrites to Cinecittà Studios, the once-vibrant center of Italian cinema that is now little more than a soundstage ghost town. Paul brings with him his gorgeous wife Camille (Brigitte Bardot), and it’s immediately clear that the producer has designs on his new employee’s wife.
Despite Prokosch’s wolfish reputation, Paul leaves his wife alone with his boss for an extended spell. And in that period, the marriage is permanently wounded. It’s never clear what’s happened between the producer and Camille during their time together, but she turns cold to Paul afterwards. When her husband repeats the same irresponsible (opportunistic?) act again, there’s no chance for reconciliation. Not knowing Paul’s intentions or what has actually occurred between Prokosch and Camille turns the film into a painful frustration dream. It does more than hurt–it also haunts.
But no matter how painful the marriage coming undone is, it isn’t the greatest loss to the director. He is more concerned with cultural loss, what he sees as the domination of the world film industry by the U.S., which was mirrored by Godard’s own battles with American producer Joseph Levine, who wanted his director to get Bardot to bare as much of her heavenly body as possible to ensure big box office.
When Prokosch is warned in one scene that it will be difficult to bend Lang’s will to his own, since, after all, the director defied Goebbels in 1943, he spits back: “This isn’t 1943. It’s 1963. And he’ll direct what he’s told.” And instantly one troubled film production is transformed into a metaphor for an international power struggle.•
In 1972, iconic director Fritz Lang was interviewed by two reporters, Lloyd Chesley and Michael Gould, and confided in them that he had tired of directing movies by the advent of talkies; he wanted to recreate himself as a chemist. A truly disreputable money man dragged him back into the business and gave him the creative freedom to make the chilling classic, M. An excerpt from the interview:
“Michael Gould: Your themes changed from epic to intimate when you began making sound films.
Fritz Lang: I got tired from the big films. I didn’t want to make films anymore. I wanted to become a chemist. About this time an independent man—not of very good reputation—wanted me to make a film and I said ‘No, I don’t want to make films anymore.’ And he came and came and came, and finally I said ‘Look, I will make a film, but you will have nothing to say for it. You don’t know what it will be, you have no right to cut it, you only can give the money.’ He said ‘Fine, understood.’ And so I made M.
We started to write the script and I talked with my wife, Thea von Harbou, and I said ‘What is the most insidious crime?’ We came to the fact of anonymous poison letters. And then one day I said I had another idea—long before this mass murderer, [Peter] Kurten, in the Rhineland. And if I wouldn’t have the agreement for no one to tell me anything, I would never, never have made M. Nobody knew Peter Lorre.”
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