Fritz Lang's European films inspired some of the most highly acclaimed Expressionist posters in the 1920s; now, Metropolis has inspired a new poster by Bay Area artist David Goines, on display and available for purchase through the PFA business office. To commemorate this new poster, we are screening a 35mm print of Lang's futuristic masterpiece (on its release, the most costly European production ever), which depicts the effects of technological society on the workers in the year 2000. Luis Buñuel described the visual Metropolis as “a glorious symphony of movement...the rhythmic progression of wheels, of pistons, of hitherto unimagined mechanical shapes” (while lamenting the banality of its apocalyptic story), and Richard Combs, writing in Monthly Film Bulletin, concurs: “Metropolis...has has survived mainly on the novelty of its special effects and Lang's dynamic counterpoint of a monumental, architectural geometry with a crazed, pathetic ballet of mechanised ant-man in revolt against his Utopian overlords.... (T)he film's visuals acquire a splendid, abstract poetry of their own....”

(See Monarch at 9:45 PM)