Metropolis, interfered

Local music group rescores classic film

William O’Donnell, staff

Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, from 1927, is a classic that needs no formal reviewing here. What I covered was the one-night-only, live score added to this film by keyboard savvy three-piece, Random Interference, at Cinematheque at the very end of November.

The audience walked into the theatre to video samples of experimental and unusual musicians from the ’50s through the ’70s. This could be considered a treat or a torture, depending on which audience member you were. I was privy to a small few audience members who vocally protested the clips with proclamations of “I’ve never seen such crap” and so forth. Thankfully, these sorts of comments were reserved only for the openers and not for the show. After an animated short by Random Interference member, Murray Toews, the movie got underway.

The first synthesizer sound rose up before the film even started, and the sounds never left until long after the film ended, when the house lights came back up. The lack of silence was an interesting choice, for it seemed to suggest that the action and movement never ceases in the film. While this is somewhat true, it certainly fluctuates and the constant music sometimes became a distraction.

It wasn’t actually the consistency that got to me, rather their scoring sounded overly ambient or discordant during calmer exposition portions of the film; I was very distracted. The trick, for me, was finding moments when I did not think about the music at all. During the first half, I noticed the music too much. Plus, I found Cinematheque to be particularly cold that evening. During the second half of the film, I put on my coat and focused more on the film; both helped.

Eerie synth sounds, random drum beats, and even the occasional funeral chord on a (synthesized) organ matched both the tense and frantic portions of the film quite well. The sometimes odd, electronic beats married well to the expressionist rhythm of the underground worker characters’ duties as well as the wild eyed chases before and during the climax.

The machine-man character of this film is often the avatar for the film’s advertisements and the most memorable character of the film. Once this character is disguised as Maria, an underground religious leader in the film, her movements become sharper and have a sexualized resemblance to that of a snake.

I bring up this character because her presence and actions were ripe for unique music, but overlapping became too much from scene to scene and particular points never became highlighted enough. Modern electronica could have mixed well with the rising action of the workers, led by machine-Maria, but the timing was off and, instead, found itself juxtaposed against scenes of discussion or silent turmoil in the characters.

So far, this has been more criticism than credit. Metropolis, being a science-fiction vision of the future, seems to attract typical sci-fi music (namely, electronic sounds and beats). The biggest trouble the musicians had were points where the music and film did not completely merge, or simply sounded too typical. By typical I mean using laser-like sounds effects or other sounds straight out of The Outer Limits. This might be the curse of electronic instruments as your only arsenal.

On the flipside, the three musicians made certain moments shine, such as when a continuous piano riff played out during a portion of the second act, while all the other sounds changed around it; this was a great metaphor for how the aim of the film’s heroes remained steadied, despite all that was familiar around them, altered or destroyed in grand ways.

All in all, this was a unique event that I shall remember and hope to see more of (the group did hint at possibly doing more). I assure you the experience was a good one, but my nit-picking wishes it were a touch more polished, for Metropolis deserves it. Kudos to Random Interference for taking on something this risky and ambitious (at least to the eyes of a film student).