Yup, it was just released on DVD, although Whit Stillman's previous effort, Metropolitan, is still confined to the VHS aisle. A sample of the well-written dialog follows:
Fred and Ted, cousins, are walking down a sidestreet in Barcelona.
Fred: One of the things that keeps cropping up when I read is this thing about subtext. Plays, novels, songs - they all have a subtext, which I take to mean a hidden message or import of some kind. So subtext we know. But what do you call the message or meaning that's right there on the surface, completely open and obvious? They never talk about that. What do you call what's above the subtext?
Ted: The text.
(Awkward pause)
Fred: Okay, that's right. But they never talk about that.
Fred and Ted walk off camera.
You've gotta love the way these two characters talk, especially Ted, who is essentially still a college kid trying to find some order and intellectualism in the land of heavy industrial equipment sales while wandering around in a strange land. And the whole bit about anti-Americanism in Spain supposedly hits the nail on the head, according to my coworkers at HP's Barcelona campus.
I've found the myriad DVD versions of Metropolis all but unwatchable, but the recently restored and reconstructed edition currently making the arthouse rounds is one of the most engrossing experiences I've had in a movie theatre since, well, I can't remember (perhaps seeing The Spiral Staircase with my folks at the Paramount when I was about 10?). With several minutes of previously lost footage added and the original soundtrack available for the first time since its 1927 premiere, the whole thing coheres so magnificiently as to make previous versions seem like almost a completely different (and inferior) movie.
I think the biggest improvement is in the score, which now actually matches what's onscreen (as opposed to my DVD version that merely sequences Mendelssohn's 4th symphony, Ravel's String Quartet, and other works in absurd disregard to the visuals). It's a rich, lush Romantic affair in the Korngold and Max Steiner vein, the sort of thing you'd hear on an early 1940's Warners picture (The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, or The Big Sleep) or on KMFA's Friday evening "Filmscore" program.
What?! You don't tune into "Filmscore" from 10 to 11 Friday night? For Christsake, check it out! Give it a try for spicing up those stay-in lovemaking marathons and just see how well the Ben-Hur movie music accompanies the entire catalog of bedroom sports.
And try and catch this version of Metropolis at your local Landmark Cinema while you can. You'll be amazed at how immediate a movie from 1927 can feel and how it manages to hold the entire audience in the palm of its hand for over 2 hours with no dialog. The movie theatre was about half full and amazingly silent from the moment the opening credits rolled to the last frame. And when you leave and drive home afterwards, you somehow feel that mankind will always find the true and right path as long as serious art is around to show the way.
