Professor David Peimer
Fritz Lang: Metropolis
Summary
Professor David Peimer discusses a few key films from director Fritz Lang, widely considered to be one of the most influential filmmakers of all time. He takes a close look at “Metropolos” (1927), “M” (1931) and “Dr. Mabuse” (1922), interweaving a conversation about his work with the details of his life and the history of his time and obsessions.
Professor David Peimer
David Peimer is a professor of theatre and performance studies in the UK. He has taught at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and New York University (Global Division), and was a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University. Born in South Africa, David has won numerous awards for playwriting and directing. He has written eleven plays and directed forty in places like South Africa, New York, Brussels, London, Berlin, Zulu Kingdom, Athens, and more. His writing has been published widely and he is the editor of Armed Response: Plays from South Africa (2009) and the interactive digital book Theatre in the Camps (2012). He is on the board of the Pinter Centre in London.
Well in the early days in the 20s, it was German industrialist, financiers, film producers, you know. There was money that he found from various sources. I think there was some American money as well, ‘cause we got to see it again in that context of this explosion of technology of aircraft, submarines, you know, ships, cars, film going with it. So investors and people, you know, all these things on you. A bit like maybe, you know, some of the digital technology today can go in many directions, which will take over, which won’t. So I think there was money from quite a few sources.
It was mostly set in a studio. It cost about 20 million euros in today’s money, which was a hell of a lot then at a cost of thousands. And you had these fantastical sets built. I mean they’re small but they’re built. So you know, a camera can film and you can show like a massive skyscraper but actually, it’s almost like a Lego set or toy set. But you know, you get the image of that and little aeroplanes and all that. So you use minutia to create the illusion of bigness. And the same with the science, you know, the experiments. But he was the first to do all of this. Now it’s become almost filmic cliche, you know. It’s visual cliche to do this, but he was the first to put it all together. And he honestly acknowledges that he worked equally with his cinematographer, you know, who had the visual and you know, how they pulled it together. And when he said in this time it was just the two of them. Nowadays you’ve got huge special effects departments, you know, of the studios.
It’s never been proven. I can’t find final proof of what actually happened.