Artists can absorb influences so deeply, it can be renewing — if not startling — when we discover traces of them in our later, “mature” work. By traces, I don’t mean George Harrison-style cryptomnesia when you suddenly have to lawyer-up thanks to a couple of misappropriated “doo langs.” No, I mean the subtle nods or oblique homages to the works that inspired us and the whose who made it. We may have forgotten some of these instances of inspiration then trip over like psychic land mines when looking over one’s own oeuvre.
I credit my newfound awareness of this potentiality to Anthony Burgess, whose previously unpublished essay, A Movie That Changed My Life by Anthony Burgess, recently appeared in the Guardian. It got me thinking about the quiet DNA of influence. Spoiler alert — for Burgess, it was Fritz Lang’s expressionistic and dystopian Metropolis that prefigured ideas that later became the author’s A Clockwork Orange and a quasi-sequel to an Orwell classic cheekily titled 1985. The essay brought to mind my own transformative relationship with the expressionistic genius of Fritz Lang.
The first images of Metropolis I laid eyes on were in what I’m assuming was 1979’s The Art of Star Wars by Carol Titleman, which I poured over as a seven-year-old. There was a poster-worthy image of Metropolis‘
I wouldn’t see the film until five years later when it came to the Plaza Theatre in Petaluma, California. The Plaza was a revival house in the heart of town, responsible for birthing many a local cineaste (and the inspiration for the Lumiere in The Late Projectionist). But this was 1984, so the version of the film making the rounds wasn’t the original silent, black and white, Fritz Lang original but rather a sort of extended found-footage, color-tinted, music video version tailor-made for the MTV generation.
We can thank or blame Giorgio Moroder for this particular cut.
For context, Moroder is “the founder of disco and an electronic music trailblazer” (according to his bio). An Italian-born producer and film composer, Moroder is responsible for scores for films including Scarface and Midnight Express, and soundtrack singles like Top Gun‘s “Take My Breath Away” and Blondie’s “Call Me” in American Gigolo. This is just conjecture but it seems Moroder had the notion to build a soundtrack and needed a movie upon which to pin it. In fact, Moroder outbid David Bowie for the rights for Metropolis (we can cry about that later). He then reduced the film’s running time (or butchered depending on your sense of authorial sanctity) and added this New Wave-ish soundtrack:
Admittedly, I remember being quite taken by Bonnie Tyler’s “Here She Comes,” with all its chordal echoes of Tommy James and the Shondells’ “Crimson and Clover” and heavy rotation on MTV as a video culled from Moroder’s cut.
So, yeah, I didn’t (at least first) see the version of Metropolis that so inspired Burgess but I was inspired nonetheless. Perhaps the dilution of the film’s potency has resulted in the comparatively weaker sauce that is my own oeuvre. But, hey, Tony’s dead, so I have time to catch up. You do too — you can start with Moroder’s edition on YouTube:
Film is a visual medium, and, if the task of literature is to stud the brain with quotations, cinema’s job is to cram it with images which transcend storyline and feed the need for myth. — Anthony Burgess
Consider it fed, Mr. Burgess.
