European Epic Films of the Late 1920s

Lang’s Metropolis, Gance’s Napoleon, Eisenstein’s October

Oct 24, 2008

The 1920s has often been called the Golden Age of Silent Movies. These three examples from Europe show why this is true.

Although these films by Fritz Lang, Abel Gance, and Sergei Eisenstein were never “lost,” for many years viewers could only see them with large portions missing. Now through the efforts of film historians and restorers, they have been, or may soon be, restored to near their original forms.

Metropolis, a story of class struggle with religious overtones, takes place in 2026 when society has been divided into “thinkers and owners,” who live high above the city, and “laborers,” who live in its bowels, and whose raison d’etre is to carry out the work of the former. Introduced into this setting are a young man (Freder) from the upper class and a young woman (Maria) from the lower who seek to reconcile the class differences. A mad scientist (Rotwang) tries to thwart their plans by creating an android who looks like Maria.

The film is filled with many excellent images such as the featureless, robot-like workers going to and from work. Its later influences can be seen in such movies as diverse as Frankenstein (the science labs look the same), Dr. Strangelove (director Stanley Kubrick, himself, stated that Strangelove was patterned after Rotwang), Blade Runner, Brazil, and Minority Report.

For over eighty years, 25% of Metropolis was missing, thus leaving some story lines incomplete and modern viewers confused. Attempts to fill in the missing sections by use of inter-titles and still production photos helped but were not completely satisfying. This problem has now been apparently resolved. In July 2008, a full length print of the film was discovered in Argentina.

This movie is now considered to be one of the greatest films of all time. In his telling of Napoleon’s life from his youth to the conquest of Italy, director Abel Gance created a visual masterpiece using montage, rapid editing, effective tinting, hand-held cameras, super impositions, and split screen photography that used three projectors.

Among the most memorable scenes in a movie filled with them are a snowball fight where the young future emperor shows his military skills, a storm at sea, and the lengthy conclusion. In the latter, Gance used a three panel technique called a triptych. The separate scenes shown in each panel gradually morph into an eagle, soldiers in battle, and the face of Napoleon, with the whole screen turning into the red, white, and blue French tricolor.

Originally meant to be the first part of a trilogy, Napoleon was a box office flop at the time, due in large part because most distributors, shocked at the film’s six hour length, demanded that it be severely shortened. This mutilated the film to such an extent that it was incoherent to viewers. Prints remained this way, until the late 1970s when British film historian Kevin Brownlow began working to piece together much of Gance’s original work, a project which is still going on today.

Sergei Eisenstein’s October (Oktyabr - Soviet Union - 1928)

Eisenstein followed up his 1925 success with Battleship Potemkin (Bronenosets Potemkin) with this semi-documentary epic of the 1917 Russian revolutions, commencing with the overthrow of the Czar in February of that year, through the rise and fall of the provisional government, led by Alexander Kerensky and culminating with the Communist takeover in October.

Commissioned as a propaganda piece celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Communist government, the film is filled with Eisenstein’s trademarks -- frequent montages, unusual camera angles, exaggerated characters, and large crowds. The concluding scenes in Petrograd include the memorable sequence of a white horse dangling from a drawbridge.

Ironically, October was not well received by Stalin who had begun a purge of other party members. As a result, Eisenstein was forced to re-edit it, removing many “heroic” characters who by 1928 were considered enemies of the state. This truncated version was restored in 1967.

The copyright of the article European Epic Films of the Late 1920s in European Films is owned by John K. Davis. Permission to republish European Epic Films of the Late 1920s in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.