The greatest scifi silent epic ever made, and possibly the first ever scifi moition picture, is a surreal telling...The story begins in an alternate dystopia set in a world where a mega company has taken over the world and at the head is an indifferent protagonist, who to his workers is a tyrant. His literal ivory tower is Babel, the headstone of the city, and the odd biblical images indicate that like the ancient Babel's tower, this one too will fall. The workers below are doing weird and mundane tasks like setting giant clocks and operating giant steam and vacuum tube machines.
When the son of the head of the city decides to trade places with one of the workers, his father protests to his defection and sends a man after him. Then later the father visits his mad scientist friend who has created a robot female machine and they plot to use the robot against a worker's revolt movement.
The son discovers and falls for the revolt leader, a charismatic free thinking flapper girl (because it was 1927) who is later kidnapped by the evil scientist and her 'essence' is used to imprint her body type and face onto the machine female, top use it against the workers. So much of this story and its ideas are intertwined into scifi since that some of it is cliché, like the android double, the workers revolt against the upper class, the dystopian fall, and the like.
Even the robot resembles C3PO from 50 years star in Star Wars. What's funny though is with the restored ending, the bleak baroque interplay of Ghost in the Shell type endings, (the hero gets it because it's destiny) is actually not really how it ended! Here the Germans have been blamed for sad endings all these years.
The restored bit has the hero lady escape before the mob kills the robot, but in the cut version she just isn't there anymore! Father and Son unite and all is well, and he learns to rebuild. But with the restored bits it looks like the girl actually does make it out and so do the children. So no wonder the original version was so messed up!
Review by Adam Browne
When the son of the head of the city decides to trade places with one of the workers, his father protests to his defection and sends a man after him. Then later the father visits his mad scientist friend who has created a robot female machine and they plot to use the robot against a worker's revolt movement.
The son discovers and falls for the revolt leader, a charismatic free thinking flapper girl (because it was 1927) who is later kidnapped by the evil scientist and her 'essence' is used to imprint her body type and face onto the machine female, top use it against the workers. So much of this story and its ideas are intertwined into scifi since that some of it is cliché, like the android double, the workers revolt against the upper class, the dystopian fall, and the like.
Even the robot resembles C3PO from 50 years star in Star Wars. What's funny though is with the restored ending, the bleak baroque interplay of Ghost in the Shell type endings, (the hero gets it because it's destiny) is actually not really how it ended! Here the Germans have been blamed for sad endings all these years.
The restored bit has the hero lady escape before the mob kills the robot, but in the cut version she just isn't there anymore! Father and Son unite and all is well, and he learns to rebuild. But with the restored bits it looks like the girl actually does make it out and so do the children. So no wonder the original version was so messed up!
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