As part of a new series, one of our writers finally catches up with the cinematic classic they’ve somehow missed.
Today, Stuart Jeffries watches Fritz Lang’s pioneering sci-fi epicIt’s Freddie Mercury’s fault.
When he and his lavishly coiffed backing band released Radio Gaga in 1984, the video used footage from the 1927 German expressionist film, Metropolis.
Superimposed over Fritz Lang’s visionary cityscape were the foursome in a flying car.
Later in the video, they performed a gig before the film’s downtrodden masses.
Not many cinematic classics could survive such brutal repurposing.
For me, Lang’s film got tainted by association with Queen’s song – one that, ironically enough, became part of the very radio blah it ostensibly indicted.I’ve always loved the films noirs the German emigré made in Hollywood after the war: The Blue Gardenia, While the City Sleeps, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt.
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