Spies

MOVIE #1,871 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 08.02.24 FRITZ LANG: DIRECTOR FOCUS This was always destined for (relative) obscurity coming on the heels of Metropolis, but there's some wonderful shots. The plot is a little dry and its field of characters is a bit too crowded, but it's a solid, very different follow-up. Still, it’s hard to compare or stack up anything next to Metropolis. I’ve been getting a little tired of what sounds like stock musical accompaniment on these silent films so I’ve been experimenting with adding different soundtracks. I randomly landed on the Nine Inch Nails’ record Ghosts VI: Locusts, the most recent NIN studio effort (I’ve actually never sank my teeth into any of their albums since 2007’s With Teeth). And let me tell you: it worked perfectly as the background for silent cinema.

There were even several Darkside/Oz-esque moments of serendipity (like the track “When It Happens” gelled amazingly with a sequence of a scared victim on the street, and a character started to use a phone during the dial tone sound FX on “Another Crashed Car”). I should also note that I watched this on 2x speed if you’re trying at home (please don’t judge me).

My favorite visual element was the digital overlays / repetition of the number 33133…

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CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ MOVIE #1,870 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,872 ⫸

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Spione [ˈʃpi̯oːnə] (English title: Spies, under which title it was released in the United States) is a 1928 German silent espionage thriller directed by Fritz Lang and co-written with his wife, Thea von Harbou, who also wrote a novel of the same name, published a year later. The film was Lang's penultimate silent film and the first for his own production company; Fritz Lang-Film GmbH. As in Lang's Mabuse films, Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler (1922) and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933), Rudolf Klein-Rogge plays a master criminal aiming for world domination. It was released on March 28, 1928.