Fritz Lang ... film maker of dark and celebrated movies ..... today on the wireless

Now I only discovered the film Metropolis in my 30s, by which it was already half a century old, and it is one I still go back too.

Maria from Metropolis

As for the man who made it , I knew little, other than that he was Austrian, fled Nazi Germany and made a heap of superb films both in Germany and the USA.

All of which is an introduction to today's In Our Time on Radio 4.

"Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Austrian-born film director Fritz Lang (1890-1976), who was one of the most celebrated film-makers of the 20th century. 

He worked first in Weimar Germany, creating a range of films including the startling and subversive Mabuse the Gambler and the iconic but ruinously expensive Metropolis before arguably his masterpiece, M, with both the police and the underworld hunting for a child killer in Berlin, his first film with sound. 

The rise of the Nazis prompted Lang's move to Hollywood where he developed some of his Weimar themes in memorable and disturbing films such as Fury and The Big Heat.

With Stella Bruzzi, Professor of Film and Dean of Arts and Humanities at University College London, Joe McElhaney, Professor of Film Studies at Hunter College, City University of New York, and Iris Luppa, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies in the Division of Film and Media at London South Bank University.

Producer: Simon Tillotson"

Picture; Replica of the character Maria from Metropolis. This image is freely available under the Creative Commons,  Attribution-ShareAlike license, Date 8 March 2011, Source Maria from the film Metropolis, on display at the Robot Hall of Fame, Author Jiuguang Wang from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States

*Fritz Lang, https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0012s94

Bringing the monsters to life on the big screen ...... for the next three weeks on the wireless

Now if you are of a certain age you will remember those slightly clunky monsters which bestrode cinema epics like The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Jason and the Argonauts and countless other films from B movies in the 1950s right the way through to the blockbusters over the the next thirty years.

They were the work of Ray Harryhausen, and while they look amateurish and clumsy by today's standards of film animation they were magic to a nine year old sitting in the cheap seats at the ABC Regal on the Old Kent Road.  

And almost a decade on could still fascinate me as a "sophisticated teenager" on the back row on a Saturday night in the Well Hall Odeon.*

All of which is a round about introduction to A Long, Long Time Ago...Unreal: The VFX Revolution on the wireless.

The first episode was broadcast earlier today, and while I missed it, I will be calling it up later.

"The story of how visual effects changed and changed cinema told from the inside by the Oscar winning Paul Franklin. In 1975, in a nondescript warehouse in Van Nuys, George Lucas and John Dykstra created a visual effects start up that would make history. 

Industrial Light & Magic. A group of many talents spent well over a year in R&D to perfect the dream of motion control before X-Wings and the Millennium Falcon could soar. 

Meanwhile the magic eye of Douglas Trumbull and his team was creating the light show for Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters. It was the beginning of a revolution.

With the voices of Robert Blalack, John Dykstra, Richard Edlund, Dennis Muren & Doug Trumbull.

Producer: Mark Burman"**

Picture, the work of Ray Harryhausen, 2021, on display at The National Galleries Scotland, courtesy of Kevin Ball

*Ray Harryhausen, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Harryhausen#2000s%E2%80%932010s

**A Long, Long Time Ago...Unreal: The VFX RevolutionEpisode, Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000xltg