Anything But Silent Live theatre organ accompaniment by BEN MODEL
Fritz Lang's
SPIES (Spione)
Wednesday, February 21 at 7:30 pm
Members $11 | Public $16
Previously seen in a severely truncated form, Fritz Lang's epic thriller about an undercover agent fighting to bring down a criminal mastermind is at last restored to its proper length.
Both a mesmerizing thriller and a playful portrait of Weimar Germany, Fritz Lang’s Spies is one of the most dazzling movies of the 1920s. Having defined the espionage genre with Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler, Lang returned to the genre with this fast-paced and remarkably dark thriller. Rudolf Kleine-Rogge stars as Haghi, the head of an elaborate criminal empire, and Willy Fritsch is the undercover agent assigned to topple the diabolical king from his throne. Filled with sexual intrigue and high-tech gadgetry, Spies remains remarkably contemporary, more than 85 years after its original release. There are buttonhole cameras, invisible ink messages, periscopes, peepholes, assassinations, seductions, drugged victims and a spectacular train wreck woven through the machinations of the competing spies. Like Metropolis, surviving prints of Spies were severely edited and the original cut was unavailable for decades until the Murnau Institute restored the film with over 50 minutes of missing footage. Lang's cinematic spy fantasy is available in its full glory once again. (Germany, 1928, 143 min., NR, Silent with English surtitles | Dir. Fritz Lang)
Ben Model is one of America’s leading silent film accompanists, and has been playing piano and organ for silent films worldwide as well as at the New York MoMA since 1984, and the CAC since 2006. For more infornation on Ben visit: silentfilmmusic.com
