The idea of a science fiction movie called MASTER OF THE WORLD emerging from Nazi Germany is an intriguing one… Harry Piel’s 1934 movie promises much, then delivers so slowly that most of your anticipation has curdled before its fulfilled. Every scene seems to last twice as long as it ought to: a gas explosion in a coal mine, staged with a real flame-thrower blasting fire in from out of shot, is impressive in conception, but editing so slackly that it feels like all they’ve done is take the clapperboards off, rather than generating pace so it feels like a continuous fireball spreading through the pit.
We’re promised robots, but for a very long time the only ones we see are inert. Finally, at the climax, the super-robot attacks — and then, afterwards, we get to see a whole army of robots working a coal mine, an impressive sight, but a weird thing to throw at us when the conflict has been resolved and the movie should be over.
The movie also has a super-naive conception of automation, with the corporations paying their obsolete workers to take it easy in bucolic comfort (it makes A NOUS LA LIBERTE look like SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING). The economics just don’t add up, here: the robots must cost SOMETHING, so the workers can’t be getting the same wages they scraped by on before… That stuff in METROPOLIS about the heart uniting the hand and head isn’t so very foolish, when you look at something like this.
Harry Piel did some decent stunt films, but his signature move as a director was real, life-size demolition of buildings. Lubitsch had his touch, Capra had his corn, Piel has his detonator.
The mad scientist (Walter Franck) is well cast, and well-lit.
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