The Weimar Future

[randy_byers]

Metropolis (1927)

This screencap is from the recently restored footage, which is from pretty badly damaged 16mm film stock, thus the poor quality. It's from a brief montage representing the Yoshiwara District in Metropolis, which is essentially the red-light district (named after a district in Tokyo/Edo where prostitution was legal until 1958). When I first saw this montage at the SIFF Theater show, I read all three faces as female, but now that I'm able to take a closer look on DVD, it seems to me that the gender of at least two of them is ambiguous. More Weimar sophistication?