Lady Gaga Channels Fritz Lang ‘Master of Darkness’ in the Making of ‘Alejandro’ Video
“Alejandro is on the radio. Fuck it sounds so good, we did it little monsters,” – tweets Lady Gaga.
The dissolution of boundaries between music, art, theatre, dance and film, underway since the launch of MTV: Music Television in 1981, occasionally spawns elegant short form works of cinematic fine art. I must admit that last month, I scoffed at Time magazine’s inclusion of Ladt Gaga in their recent list of the 100 most influential people of the year… but I now withdraw that opinion. Alejandro, her latest video, fashioned with director and photographer Steven Klein, is crafted in the genre of an early Fritz Lang cinema noir masterpiece and immediately brings to mind scenes from Metropolis.
The latest Gaga video also reminds me of a rule I personally attribute to Ingmar Bergman – that each and every frame of a film should be so well composed that it could be printed as a still photograph and exhibited in a gallery. Allejandro exhibits that kind of attention to detail in Klein’s careful framing, form and placement of everything and everyone. It may be surprising to realize that Madonna’s “Express Yourself” video, also a Klein creation, was released 25 years ago. The comparisons are obvious…
As an ex-Catholic, I have always enjoyed the irreligious subtext in Klein’s work with Madonna and now with Lady Gaga. Alejandro is rich, dark and elegantly erotic. I am glad to be converted at last to just another Gaga worshiper, one of her little monsters.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 8th, 2010 at 2:18 pm and is filed under Films. You can follow any comments to this post through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
September 9th, 2010 at 10:28 am
Gaga is absurd in my personal view
November 11th, 2010 at 3:23 am
LOL I so love Lady Gaga! I love that she is off the wall. Thank you for writing this post. I have book marked your site and will drop by again!
November 11th, 2010 at 7:13 am
I checked out your baby stroller review site and it too is well done. i think that’s a great way of developing authentic Web marketing and income derived from affiliate links. I teach social media marketing techniques and would like to learn more about what all you do… Yes I agree Gaga is a trip… an intelligent performance artist who has mastered the delicate art of blending style, wisdom and irreverence. We can all learn from her example.