Welt am Draht [World on a Wire] (1973)

(On Cable TV, March 2021) Now here’s a fascinating find — I used to fancy myself a Science-Fiction buff (considering that I was reviewing SF movies professionally), but even I was surprised to learn of World on a Wire’s existence as a proto-cyberpunk film dealing with ideas of simulated characters breaking out of their computerized existence. Better yet: It’s adapted from Daniel F. Galouye’s novel Simulatron-3, which also led to the 1999 American film The Thirteenth Floor. Digging deeper in the film’s production history (how could I have missed such a film??), things became a bit clearer: Broadcast on German TV in 1973 as a two-part miniseries, the film remained mostly inaccessible to English-language audiences until restored edition showings in 2010 and then a Criterion edition in 2012, a year after I started losing touch with the SF field. Still, it does remain a major find — directed by film legend Rainer Werner Fassbinder (his only SF work), the film is clearly a methodical, intellectual piece of work: It’s all about ideas and characters, shot with an overabundance of chrome, mirrors and glass. There’s an intention here to deal with futuristic topics that would only slide in the mainstream twenty-five years later, and the cinematography (despite obvious TV-schedule limitations) clearly goes for something deliberate. Of course, we’re grading on a historical scale when it comes to discussing ideas — for the film’s interminable 204-minute running time, it spends a lot of energy setting up a now-obvious revelation (“We’re living in a simulation!”) in time for the cliffhanger ending of the first episode. It’s not a story told efficiently — there are numerous useless digressions that an experienced editor could have cut out (but probably didn’t due to contractual length obligations) and the moment-by-moment pacing of the film is severely lacking. Dozens of other Science Fiction movies and miniseries have done much, much better than World on a Wire in terms of pacing, efficiency, ideas and effectiveness — but you can draw a straight line from World on a Wire to Westworld, and 1973 is remarkably early to be talking about computer simulations of real humans. I suspect that there’s an entire dimension to the film that I don’t get, not quite knowing what was normal in 1973 Germany — it may be that the film is filled with clever deviations from then-reality that I’m ill-equipped to grasp. I’ll also admit that the leisurely running time and laborious presentation of its ideas can be exasperating at times. Still, I count the result as essential viewing for anyone interested in the history of SF cinema — especially if you’re already very familiar with its later heirs.