Metropolis

Silent movies are not for everyone. Neither are subtitles. Those brave enough to view a movie with no sound and words that are far and few between should definitely enjoy this silent masterpiece. One of the biggest productions of its time, Metropolis still holds its own when set design and special effects are compared. But what Metropolis really has is orginality. This German-Expressionist film had such originality in everything from its costumes to its views of a future (modern) city that its ideas can still be seen everywhere in modern sci-fi. Star Wars's C-3PO was based on Bridgette Helm's robot. Dark City and Brazil both have Metropolis look-a-like cities. This is a very good movie. It's too bad most movies don't have its originality.

We have seen so many movies now that even those of us who study them tend to forget where certain familiarities were born. The science fiction elements presented in Fritz Lang's 'Metropolis' are so familiar to us that they have become not just the genre standard but almost a given. The notion of a city as an urban hell ruled by the upper-class and operated by slave-like poor. The notion of the city that seems to touch the heavens. The notion of a mad scientist giggling in his lab as he plays God. The lone hero who discovers the diabolical machinations of the villain and tries to throw a monkey wrench into his plan. These elements can be found in this film's ancestors 'Frankenstein', 'Batman', 'Gattaca' and the cities of 'Blade Runner', 'Star Wars' and 'The Fifth Element'. All of these films contain elements that were inspired by Lang's work.

'Metropolis' has gone down in history as one of the most influential films ever made, certainly one of the most studied silent films and yet the movie sort of languishes. After its success in 1927 the film has had an uneasy time. It's pedigree as a silent film turns off the usual science fiction audience and it is sort of a footnote in the history of the genre. One restored version after another has tried to reconstruct the film as best it could because some of the footage of the film has been lost through neglect and silly studio censoring. Some of the restorations work but most do not so we sometimes wonder what an experience this must have been like in 1927. Unless a lost version surfaces (as it did with the recently uncovered print of Valentino's 1922 film 'Beyond the Rocks') the complete work my never be seen again. The restored version released on DVD in 2001 was based on a digital restoration at 2K resolution from all available sources. It's the best version that I've seen and I would highly recommend that one if you haven't seen the film. The worst is a 1994 print put out by GoodTimes video which contains not an ounce of restoration, the film in grainy and difficult to see, it doesn't even have a soundtrack. I call that one the worst because I'm still a little ambivalent about the 1984 restored version by Georgio Moroder with color tinting (good), sound effects (not so good) and a soundtrack that includes songs by Loverboy, Freddy Mercury, Bonnie Tyler, Adam Ant and Pat Benatar (yuck!).

Those who study the film (myself included) find the story impenetrable. Some films you can easily decipher but 'Metropolis' has a plot that is so maddeningly erratic that it's hard to pin it down as a whole. Many conceded that as a fault but I think it adds to the film's chaotic nature. It takes place in the future (restored versions offer title cards that suggest that it's the year 2000 but I don't go by that) in an overcrowded city with immense skyscrapers (the Gothic, sometimes grotesque architecture suggests that the buildings were constructed in a hurry). The rich in Metropolis are content with their lives, dancing in their penthouses and spending their money. The poor work as slaves beneath the city like cogs in a machine. Lang choreographs the scenes in the subterranean levels magnificently so that the workers are never out of step. They don't so much work as toil under oppression like Ramses' slaves building his pyramids. The rich and poor of Metropolis are ignorant of one another. One person that isn't ignorant of the class division is Joh Fredersen a ruthless businessman who rules Metropolis from his office.

His son Freder happily enjoys the Pleasure Gardens one day when he notices a woman rising from the underground caves with a group of the worker's children. Curious, he follows her to the depths and is aghast at the tyranny in motion there. The woman is Maria, a revolutionary who holds sermons to remind the workers that a peaceful resolution can and must be found.

Freder uncovers a plot by Rotwang, the mad scientist to create a robotic version of Maria to convince the workers to rise up and take arms. This leads to the film's most famous scene when the robot becomes flesh and blood and the false prophet opens her eyes to reveal two dead sparkling orbs. Rotwang kidnaps the real Maria and sends the false one to convince the workers to rise up and then taunt the rich men and drive them into a sexual frenzy.

Then all Hell breaks loose, but the rest I must leave to you to discover.

Lang based the film on the book written by his wife Thea Von Harbou. In the book the story is about a chaotic as the film (and therefore less successful), the difference is that Lang has the visuals to suggest the chaos where the book did not. He uses every technical tool at his disposal to visualize the Hell of the subterranean machine run by the workers. At one point Freder, disguised as a worker, witnesses one of the huge machines explode and visualizes it as a horrendous monster swallowing workers by the dozen. Another suggests an odd device, a giant dial in which the worker is made to keep the arms in the same place as the light bulbs go on and off around it's edge. The machine doesn't seem to have any purpose until Freder imagines it as a giant clock and tries to pull the arms forward to end the merciless day.

The film is one of the pinnacles of German Expressionism, astonishing in its use of light and shadow. One of the best examples is the scene in which Rotwang pursues the real Maria through the caves using only a beam of light to strike terror as he closes in. Another brilliant moment comes with Maria's erotic dance as the men gawk, the camera filled with their moist eyes. This scene was completely removed after the initial release and not restored until home video.

Other moments have deeper resonance. There is something unsettling about the hundreds of workers toiling in the underground caves. Walking to work they march with their heads down, dressed in uniforms and caps. It reminded me of the Jews being led into the Nazi Death Camps. There is a buried foreshadowing of Hitler. More obvious are Lang's biblical references. The rise of the city parallels Maria's retelling of the story of the Tower of Babel. The giant pentagram in Rotwang's lab as he plays God. The breathtaking image of the plague-bringer who comes wielding an obscene scythe. The very heaven and hell nature of Metropolis itself. There is even a Christ-like quality in Maria who gives her sermons and reinforces that indeed blessed are the peacemakers.

These elements and images are brought to the film because of Lang's insistence on no less then absolute perfection. He was known as a sometimes cruel taskmaster, working his cast and crew like a dictator. He cast some 20,000 extras (1500 of them for the Tower of Babel sequence alone) and worked them from morning till night. The water which covered the set for the climactic flood was ice cold. Many of the extras were soaked through from morning till night. Actress Brigette Helm was nearly killed several times, once by a fall and another by the fact that the bonfire scene was real! Helm was so rattled by her experience working with Lang that she thereafter refused to make another film with him.

I could go on and on, this film all great films invite lengthy discussions. It can be seen in at least a hundred different ways, as a foreshadowing of fascism or the tyranny of communism or just capitalism boiling over. But when you get down to it the best way to view 'Metropolis' is not as a film to pick apart but simply as a film of it's time, Lang created the story of a world gone mad while the world around him was going mad.

Who ever heard of an epic science fiction film? Especially in the 1920s? Sure, some science fiction movies are huge today, such as George Lucas' latest goofy Star Wars movie, but in 1926, Fritz Lang came out with a brilliant film about what the future would be like if people went on living the way they were living back then. And sure enough, we went right ahead living the way we were living, the population got bigger and more crowded, and now modern society is not a whole lot different from what was presented in Metropolis.

The story is about a young rich kid without a care in the world who becomes concerned about the way that society (Metropolis) was run by his father, John Frederson, the master of Metropolis. He lives in a ‘Pleasure Garden' high above the level of the workers', and he worries about what would happen if the huge number of workers were to turn against his father, given the terrible conditions under which they live and work. Some of the best scenes in the film take place in the underground mines, showing the workers portrayed as little more than components on a gigantic, sinister looking machine. The scene where the machine overheated even contained some impressive stunts, as well as interesting cinematography as the machine transforms into a giant devil-looking monster. After countless workers are consumed by it (no wonder this was Hitler's favorite film), they are immediately replaced by other workers, who go right to the same spots that the previous men left and resume their robotic movements. If some of these scenes, men can be seen being carried away on stretchers after having been injured, and the rest of the workers keep right on working, hardly even noticing.

The way that the workers are portrayed as lifeless machines is one of the more potent elements of this film, as well as the most revealing about the directors intentions. When his son complains about the tragic things that go on in the mines, Frederson replies that such accidents are unavoidable, but his son still insists that they deserve credit for building the city. This is the kind of content that foreshadows some serious mutiny, and at the same time it shows what may very well happen when large groups of people feel mistreated. `Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups' is a saying that doesn't necessarily only apply to stupid people, as Metropolis suggests. Fritz Lang brilliantly portrays this very complex story with extremely limited dialogue, and the result is still compelling today. The special effects in this film are decades ahead of its time – it even resembles The Fifth Element in many ways (except that the two films can hardly be compared) – and the acting and especially the elaborately created sets are stunning to say the least. An excellent film, Metropolis is one of the few that should never be forgotten.

Whenever people are asked what they consider to be revolutionary and historically significant in terms of classic cinema, one answer that frequently comes up is Metropolis, and it's not hard to see why. In addition to being a very impressive technical achievement for its time, the film is well known as the very first feature-length sci fi film. While it wasn't met with a very warm reception upon its release (not to mention having been cut since then), it has made a massive impact over the decades for its biting allegory and themes of purity mixed in with knowledge and strength.

Set in a futuristic urban dystopia, high class city planner Joh Fredersen lives in the Tower of Babel around the prestigious city, which is atop its underground equivalent filled with workers who manage the machinery that support it. The actual story revolves around Joh's son Freder and the holy figure Maria trying to overcome the major split between the two parts. Director Fritz Lang and writer Thea von Harbou develop the film's plot through world building, as it's made clear from the start that the workers of the surface-level power plant toil with the equipment tirelessly year by year. Satirically, the workers are the clocks controlled by the ringleader Frederson. In a way, the film lets the viewers think about the societal differences between individuals and power without spoon-feeding the message as much as showcasing it through distinctive nations.

Admittedly, the film doesn't really develop the characters outside of their basic tropes and goals, but they're by no means bad. If anything, they're meant more to guide the events of the different classes throughout the story's progression. Freder knows all the wrong doings of tampering with technology, therefore he wishes there to be a proper balance between the thinkers and the builders, hence why he adores Maria so much. Speaking of Maria, she is the saintly guide to the workers looking for hope, but her purity comes at a price of the mad scientist Rotwag who builds a robot to replicate his loved one Hel (who ended up becoming Freder's mother). Without spoiling much, let's just say that what he does to Maria really causes the film to get suspenseful. The remaining cast are mainly easily manipulated individuals looking for the right voice to lead them.

But of course, the feature's visual style is timelessly breathtaking. Most of the special effects were huge innovations at a time of severe technological limitations, and some even work as substance depending on some given scenes (like the mythos behind the Tower of Babel). Many of the contraptions and backdrops have clearly inspired the likes of Blade Runner, Futurama and even Batman over the years, mainly through the gothic architect and abstract landscapes. Admittedly, a lot of the acting is really over the top by today's standards, but that's more attributed to the dynamic gestural performances commonplace back in the day. That, and many scenes do kind of drag on a bit for their own good. However, the narrative and message are meant to be told through these elaborate sets and melodramatic performances to gain the necessary emotional resonance for such an ambitious project like this.

In conclusion, Metropolis is a prime example of how something can stand the test of time through technical brilliance and emotional resonance based on a political allegory. It's funny how Fritz Lang believed this film to be the prediction of how the future would be perceived back in the 1920s, because it's not too far off from today. Technology is a great usage and all, but all the amazing knowledge and manual labor in the world are nothing without the necessary negotiating in case one spirals out of control, something that many corporations these days fail to realize. If you are yet to check this film out, definitely feel free to do so to remind yourself how important it is to maintain order around advanced infrastructure.

Absolutely crammed full of future references to all of your favourite science fiction feature films, series, books, comics and video games. There's also quite a lot rooted in the current world of science non-fiction with the age of automation and robots concurrently being consumed by A.I. and Machine Learning. You could squeeze gene editing in as well if you have the imagination.

I saw a clean restored version and spent a lot of time wishing I was consuming the experience in a cinema as a result. Ambitious, visionary and epic in its making - seldom can any film lay claim to having such huge influence. It must have been quite breathtaking for the paying public of the day, in their time away from the grindstone, to encounter such an alien and yet metaphorically familiar world, as the one they encountered here.