Metropolis
Dir: Fritz Lang
1927
*****
Metropolis
is one of the greatest, most influential films in the history of
cinema. Fritz Lang’s classic German expressionist,
science-fiction epic will be remembered for being the first feature-length film
of the genre and the birth of a certain futuristic vision of the future that is
now embedded in the human psyche. It’s one of the most profound films ever
made, almost like the invention of a new colour. Made in Germany in 1927
during the Weimar Period, Metropolis is set in a
futuristic urban dystopia and follows the attempts of Freder, the wealthy son of the
city's ruler, and Maria, a poor worker, to overcome the vast gulf separating
the classes of their city. The style of the film draws influence from Bauhaus, Cubism and Futurism but
also went on to influence each house of design. Much of the set is a
combination of Gothic meets art deco but Lang later commented that
"the film was born from my first sight of the skyscrapers in New York in
October 1924". He had visited New York for the first time and remarked
"I looked into the streets – the glaring lights and the tall buildings –
and there I conceived Metropolis." The film was
met with a mixed reception upon release with critics finding it pictorially
beautiful, lauding its complex special effects, but accusing its story of
naiveté and accusing it of having a distasteful Communist message.
With hindsight and retrospect we can see the film differently and see
just how pioneering it really was. The film clearly draws on biblical sources
for several of its key ideas, such as the story of the Tower of
Babel and the Whore of Babylon. The
political aspect of the story stems from the First World
War and the culture of the Weimar Republic in
Germany, the view of American modernity, fascism,
and also communism. Lang’s comment on fascism is somewhat ironic given that for
the scene where the worker's city was flooded, Helm and five-hundred children
from the poorest districts of Berlin had
to work for fourteen days in a pool of water that Lang intentionally kept at a
low temperature. Lang was a perfectionist, his art came before everything else
and at all costs. The story begins in the future, the year of 2026, in the city
of Metropolis. Wealthy industrialists reign from high-rise
towers, while underground-dwelling workers toil to operate the underground
machines that power the city. Joh Fredersen is the city's master. His son
Freder idles away his time in a pleasure garden but is interrupted one day by
the arrival of a young woman named Maria, who has brought a group of workers'
children to witness the lifestyle of the rich. Maria and the children are
ushered away, but Freder, fascinated, goes to the machine rooms to find her.
Witnessing the explosion of a huge machine that kills and injures several
workers, he also has a hallucination. The machine is Moloch and
the workers are being fed, some naked, into the flames within it. After the
hallucination ends and he sees the dead workers being carried away on
stretchers, he hurries to tell Fredersen about the accident. Grot, foreman of
the Heart Machine, brings to Fredersen secret maps found on the dead workers.
Fredersen, upset with his assistant, Josaphat, that he was informed about the
explosion and plans from Freder and Grot and not from Josaphat, fires him.
Freder secretly rebels against Fredersen by deciding to help the workers, after
seeing his father's cold indifference towards the harsh conditions they face.
Fredersen takes the maps to the inventor Rotwang to
learn their meaning. Rotwang had been in love with a woman named Hel, who left
him to marry Fredersen and later died giving birth to Freder. Rotwang shows
Fredersen a robot he has built to "resurrect" Hel. The maps show a
network of catacombs beneath Metropolis, and the two men go to investigate. They
eavesdrop on a gathering of workers, including Freder. Maria addresses them,
prophesying the arrival of a mediator who can bring the working and ruling
classes together. Freder believes that he could fill the role and declares his
love for Maria. Fredersen orders Rotwang to give Maria's likeness to the robot
so that it can ruin her reputation among the worker to prevent any rebellion.
Fredersen is unaware that Rotwang plans to use the robot to kill Freder and
take over Metropolis. Rotwang kidnaps Maria, transfers her likeness to the
robot and sends her to Fredersen. Freder finds the two embracing and, believing
it is the real Maria, falls into a prolonged delirium. Inter-cut with
his hallucinations, the false Maria unleashes chaos throughout Metropolis, driving
men to murder and stirring dissent among the workers. Freder recovers
and returns to the catacombs. Finding the false Maria urging the workers to
rise up and destroy the machines, Freder accuses her of not being the real
Maria. The workers follow the false Maria from their city to the machine rooms,
leaving their children behind. They destroy the Heart Machine, which causes the
workers' city below to flood. The real Maria, having escaped from Rotwang's
house, rescues the children with the help of Freder. Grot berates the
celebrating workers for abandoning their children in the flooded city.
Believing their children to be dead, the hysterical workers capture the false
Maria and burn her at the stake. A horrified Freder watches, not understanding
the deception until the fire reveals her to be a robot - The Maschinenmensch,
now iconic cinema symbol, created by sculptor Walter Schulze-Mittendorff. Rotwang is
delusional, seeing the real Maria as his lost Hel, and he chases her to the
roof of the cathedral, pursued by Freder. The two men fight as Fredersen and
the workers watch from the street. Rotwang falls to his death. Freder fulfills
his role as mediator by linking the hands of Fredersen and Grot to bring them
together. Although it is now considered a classic, critics at the time weren’t
so keen. The New York Times critic Mordaunt
Hall called it a "technical marvel with feet of
clay". H. G. Wells accused it of "foolishness, cliché, platitude, and
muddlement about mechanical progress and progress in general." He
faulted Metropolis for its premise that automation created
drudgery rather than relieving it, wondered who was buying the machines' output
if not the workers, and found parts of the story derivative of Shelley's Frankenstein, Karel Čapek's robot
stories, and his own The Sleeper Awakes. Wells
called Metropolis "quite the silliest film." Nazi
propagandist Joseph Goebbels on the other hand was impressed
with the film's message of social justice. In a 1928 speech he declared that
"the political bourgeoisie is about to leave the stage of history. In its
place advance the oppressed producers of the head and hand, the forces of
Labor, to begin their historical mission". To Lang’s dismay, both Goebbels
and Adolf Hitler himself announced themselves as fans of the film and
when Goebbels met with Lang he told him that he could be made an
honorary Aryan despite his Jewish background. Goebbels told him "Mr. Lang,
we decide who is Jewish and who is not." Lang left for Paris that very
night. The harshest critic of the film however was Lang himself who said that
he enjoyed working on it very much but didn’t much care for the finished piece.
History is a funny old thing, you could spend days comparing Metropolis to
historical events that happened before and after it’s production and indeed the
uncertain future we face. You could also spend longer listing the many
influences Metropolis has had in film, television,
art, literature and even music. ‘Iconic’ seems to be a
woeful understatement but films don’t come any more historically
important, influential or fascinating as Lang’s Metropolis.
