Year: 

1927

Directed by: 

Fritz Lang

Rated: 

Not Rated

Country: 

Germany

Runtime: 

2 hrs. 4 min. (incomplete)

Production Company: 

Universum Film

Written by: 

Thea von Harbou

Starring: 

Gustav Fröhlich

Brigitte Helm

Rudolf Klein-Rogge

Alfred Abel

Similar Films: 

THX 1138

Things to Come

Metropolis (2001)

Metropolis, directed by famed German silent-era expressionist Fritz Lang, is a great piece of science fiction, but it is first a great piece of cinema, period. In fact, there are only a handful of sci-fi elements in the film. These elements are used with utmost skill, but they are secondary to the story that Metropolis has to tell, which is about class divides and society's need for compassion. With an allegorical plot highlighted by visuals that are impressive even for the expressionistic era, Metropolis is a monumental film built to last forever.

The film opens with a title card that reads, "THE MEDIATOR BETWEEN HEAD AND HANDS MUST BE THE HEART!" and is followed by close-ups of machine parts rotating and sliding. Then we see clocks: one twenty-four hour clock for the day and a more prominent ten-hour clock for the work day. When the shift is over, the new crew walks in as if approaching their execution. The old crew walks out as if already dead. With this, the film sets itself up as a portrayal of lower-class exploitation.

After the workers take an elevator down to their housing beneath the earth's crust, we switch to the upper class. These residents of Metropolis spend their days competing in athletics and playing with loved ones in gardens. On this particular day Maria, a sort of priestess of hope to the working party, shows up at the gardens, proclaiming "These are your brothers," in reference to the dirty, tired working children around her. Freder, the son of autocrat Joh Fredersen goes looking for her. Instead, he finds the Hellish machine rooms beneath the city and experiences a humanitarian awakening.

The moment of awakening is unforgettable and is one of the most memorable of the film's images. Workers shift back and forth in near perfect unison, performing the most tedious lever-pulling, switch-flipping, knob-turning tasks imaginable. When one worker collapses from exhaustion, steam explosions send bodies flying. Then Freder has a vision: the machinery turns into Moloch¹, into whose mouth the workers dutifully march. The vision's vividness effects a poignant understanding of the lives of the working class, both in Freder and the viewer. This visual salience is upheld throughout the film.

Perhaps the other most memorable image in Metropolis is that of the "man-machine," a robot built by the scientist Rotwang for Fredersen (despite its name, the robot is given decidedly feminine characteristics) in order to replace the wife Fredersen lost while giving birth to Freder. The robot is first shown stationary in the seat in which it is kept. When Rotwang gives it a hand signal, it slowly rises as smoothly as if it truly were all hydraulics. While the robot walks forward, with a compliance equal to that of the factory workers, the camera can do nothing but stare at it, as Fredersen does, in awe. The robot is later given the countenance of Maria in order to deceive her followers, so it does not get a lot of screen time in actual robot form, but, like the monster's bride in Bride of Frankenstein, its short appearance does not diminish its visual power and actually may strengthen it. It is so well-designed, in fact, that George Lucas used it as a starting point for the design of C-3P0 in Star Wars and deviated little from the source's look.

Along with the robot, the city itself is one of the surprisingly few science-fiction elements in the film. While the workers' underground city is dark and consists only of rectangular block buildings, the surface of the city is as imaginative and expansive as the divide between the classes. It consists of lit-up signs on the sides of buildings, highways many stories above ground, and amazing architecture. The design of the city emphasizes the truly massive (and possibly more prescient than I would like to think) concentration of wealth among the upper class, adding to the despair of the class divide.

The most important aspect of the film, though, and one that is often enhanced by its images, is its message of empathy and compassion. Freder was supremely oblivious to the daily injustice placed upon the backs of the working class until he was directly exposed to it. For him, this was a life-changing event. Whereas the upper class can be held only partially responsible for neglecting the working class when they are oblivious of the latter's plight, Freder becomes fully responsible for their social repression by becoming aware of it. Unlike his father, he redeems himself by empathizing with them and even taking some of their burden upon himself.

Ultimately, this theme leads to its Christian symbolism, most heavily existent in the character of Freder. As stated above, Freder begins his Christ-like life by associating with the lower class. By doing so he becomes a redeeming force, redeeming not only himself but eventually the class-exploiters around him by bringing them to their moral senses. In the end, he unites, albeit somewhat didactically, the working class with Fredersen, becoming symbolic not only of Christ Himself but of compassion because it is compassion, advanced by Freder, that allows Fredersen and the lower class to accept and respect each other.