A hundred years into the future, a glorious city called Metropolis reaches
for the heavens. One of its most prominent young men, Freder, son of
Metropolis' master Joh Fredersen, relaxes in The Club of the Suns, a magnificent
playground of racetracks, theaters, and the world-famous Eternal Gardens.
One day, a remarkable woman named Maria interrupts Freder's festivities with a
group of impoverished children from the depths of the city's underground, telling
them that they are all--rich and poor alike--brothers and sisters.
Maria and her brood are quickly shuffled off back where they belong,
but Freder is forever changed by the encounter and immediately sets out
to find Maria. Beneath the decadent and carefree life of Metropolis' upper class,
Freder discovers the brutal machinery that keeps the city running, along with the
bruised and battered mass of workers who are constantly fed to it.
He immediately takes the place of a worker on the brink of terminal exhaustion and
gets a taste of the strenuous existence of the working man.
At the end of his first shift, Freder follows a group to
an old, underground Cathedral, where he finds Maria, who boosts the morale of the
workers with promises that one day, a mediator will come to bring together the
head and hands of Metropolis, to unite the rich and poor, once and for all.
Meanwhile, Freder's father, Joh Fredersen, master of Metropolis, disturbed by reports
of saboteurs, sees Maria as a threat to his own power and seeks to remove her.
He elicits the help of Metropolis' resident scientist, Rotwang, to reconfigure
The Maschinenmensch, a prototype android, into a perfect copy of Maria, capable of
following orders and inciting the workers to riot, which Joh hopes to use as an
excuse to clamp down on them. Unbeknownst to the master of Metropolis,
however, Rotwang has his own designs for the robot Maria, and when he sets them in motion,
the entire city and everyone in it--rich and poor alike--are sent to the brink of destruction.
In 1924, a precocious young Austrian/German filmmaker, Fritz Lang,
hot off the smashing success of his four-hour epic, Die Nibelungen, visited
New York for the first time. Even at a mere 23 years old, he was a seasoned world
traveler, with trips all over Europe, Asia, and Africa already under his belt.
Still, nothing prepared him for the awesome sight of America's most advanced city.
This visit would inform Lang's vision for the already in development Metropolis, a film
he had conceived with his wife at the time, Thea von Harbou, who was writing
the novel upon which it would be based. When discussing the history of Fritz Lang,
it's important to note that most of his stories of his early life are just that: stories.
Lang always was a gifted storyteller, and those who have studied him know that
most of his anecdotes are at least romantic embellishments, if not outright lies,
so while I am inclined to believe his visit to New York City informed the look and feel
of Metropolis to a certain extent, how much of an influence it had is certainly
open to debate. Nevertheless, Lang,
decades before he would become the icon of early film he is today, was already a gifted
and influential filmmaker, and his next project, Metropolis, would prove to be his
most ambitious and remarkable film. It didn't start out that way, though,
and the film company controlling the purse strings, Germany's UFA, was struggling
in its own right under the economic uncertainty of the Weimar Republic.
Somehow, though, Lang convinced UFA to pour more and more time and money into
the project, with the film's production ballooning well past the limits originally set.
In the end, Lang spent an incredible seventeen months and anywhere
between five and seven million Reichsmark to film his science-fiction epic.
UFA was then understandably upset when, upon its initial release, the film
grossed less than a hundred thousand Reichsmark, making it one of the greatest
financial flops in the history of cinema, even to this day. In an effort to recoup
even a tiny percentage of the money burned away in its production, the film
was sold to Paramount, where the negative was butchered from its 3-hour original
cut into something the American studio felt would be more palatable to audiences:
a mere 90 minutes. The cut scenes were then unceremoniously destroyed.
Even in its Americanized form, critics of the time hated the film,
calling it overly long, dreary, and pretentious.
Famed science-fiction author H.G. Wells, whose own The Time Machine, with its
Morlock and Eloy future, may have served as partial inspiration for the dualistic
nature of Metropolis, wasn't a fan either, and his review in The New York Times is
so scathing, it's actually pretty fun to read. I will link it in the description, and I urge you
to check it out, as an entertaining counterpoint to modern popular opinion.
Metropolis had its contemporary defenders, of course, but it would take
many years for Metropolis to find its audience, and it would take even longer
for film critics to recognize it as one of the most important silent films ever made.
Unfortunately, its most notable early fans would be so enthusiastic
about Lang's work that they would drive him out of Germany altogether.
This happened in 1933. For his film, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse,
Lang caught the attention of the new National Socialist government of Germany.
"Nazis. I hate these guys."
According to Lang, he was called to the office of the Propaganda Ministry
to meet with Joseph Goebbels himself, and Lang, who was half-Jewish by heritage
though not religious affiliation, was understandably petrified.
Goebbels did indeed scold him for The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, which was
seen as a rebellious and dangerous work of art that had to be censored,
but far from punishing him for his work or his lineage, Goebbels then went on
to praise Lang's earlier stuff, especially Metropolis, a film that was
reportedly a favorite of der Führer himself. Goebbels offered Lang a job as
der Führer's filmmaker of choice, tasked with creating the greatest
film propaganda the world would ever see. Fritz Lang then fled Germany, not long
after his meeting, and would eventually settle in America, where he would spend
the rest of his life making films for Hollywood, including a few anti-Nazi
works like Hangmen also Die. He would state in interviews that
Metropolis was a silly film that he all but regretted making, in large part because of
Goebbel's endorsement, though towards the end of his life, he would rediscover an
appreciation for it as a romantic and idealistic work that spoke for the youth,
as represented at the time by the growing counterculture movement of the 1960's.
This raises the contentious question of Metropolis' politics, a surprisingly touchy
subject in academic circles, despite the theme of the picture being ludicrously clear.
Film historians have concluded that, while Lang was the driving force behind
the visual aesthetic of Metropolis, the story and political message of the film belong
almost entirely to its writer, Thea von Harbou, whose physical resemblance to Maria
is no coincidence. Before we go to the film itself and analyze it on its own merits,
we should probably discuss Thea von Harbou.
Lang and Harbou were married for just over a decade, but the marriage, which was
a second one for both of them, was not a stable one.
Lang pursued younger women, and Harbou would eventually be caught
cheating on Lang with the man who would become her third husband, which is the
generally accepted reason for their divorce. However, Harbou's politics may have also
come into play, as the divorce happened around the same time as Lang's meeting
with Joseph Goebbels, in 1933. After Lang went into self-imposed exile,
Harbou stayed in Germany and helped write and produce a library of propaganda
for the Nazi government. This is often cited as evidence for Metropolis' alleged
pro-Nazi message, but Harbou would defend herself after the fall of the Nazis
by claiming she was doing her best to help Germany's Indian population.
In her defense, she was secretly married to an Indian man during the Nazi years,
an interracial union the government forbade quite forcefully. Harbou was also,
by all accounts, a kind, generous, and selfless woman, so it is not outside the
realm of plausibility to argue that her work for the Nazis was done with the
best of intentions. Still, I'm not trying to defend someone who willingly produced
propaganda for Adolf Hitler. I am merely trying to illustrate that it is faulty logic
to argue that her time with the Nazis is definitive proof that she held pro-Nazi
sentiments in her heart all the way back in 1924, when Thea von Harbou penned
the first draft of Metropolis.
Therefore, to settle the matter of Metropolis' political message,
one should stick to the text, i.e., the film itself.
Metropolis is an absurdly blunt film in making its point, which is one of
compassion and mutual understanding, but let's pretend the message isn't so clear.
There are segments of the film that appear at first glance to be a manifesto
for the working class and a cry to rise up against the oppression of the
capitalist system. However, to focus on these elements in isolation is to
deliberately ignore the fact that this rising up of the working class is the
proximate cause of Metropolis' near destruction, that the workers who rallied
in rebellion were so gung ho in their reckless abandon that they left their
own children to die. The working-class, far from being portrayed as the heroic
saviors of Metropolis, are portrayed as simple-minded automatons, easily
manipulated by others into either beautiful creation or wanton destruction.
They are the hands devoid of the head. The upper class isn't portrayed much
better, either, with Joh Fredersen's plot to keep the workers in check shown quite
clearly to be both short-sighted and evil. This is perhaps the most damning
consideration when arguing for Metropolis as a pro-Nazi film: it shows a
leader who should not be trusted, which is antithetical to the core Nazi tenet
of total faith in der Führer. Rather than inciting the classes against each other,
the film is trying to take audiences away from the mindset of class warfare,
of choosing the workers over the bureaucrats or vice versa. If the film
has a political axe to grind, it is that compromise is too easily discarded by
both sides of any political division. Also, take a look at this scene, the famed
Moloch sequence, that takes place when Freder first enters the workers' city
beneath Metropolis. The gaunt masses of shaved heads being herded into a furnace
is a prescient and disturbing view of Germany's near future under the Nazis.
It's not a prideful call for the people to accept fascism. The film, therefore, is
neither praising National Socialism nor capitalism. It is neither communist
propaganda nor libertarian wish-fulfillment. It isn't advocating any
particular system of government or social construction. This is because
Metropolis isn't really about politics; it's about technology.
Once you look at the plot through the lens of technology as opposed to the
lens of politics, everything becomes much clearer. The antagonist of the film is
neither the scheming Joh Fredersen nor the revolting mass of workers who try to
tear down the machine; it is the scientist, Rotwang. Rotwang, apart
from being a blatant ripoff of Dr. Frankenstein, represents man's capacity
for innovation, for good or for ill. He is portrayed as a broken man who has lost
his heart following the death of Hel, Joh's wife who died giving birth to Freder.
Rotwang is driven by jealousy and vengeance--or envy and wrath, to cite
the film's recurring seven deadly sins motif--to thwart Joh's plan and tear down
everything he has created, and his weapon of choice is the most iconic thing in
the whole movie: The Maschinenmensch, one of cinema's most famous androids.
The Maschinenmensch is a fetishization of technology, and though it is given the
veneer of a heart, its true lack of one is the reason Metropolis is nearly destroyed.
Metropolis is mankind's greatest achievement, a futuristic world
built by science that reaches for the stars, but it has nearly destroyed the humanity
of the people who live in it, be they the heartless upper class that
gorges itself on vice or the mindless workers who slave away without reward.
As forcefully as Fritz Lang's visuals seek to make a glorious spectacle of
mankind's potential, Thea von Harbou's script warns us of what that potential
can do to us if we don't hold on to our humanity.
If you want to watch Metropolis today, I highly recommend you seek out
the most recent reconstruction, which was carried out after an old
copy of one of the original negatives was found in Argentina.
The 2010 edition, known as The Complete Metropolis, was published
by Kino International, and it is the closest any modern version has ever come to
recreating Lang's original cut of the film. While much of the recovered footage
is badly damaged, as you may have noticed, they contain scenes and subplots
that are absolutely essential, including the explanation of Rotwang's
motivation and almost everything involving the menacing character of
The Tall Man. My introduction to the film came long before that cut ever existed,
way back in the 80's and 90's, when the most readily available version involved
a soundtrack that consisted of pop music by the likes of Freddie Mercury and
Pat Benatar. Watching that version today is a surreal experience, an almost postmodern
way to view a Frankenstein's monster of an assemblage of Fritz Lang's vision.
Still, even in this bastardized form, Metropolis was enormously influential
throughout the Twentieth Century and saw something of a renaissance in
the 80's and 90's, inspiring music videos, literature, comic books, video games, and
more modern films like Blade Runner and the criminally underappreciated Dark City.
Though I can't find any evidence that James Cameron has openly admitted it,
I think it's pretty clear his ultra-successful Titanic borrows a lot of elements
from Metropolis as well. While Metropolis is not the first
feature-length science fiction film ever made, it is one of the most influential.
Not only is it a seminal work of science- fiction, it's also a landmark piece of
film in general, demonstrating an adeptness for spectacle and epic visual
storytelling that continues to impress, even as we now approach the hundred year
anniversary of its creation, when every person involved in is probably long dead.
It also pioneered many special effects tricks we still employ today, such as the
liberal use of forced perspective, which was used to great effect in
Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. Don't let the fact that it's a silent film
dissuade you from watching it, because Metropolis is a movie that will
hold your attention and provoke your emotions, even without sound,
and it won't let you go, even after its closing credits.
And that's all for today, fellow Earthlings. Thank you so much for watching, and if
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can get. For written reviews of Metropolis and many other classic works
of science-fiction, both in film and literature, visit my website at emagill.com.
Until next time, this is The Unapologetic Geek, telling you to never be ashamed
of what you love... as long as you're not hurting anybody.