Customer Reviews
The city as nightmare - By: Dennis Littrell, 09 May 2008 
BEWARE SPOILERS
Fritz Lang's futuristic Metropolis is set in as it happens something like the current era. Most of the population are workers who slave underground to keep the massive machine that is the city going while the privileged stay above ground & live hedonistic lives. It is impossible not to see this in Marxian terms, the prols exploited by the capitalist class. At the time of the film's production in Germany, there was indeed a specter haunting Europe & it was indeed the specter of communism. Curiously Lang ends the film with a blatant political statement. He has labor & capital reluctantly shake hands. I find this curious because there is little doubt that for the previous two & a half hours the film depicts the capitalist class in the person of Joh Fredersen (Alfred Abel) as seeing the workers as mere automations to be exploited. I think Lang wanted to dodge the political implications of his film. I think he was less interested in ideology than in showing striking visuals of man in the world of machines, of humans as machines themselves, & other humans more like brains without bodies, wet wear blind to anything but production & keeping the hive buzzing.
Metropolis is like a hive or an ant colony except that the workers never get to go out & forage. Their world is dark & steamy; they are for the most part without hope as they come & go with their heads bowed in submission.
In another sense (and this metaphor is directly from the film) the workers are the hands of the body & the capitalists the mind. Maria says, "Between the mind that plans & the hands that build there must be a Mediator, & this must be the heart." Maria is a prophet who predicts the coming of this Mediator, who one might, in alll innocence, believe to be a nice stand-in for, say, Jesus Christ. Politicallly speaking, then, perhaps what Lang is saying is that the war between communism & capitalism will eventuallly be mediated by the Second Coming. Expressing this commonplace idea with striking visuals rather than speaking it in so many words, exemplified the power of the relatively new medium of the "picture show."
This is the first silent film I've seen in many years. It's a bit over the top in terms of acting, which of course was deliberate since facial expressions & body language were used to replace words that would have to be read. Modern audiences may find this convention comical or just weird. I found the scenes showing the characters running at something like one & a half times real human speed a bit amusing. I don't know enough about silent films to know whether that was deliberate or something Lang thought effective. Gustav Frohlich, who has the male lead, in particular is a frenzy of action & contorted facial expressions. Brigitte Helm, who plays Maria & her deadly clone (and the robot & the dancing woman as well) is even more over the top in her physical gyrations, but her performance stands out because there is nothing quite like it in filmdom, at least nothing that I have ever seen. It is both the heavy makeup & her wild, demonic (and seductive) expressions that alllow us to clearly see when she is the evil clone & not the demur, heroic Maria. For me she was the most memorable part of the film.
There is quite a bit of trivia & film history associated with this landmark film. The film seen today is a 2001 reconstruction of the original, part of which has been lost. The missing action is explained in text before going on to the next scene. Metropolis was said to be Hitler's favorite film, which doesn't surprise me, & it was the most expensive film made up until that time, & employed a huge cast.
But see this for Fritz Lang's stunning & haunting visuals, which remain even to this day as striking works of art.
A work of art - By: Mr. Derek R. Osbourne, 12 Dec 2007 What a work of art. This film is worth seeing for the sets & cinematography alone - & the restoration is brilliant. What a pity that not alll of the film could be save. Like Nosferatu it would have been a tragedy if the film had been alllowed to deteriorate to the point of total destruction. Fortunately both films, magnificent versions of German 1920s art.
If the backgrounds are magnificent it is a pity that the male & female leads are so overstated.Their acting is typical of much of the time but starts to look over the top now whilst the contrast between the youngsters & their stage trained seniors is obvious.
The bonus material is fascinating especiallly the item about how the film was restored.Truly a DVD for the film afficionado.
A picture of Hel - By: B. Chandler, 30 Mar 2007 In the back ground we see a picture of the Metropolis in 2026 that is watched over by Johhan 'Joh' Fredersen (Alfred Abel). He stole the heart of Hel from C.A. Rotwang, der Erfinder "The Inventor" (Rudolf Klien-Rogge) & married her. It was speculated that Hel fell for Joh's position of power more than love. Hel dies in child birth.
Rotwang being lonely invents a robot replacement for Hel. Rotwang loses a hand in the process. We see the machine person Hel on the poster the same way Joh saw it when he learned of its existence.
Meantime it looks like Jon's son Freder Frederson (Gustov Fröhlich) has been smitten by a kindly girl Maria (Brigitte Helm) with a mission. This mission is stated in the beginning credits as the "Head" & the "Hands" will be brought together by the "Heart."
Joh must squelch the son's infatuation with Maria & put the workers in their place.
Looking at the sight of Rotwang's machine person, an evil plan forms in Joh's mind. Little does he know what plan is in Rotwang's mind.
But we do.
Hel is the name of the queen of Helheim, the Norse underworld.
This is a 1927 movie, made at the UFA studios. Learn more of UFA in the book "The UFA Story: A History of Germany's Greatest Film Company" by Klaus Kreimeier
CUTTING EDGE - By: C. Pierides, 06 Mar 2007 This film was far ahead of its time.The magnificent special effects are still cutting edge in their scale & imagination today. The dream sequences of Maria coming out of a fantastic metal clam inspired Chiparus's Les Girls to immortalise Fritz Lange's work in bronze & ivory. I still think these sequences are breathtaking. And the magnificent Art Deco backdrops even in the worker scenes are fantastic. The angst of the impending WWII come through in the depiction of humanity in subjugation & revolution.The exaggerated worker shoes like clowns play out this larger than life role.But rebellion is at hand,and the social order is overthrown. I truly enjoyed this film.If you like old world charm, you will too.
An apocalyptic vision of class struggle - By: Jacques COULARDEAU, 14 Feb 2007 This film is a myth. 1925-1927 in Germany was a crucial period. The depression was going to arrive soon with its unemployment, financial catastrophe, & nazism. All that is clearly reflected in the film. There are two levels in this city, the underground level for factories & the working class, & the top level for business people, politicians & other privileged people. The latter dance, feast, do nothing but enjoy what other people under them create & produce. This vision of a world cut in two social classes is quite common in those days though today it sounds a little bit schematic. In these days everything was either black or white. The trick in the film is that the son of the ruler of this metropolis fallls in love with a certain Maria from underground who preaches the coming of some kind of Messiah to establish peace & freedom for alll. She preaches in the catacombs exclusively to working class people. She represents some hope & patience. But it alll runs afoul when the ruler decides to get rid of his main counselor & to encourage his inventor to kidnap this Maria to use her face on the inventor's robot. This robot then goes down underground & preaches rebellion & destruction. The real Maria, with the help of the ruler's son & his fired main counselor will save alll the children trapped in the underground city & will catch up on the crowd of working class people looking for vengeance in the name of their supposedly lost children. Luckily the good news will change the atmosphere, though not the fate of the false Maria who is already burning at the stake, which reveals she is nothing but a robot. Then the inventor had managed to recapture the real Maria & the ruler's son runs after them. The inventor will be defeated, Maria saved & some kind of peace reestablished between the leader/foreman of the working class & the ruler of the metropolis, thanks to the intermission of the ruler's son who appears to be the Messiah or go-between they were waiting for. The interest of the film here is that it is messianic because it foresees what is going to happen though it tries to avoid it or preach a middle way between the two extremes. We have to think of H.G. Wells & his Time Machine. The two worlds are not incompatible, just not able to communicate any more. The solution, the way out is for Fritz Lang the possibility to communicate again for these two classes, with a strong common ground which is found in some kind of christian inspiration mainly from the Book of Revelation. But the main interest of the film is technical. It is a film that associates some kind of animation, the filming of pictures, images & objects, & the filming of real characters in the setting that these images represent. For the period it was very advanced & some of the special effects necessary for the depicting of the machines, the factories & the collapse of the underground city are extremely fascinating in spite of their rudimentary nature. It is also a mute film & the acting is extremely expressive, even if the quantity of text is rather important. The point is that the acting is probably just as expressive as Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton, but not in a comic direction, rather in a very tragic & dramatic way. These actors & actresses are able to reallly express feelings only with their body language. The best case is the main actress who plays both the real Maria & the false Maria. She manages to contrast the two parts perfectly & only with her body language. Some of the visions contained in this film have since been used by many other filmmakers & imitated or even copied by many fiction writers. We should also note the music which accompanies this film. It is slightly repetitive but keeps some liveliness & originality.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Paris Dauphine & University of Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne
