Metropolis (film)
Metropolis is a very early
science fiction/
fantasy film that was produced in
Germany during the brief years of the
Weimar Republic. It is set in a futuristic urban
dystopia, and by analogy is talking about the then-current political themes of
capitalism v.
communism and
workers revolution against the
privileged
elite class. In this context it parallels
Eisenstein's
Soviet propaganda film The Battleship Potemkin.
Released in
1927, it is a
black and white silent film created by the famed
Austrian director
Fritz Lang and was the most expensive silent film of that time, costing approximately 7 million
Marks (equivalent to around
$200 million in 2005).
[Richard Scheib (2003), Metropolis review. Retrieved November 24, 2005.]The screenplay was written in 1924 by Lang and his wife,
Thea von Harbou, and novelized in 1926 by von Harbou.
Note: There are multiple versions of
Metropolis. The original German version remained unseen for many decades. Of this version, a quarter of the footage is believed to be permanently lost. The
U.S. version, shortened and re-written by
Channing Pollock, is the most commonly known and discussed.
The film is set in the year 2026, in the extraordinary
Gothic skyscrapers of a corporate city-state, the
Metropolis of the title. Society has been divided into two rigid groups: one of planners or thinkers, who live high above the earth in luxury, and another of workers who live underground toiling to sustain the lives of the privileged. The city is run by Johhan 'Joh' Fredersen (
Alfred Abel).
The beautiful and evangelical figure Maria (
Brigitte Helm) takes up the cause of the workers. She advises the desperate workers not to start a revolution, and instead wait for the arrival of "The Mediator", who, she says, will unite the two halves of society. The son of Fredersen, Freder (
Gustav Fröhlich), becomes infatuated with Maria, and follows her down into the working underworld. In the underworld, he experiences first-hand the toiling lifestyle of the workers, and observes the casual attitude of their employers (he is disgusted after seeing an explosion at the "M-Machine", when the employers bring in new workers to keep the machine running before taking care of the men wounded or killed in the accident). Shocked at the working conditions, he joins her cause. Meanwhile his father Fredersen learns of the existence of the
robotic gynoid built by the scientist
Rotwang (
Rudolf Klein-Rogge) (Rotwang wanted to give the robot the appearance of Fredersen's dead wife, Hel) and orders Rotwang to give the Robot Maria's appearance. By doing so he wants to spread disorder among the workers that would give him the pretext to carry out a retaliatory strike against them.
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Rotwang with his invention, which in the original script was called Futura |
The real Maria is imprisoned in Rotwang's house in Metropolis, whilst the robot Maria becomes an
exotic dancer in the city's
nightclubs, fomenting discord amongst the rich young men of Metropolis. The workers are encouraged by the robot Maria into a full-scale rebellion, and destroy the "Heart Machine", the power station of the city. However, the destruction of the machine leads to the city's
reservoirs overfilling, which floods the workers' underground city and seemingly drowns their children, who were left behind in the riot. (The children are in fact saved in a heroic rescue by Freder and Maria, without the workers' knowledge.) When the workers realise this, they attack out into the gridlocked and confused upper city, foreshadowing the "destruction of the enemy in the citadel" ending still seen in films. The crowd breaks into the city's entertainment district and capture the robot Maria, whom they believe is responsible for drowning their children. They burn the robot at the stake, and when Freder sees this, he believes that it is the real Maria and despairs. However, Freder and the workers then realise that "Maria" is in fact a robot, and see the real Maria being chased by Rotwang along the battlements of the city's
cathedral. Freder chases after Rotwang, resulting in a climactic scene in which Joh Fredersen watches in terror as his son struggles with Rotwang on the cathedral's roof. Rotwang falls to his death, and Maria and Freder return to the street, where Freder unites Joh and Grot, the workers' leader, fulfilling his role as the "Mediator".
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One of the most impressive scenes features the flooding of the underground worker's city |
The film contains a scene where Maria retells the story of the
Tower of Babel from the
Biblical book of
Genesis, but in a way that connects it to the situation she and her fellow workers face. The scene changes from Maria to creative men of antiquity deciding to build a monument to the greatness of humanity, high enough to reach the heavens. Since they cannot build their monument by themselves, they concentrate workers to build it for them. The camera focuses on armies of workers unwillingly led to the construction site of the monument. They work hard but cannot understand the dreams of the Tower's designers, and the designers don't concern themselves with the fate of their workers. As the film explains "The dreams of a few had turned to the curses of many". The workers revolt and in their fury destroy the monument. As the scene ends and the camera returns to Maria, only ruins remain of the Tower of Babel. This retelling is notable in keeping the theme of the lack of communication from the original story but placing it in the context of relations between
social classes and omitting the presence of
God.
The entire film is dominated by technology, with Lang using a mixture of both 1920s and futuristic devices. Much of the technology portrayed in the film is unexplained and appears bizarre—such as the enormous "M-Machine" and the "Heart Machine". Whilst the Heart Machine is implied to be the electrical power station of the city and appears to be a kind of
Wimshurst machine, the purpose of the M-Machine is never revealed, despite it playing a significant part in the film. While Freder is in the subterranean factories, he swaps places with an exhausted worker and takes over his seemingly pointless task—moving the dials of a gigantic clock-like device in accordance with flashing light bulbs. It is possible that the pointlessness of the task was purposeful. However, other machines featured in the film anticipate future inventions: Joh Fredersen's office has a
television-like device which allows him to contact his overseers in the factories, and built into his desk is an electronic console which allows him to remotely open doors, etc. Also in his office is an automated electronic ticker-tape, with a weary and frustrated clerk constantly writing down the latest stock market prices. In the city itself, we see a mixture of futuristic
monorails and
airships combined with 1920s-style
cars and
aircraft.
The ultimate expression of technology in the entire film is the female
robot built by Rotwang, referred to as the
Maschinenmensch or "Machine Human" although it is often translated as "Machine Man" in the US version. In the original German version Rotwang's creation is a reconstruction of his dead lover, a woman called Hel (a reference to the
Norse goddess Hel). Both Rotwang and Joh Fredersen were in love with her. She chose Fredersen and became Freder's mother, though she died in childbirth. Rotwang, insanely jealous and angry about her death, creates the
Maschinenmensch Hel. In the US version, The Machine Man is merely a fully functioning
automaton which can be programmed to perform a variety of human tasks, whilst its appearance can be synthesised to resemble any human being.
However, the Machine Man is sentient, and has its own agenda different to that of its creators. It performs the required task of fomenting revolution, but then becomes an exotic dancer, turning the young men of Metropolis against one another for its own entertainment. This echoes themes from
Karel Čapek's 1921 play
Rossum's Universal Robots and anticipates the themes of many late-
twentieth century films, in which seemingly unsentient machines gain consciousness and turn against the intentions of their creators.
Part of
Fritz Lang's visual inspiration for the movie came during a trip to
Manhattan,
New York. He is quoted on the
DVD of the Murnau Foundation version as saying "I saw the buildings like a vertical curtain, opalescent, and very light. Filling the back of the stage, hanging from a sinister sky, in order to dazzle, to diffuse, to hypnotize." Lang, in his later years did claim New York inspired Metropolis, but a mention of the script for Metropolis being recently finished is made in the Licht-Bild-Bühne journal of June 1924, Lang traveled to New York in October of the same year.
Rotwang's home is fitted with a
pentagram which should be seen as being an icon of
Pythagoreanism, an ancient Greek order under
Pythagoras that believed in
geometry as opposed to
religion. The Machine-Man he created was meant to save humans from the Machine-God
Moloch which demanded sacrifice to continue working as witnessed by Freder upon his first visit to the Worker's City. Rotwang's punishment thus stemmed from him not controlling his invention, it was Joh Frederson who had ordered Rotwang to use the Machine-Man for the oppression of the workers.
The film features
special effects and set design that still impress modern audiences with their visual impact—the film contains cinematic and thematic links to
German Expressionism, though the architecture as portrayed in the film appears based on contemporary
Modernism and
Art Deco. The latter, a brand-new style in
Europe at the time, had not reached mass production yet and was considered an emblem of the
bourgeois class, and similarly associated with the ruling class in the film.
Rotwang's Art Deco laboratory, with its lights and industrial machinery is considered by some to be a forerunner of the
Streamline Moderne style, highly influential on the look of
Frankenstein style laboratories and 'mad science' in pop culture. When applied to science fiction, this style is sometimes called
Raygun Gothic.
The effects expert,
Eugen Schüfftan, created innovative visual displays widely acclaimed in following years. Among the effects used are
miniatures of the city, a camera on a swing, and most notably, the so-called
Schüfftan process, later also used by
Alfred Hitchcock.
The Maschinenmensch, actually played by
Brigitte Helm was created by Walter Schultze-Mittendorf. A chance discovery of a sample of "plastic wood" (a kneadable substance designed as wood-filler) allowed him to sculpt the costume like a suit of armour over a plaster cast of the actress. Spraypainted a mix of silver and bronze, it helped create some of the most memorable moments on film. Helm suffered greatly during the filming of these scenes, wearing this rigid and uncomfortable costume, cutting and bruising her. But
Fritz Lang insisted on her playing the part, even if nobody would know it was her.
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2002 poster for the restored version |
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DVD cover for the 2002 restored version |
On
January 10,
1927 the film premiered in
Berlin, with moderate success. In the
United States, the movie was shown in a version edited by the American playwright
Channing Pollock, who almost completely obscured the original plot, considered too controversial by the American distributors, and is considerably shortened. In Germany, a version similar to Pollock's was shown on
August 5. Only copies of these versions—mostly considered as badly-edited—remain today.
Several restored versions (all of them missing footage) were released in the 1980s and 1990s, running for around 90 minutes.
In 1984, a new restoration and edit of the film was compiled by
Giorgio Moroder, a music producer who specialized in pop-rock
soundtracks for motion pictures. Moroder's version of the film introduced a new modern rock-and-roll soundtrack for the film, as well as playing at 24 frames per second and integrating the captions into the film itself as
subtitles. His version of the film is only 80 minutes in length. The "Moroder version" of
Metropolis sparked heated debate among film buffs and fans, with outspoken critics and supporters of the film falling into equal camps.
Enno Patalas made an exhaustive attempt to restore the movie in 1986. This restoration was by that time the most accurate, thanks to the script and the musical score that had been discovered. The basis of Patalas' work was a copy in the
Museum of Modern Art's collection.
The
F.W. Murnau Foundation released a 123-minute, digitally restored version in 2002, undertaken by Martin Koerber. It included title cards describing the action in the missing sequences and, again, the original music score. (It is believed that the original film was over 210 minutes.)
Most silent films were shot at speeds of between 16 and 20 frames per second, but the digitally restored version with soundtrack plays at the standard sound speed of 24 frames per second (25 on
PAL and
SECAM videos and DVDs), which often makes the action look unnaturally fast. The reason for showing the film at this speed is unclear; a documentary on the Kino DVD edition states that it may have been filmed at 25 frames per second, but this is disputed. There have been reports stating that the world premiere of
Metropolis was shown at 24 frame/s, but these, too, are unconfirmed. In the 1970s the
BBC prepared a version with electronic sound that ran at 18 frames per second and consequently had much more realistic-looking movement. Since there is no concrete evidence of Fritz Lang's wishes on this subject, it continues to be hotly debated within the silent film community.
There have been many soundtracks created for Metropolis, by many different artists. A list of releases includes, but is not limited to:
*1927 -
Gottfried Huppertz. Berndt Heller arrangement for recent Eureka special edition DVD.
*1984 -
Giorgio Moroder. Restored and produced the 80-minute 1984 rerelease. This soundtrack includes pop tracks from the likes of
Pat Benatar,
Bonnie Tyler and
Freddie Mercury, resulting in controversy from film purists. Not available on DVD.
*1991 - Club Foot Orchestra. Performed live to accompany the 80-minute Moroder version. Soundtrack available on CD.
*1991 -
The Alloy Orchestra formed to create a new original score to Moroder's version of Metropolis.
*1994 - Galeshka Moravioff. Score used in one of the variants of Filmmuseum Munich restoration.
*1995 - Martin Matalon. Score used in another variant of Filmmuseum Munich restoration.
*1995 - Joxan Goikoetxea. Basque composer. Availability unknown.
*1998 - Peter Osborne. Synth orchestral / electronic. For JEF/Eureka 139-minute B&W DVD version, released only in UK. Not available on CD.
*1999 - Angel Tech. 3-piece group from Bristol, UK. Performed live to various versions in 1999/2000. Availability unknown.
*1999 - Wetfish. Two-man Montreal band. Availability unknown.
*2000 - After Quartet. Jazz group. Score by Brian McWhorter. Accompanies the 80-minute Moroder cut. Soundtrack available on CD.
*2000 - Dan Schaaf. Performed live for festivals in 2000/2001. Available on CD.
*2001 - Mute Life Dept. Portuguese group. Accompanied Filmmuseum Munich version, for live performance at Porto 2001. Available on CD.
*2001 - Jeff Mills. Electronic artist. Available on CD.
*2001 - Bernd Schultheis and Sofia's Radio Orchestra. Accompaniment for film festivals in 2001. Availability unknown.
*2002 - The original Gottfried Huppertz score was rerecorded in this entirety for the DVD release by Kino International.
*2004 - Abel Korzeniowski. Availability unknown.
*2005 - South Australian group "The New Pollutants". Performed live for festivals 2005/2006. Availability unknown.
Metropolis's theme is connected with both
fascism and
communism — the most powerful political ideologies of that time in Europe. The idea of the film is that the workers are oppressed, and their leader is Maria. In order to destroy the workers, Fredersen sends a robot who, disguised as Maria, leads the workers to destroy the dam and flood their homes. Many people see the film as being
anti-capitalist, showing how the rich exploit the efforts of workers. This is supported by the fact that the rich live high above in a shining city while the working class lives in misery underground. Indeed, the viewer is led to believe that there is little to no chance for the workers to move up in society due to their wealthy oppressors. Others interpret this as an
anti-communist message, claiming that the communists, by calling the workers to revolt are leading them to destruction. Some see the film as a critique on both
capitalism and
communism, calling for a third option. Maria repeatedly claims that what the workers need is a Mediator. Some interpret this as a reference to the fascist concept of
Corporate Statism, in which the ruling party acts as a mediator between the workers and the capitalists.
There is a rumour that Metropolis was one of the favorite films of
Adolf Hitler and he tried to get
Fritz Lang to make
propaganda films for him. Allegedly Hitler's interpretation of the film saw the oppressors, specifically Fredersen, as being Jewish. This rumour has its roots in a passage in
Siegfried Kracauer's book
From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film::Joseph Goebbels, the head of the Nazi party's Ministry of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda organization became interested in Metropolis, too. According to Lang, "… he told me that, many years before, he and the Führer had seen my picture Metropolis in a small town, and Hitler had said at that time that he wanted me to make Nazi pictures" (Kracauer 164).
However, if this rumor is true, it would mean that Hitler was unaware of, or chose to ignore, the fact that Lang was half-Jewish.
Most of Metropolis was filmed at
UFA studios at
Babelsberg Studios and was enormously expensive. Some sources put the total cost at four times the original budget. The official costs accumulated to 7 million mark (about 200 million dollars now). These cost overruns were a contributing factor in UFA's financial instability through the late 1920s and its subsequent appropriation by Nazi interests.
This film has influenced many
science fiction movies to the present day, including
Blade Runner,
Dark City,
Brazil, the
Star Wars series, and
The Matrix. The "Tower of Babel" structure is a key element in several films; in turn, Metropolis's tower appears to derive from
Hans Poelzig's stocky, polygonal, modernistic water tower built in
Posen (Poznań) in 1911. But the earliest films to be influenced were
Just Imagine of 1930, which also featured a city with much air transport among and between skyscrapers connected by bridges, and Vultan's city in the first
Flash Gordon serial of 1936, which had a sweatshop controlled by an operator who moved the needle of a huge dial while standing up.
*Rotwang, the film's
mad scientist, has lost his right
hand and has replaced it with a black
prosthesis. In the film
Dr. Strangelove, directed by
Stanley Kubrick and first released on
January 29,
1964, the
German mad scientist Dr. Strangelove wears a black glove on his right hand, which he cannot consciously control. This is considered to be a tribute to the earlier film.
*A similar theme shows up in George Lucas' famous
Star Wars films, in which the heroes,
Anakin Skywalker and later his son
Luke Skywalker, lose their right hands in combat and each has it replaced with a prosthesis, wearing a black glove over the robotic hand. The city-planet
Coruscant looks like a more complex Metropolis. According to the
Star Wars documentary
Empire of Dreams,
C-3PO was modeled after the Maria robot.
*Yet another example of the missing right hand archetype is
Philip K. Dick's masterpiece,
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. An important element of the story is that Palmer Eldritch, the antagonist, possesses a robotic right arm, as well as artificial eyes, and a deformed jaw.
*A poster of the original movie shows up in the movie
Hackers.
*Many of the scenes involving Rotwang seem to echo (or prophesy; it is not entirely clear) the many film adaptations of
Mary Shelley's science-ficton novel
Frankenstein, particularly the part where the Machine-Man is created.
*The ending of the film likewise is a piece of much imitated classic cinema. The climactic struggle between Rotwang and Freder over the life of Maria is strikingly similar to the many early film adaptations of
Victor Hugo's novel
The Hunchback of Notre Dame, as well as the climatic scene in
Tim Burton's
Batman.
*A
musical theater adaptation was staged in
London in 1989. See
Metropolis (musical). Another musical adaptation was created in
Italy in 2004 called "Metropolis Il Musical".
*An
anime adaptation of
Osamu Tezuka's
manga Metropolis was released in the U.S. in 2002. See
Metropolis (2001 movie). The anime series
Big O seems to draw inspiration from
Metropolis as well.
*
Thomas Pynchon's novel
Gravity's Rainbow contains several references to Fritz Lang's film, mostly voiced through the German rocket scientists and engineers who comprise a large part of its cast.
*The film has inspired or been included in several music videos, including
Madonna's "
Express Yourself", Spanish band
Mecano's "7 de septiembre",
System of a Down's "Sugar", Haddaway's "Life" and
Queen's "
Radio Ga Ga".
*
Jeff Mills released an album named
Metropolis inspired by the film in 2001.
*
Jerry Siegel and
Joe Shuster decided to name
Superman's
base of operations after the Metropolis of the film.
[Jim Steranko. Forward. Superman: Archive Editions. Volume 1]*In 1997,
Jean-Marc Lofficier and
Roy Thomas and edgy expressionist artist
Ted McKeever present an "Elseworlds" story in which
Clark Kent and
Superman inhabit the world of Lang's Metropolis in
DC Comic's book
Superman's Metropolis.*
Kraftwerk recorded a song named "Metropolis" for their 1978 album,
Die Mensch Maschine. They were later offered the opportunity of scoring the 1984 restoration of the film, which eventually deferred to
Giorgio Moroder.
*The 1994 full speech
computer game Beneath a Steel Sky is set in a similar dystopian Metropolis. Its
soundtrack is similar to
Metropolis.
*Images from the film were used for the cover of the
Be Bop Deluxe album
Live in the Air Age*In episode "Flame Street" from
Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future TV series, members of the Resistance are cornered by the evil robot Blastaar and his troopers. During the laser fight, several posters of Maria can be easily spotted on the wall of their shelter.
*The film fell into
public domain in the United States, but was restored to
copyright in 1998. The lawsuit
Golan v. Gonzalez unsuccessfully attempted to block its copyright restoration.
*On
November 15 2005, an original poster from 1927 (one of only four known in existence) was sold for a world record price of
$690,000 by the Reel Poster Gallery in
London.
[ Lang film poster fetches record, BBC news, November 15, 2005.]*
The official site of the new restoration*
About restoring 'Metropolis'*
Metropolis web site*
Metropolis page at the
UNESCO Memory of the World Register
*
Giorgio Moroder Discography*
Giorgio Moroder and Metropolis tribute Website
