Metropolis (1927)

 

Film: Metropolis

Director: Fritz Lang

Country: Germany

Released: January 1927

Runtime: 148 minutes

Genre: Science Fiction

Studio: UFA

Influenced: Hitchcock, Ridley Scott, Terry Gilliam, George Lucas, Peter Jackson

Like many silent films, Fritz Lang's Metropolis has an incredible story about how it survived into the modern age, and the version I watched on MUBI is based on the original cut that was found in a film archive in Argentina in 2008, and then restored and released in 2010. This is shorter than the original premiere cut (now sadly lost) but longer than the many truncated edits that were released from 1927 onwards. At 2 and a half hours, Metropolis can be heavy going at times and for all its wonderful cutting-edge special effects (for the time), the story is a bit naff at times and the plot very clunky.

Lang's futuristic 21st century metropolis was based on the skyscrapers he saw on his first visit to New York. The start of the film gives a sense of the inhumanity of modern industry and the inequality it creates, with its city built on two levels – one for the rich and carefree and one for the slave-workers – and scenes that give the impression that Lang is making a Communist critique of capitalism. In one early scene there's a call back to Cabiria, with the mouth of a large Moloch appearing to the main character Freder in a vision, a symbol of the industrial machinery that is causing men to become lambs to the slaughter. 

Lang makes several Biblical references in the film, including to the Tower of Babel, which is a symbol for the vast project the film portrays, of slave labour being used to fulfil the megalomaniac fantasises of tyrants at the top. For Lang, what's missing in this unequal world split between the Head (industrialists) and Hands (labour) is the Heart – symbolised in the film by the love affair between Freder and Maria. Another key character is the inventor Rotwang, a madman with dishevelled hair that is reminiscent of Dr Caligari, an archetype that would also have echoes in the characters of Dr Strangelove and Doc Brown.

Setting the convoluted and sometimes silly story aside, what's most impressive about this film is the special effects, notably the incredible set building of the planes, trains & automobiles navigating the thriving metropolis. One of Metropolis' major innovations was the Schüfftan process, named after the movie's special effects supervisor, Eugen Schüfftan. To create this effect the entire future city was first built as a miniature model so that the camera could pan through it. Afterwards, mirrors were placed at a 45 degree angle in front of the camera lens to place the images of the characters into the miniature city, playing with the scale of the city and tricking the eye into seeing the actors in between large buildings or in locations such as magnificent gardens.

As well as the special effects, what I also love about the film are the moments of real strangeness, such as the lewd wink of the robot when it disguises itself as Maria, and the trippy special effects the first time Freder sees the robot Maria. She becomes the embodiment of Babylon from the Bible and then to cap it off, the Grim Reaper appears too. One day I must watch this sequence along with the Giorgio Moroder soundtrack.