Metropolis DVD
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 Rating: - The city as nightmare
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 and 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 and it was indeed the specter of communism. Curiously Lang ends the film with a blatant political statement. He has labor and capital reluctantly shake hands. I find this curious because there is little doubt that for the previous two and 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, and other humans more like brains without bodies, wet wear blind to anything but production and keeping the hive buzzing.

Metropolis is like a hive or an ant colony except that the workers never get to go out and forage. Their world is dark and steamy; they are for the most part without hope as they come and 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 and the capitalists the mind. Maria says, "Between the mind that plans and the hands that build there must be a Mediator, and this must be the heart." Maria is a prophet who predicts the coming of this Mediator, who one might, in all innocence, believe to be a nice stand-in for, say, Jesus Christ. Politically speaking, then, perhaps what Lang is saying is that the war between communism and capitalism will eventually 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 and 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 and 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 and contorted facial expressions. Brigitte Helm, who plays Maria and her deadly clone (and the robot and 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 and her wild, demonic (and seductive) expressions that allow us to clearly see when she is the evil clone and not the demur, heroic Maria. For me she was the most memorable part of the film.

There is quite a bit of trivia and 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, and it was the most expensive film made up until that time, and employed a huge cast.

But see this for Fritz Lang's stunning and haunting visuals, which remain even to this day as striking works of art.

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