Metropolis (1927)

Date Seen: 6/14/17

Score: 5/5

DIRECTOR: Fritz Lang

PRODUCER: Erich Pommer

STUDIO: UFA

SCREENPLAY: Thea von Harbou

CINEMATOGRAPHY: Karl Freund, Günther Rittau & Walter Ruttmann

Honestly kind of hot

Brigitte Helm

Gustav Fröhlich

Josephat, played by Theodor Loos

The "Thin Man," played by Fritz Rasp

Rotwang the evil scientist, played by Rudolph Klein-Rogge

Rotwang shows Joh Fredersen (Alfred Abel) his creation

Freder (Gustav Fröhlich) confronts the Seven Deadly Sins

The Male Gaze

Theodor Loos and Gustav Fröhlich

The Evil Maria burns at the stake

Fritz's Lang's Metropolis has been widely considered one of the most iconic sci-fi films ever made, as well as masterpiece of German expressionism. I have a vague memory of seeing some of the film's imagery online and at some point associating it with the time in which it was made- the late 1920s- and being completely blown away. Metropolis is a sophisticated film, with layers of meaning and interpretive possibilities, translated through the incredible cinematography, production value, direction, artistic achievement, and expressionist performances. My only regret is that much of the film remains lost or otherwise damaged. After director Fritz Lang produced a version of the film that dramatically cut much of the original, intending it for American audiences, the excess film was considered lost until being recovered in rough but viewable shape at a film museum in Buenos Aires in 2008. The restored edition of the film includes this found footage, painstakingly inserted into the working film, and despite some minor appearance differences, the newly put together film is as close to the original 1927 film audiences would have seen in German cinemas. 

Metropolis is a dystopian science fiction story based on a novel by Fritz Lang's wife, who also wrote the screenplay. It's very much aligned with an Aldous Huxley dystopia, enough to make me wonder whether his own science fiction novel, Brave New World, published four years after Metropolis premiered, was at least in part inspired by the representation of the organized chaos present in Lang's film. Although the dystopian society in Metropolis much more closely resembles Airstrip One in George Orwell's 1949 novel 1984, thanks to the theme of intense class struggle and one man's attempt to overthrow the system with the help of his illicit lover. As I've said before, there is a lot going on in Metropolis, to the point at which it seems futile to try to interpret it or find one clear message. So for the purpose of this piece I've done some research and I'll be talking a little bit about some of the film's mixed messages, as well as its importance as a historical artifact and what we can derive from it today.

In his essay on the film, Kenneth Jurkiewicz writes that "as a reflection of the paranoiac hysteria and ideological schizophrenia of the closing days of Weimar Germany, Metropolis is without equal." This assessment, written in the year of the fall of the Berlin Wall, presents an interesting reading of the film's political messages and tensions. Certainly there is a kind of prophetic atmosphere of an early German film in which a powerful leader subdues the masses, which are presented as groups lacking individuality and prone to blind obedience. The film also has a pretty explicitly socialist message, the epigram that Catherine Russell has interpreted in the following manner: "von Harbou's pithy motto of the Heart mediating between the Head (capital) and the Hands (labor) lent itself well to the National Socialist Program," the political party that would eventually become the Nazi Party.

Some sources I consulted made the point that Metropolis was one of Adolf Hitler's favorite films, and that Joseph Goebbels watched it over and over again in the years leading up to the war. The film has a troubled history, as any movie made so close to the rise of Hitler possibly could. Its desperation, its depiction of out of control mobs and violent clashes between the proletariat, the bourgeoise, and the state so unequivocally brings to mind the hysteria of the German people leading up to the war. In my opinion, the political reading is one of the easiest interpretations of Metropolis to formulate, though certainly not the easiest to come to terms with. The film argues for a reconciliation that seems impossible, and beyond impossible, simply ridiculous. Perhaps the most outlandish idea in the entire film is that by simply making the heads of the proletariat and the bourgeoise shake hands all will be well. The idea that there could be a mediator in reality is, as the film touches on, relegated to religious belief.

Here's where I find the most complexity of the film's many interwoven ideas: the gender and sexuality interpretation. Although Metropolis has much to do with both Huxley and Orwell's masterpieces, it diverges when discussing gender and sexual roles for women. 1984 and Brave New World rely on a sense of restricted sexual freedom, whether that's the inability to engage in sex for pleasure or the inability to abstain from it. Metropolis is not without its own discussion of sexuality, but it goes about this task in a much less explicit, much more vague way. Taking cues from sources ranging from the Bible to Freud, one of the many layers of Metropolis deals with the implications surrounding femininity. As I watched the film and reflected on it afterwards, my question was this: What are the implications of women serving in only two roles, either the pure saint represented by Maria, or the sinful Whore of Babylon represented by her robot double? Obviously, with the level of complexity that the film contains, it's difficult to find a clear answer. It seems like some readings of the film could produce a feminist understanding, in which the film serves to expose the ways in which men manipulate women to cause destruction. Yet there is an alternative reading that instead says that women are either angels or demons, and that once they're corrupted by sex or a particular political agenda, they will trick men with their sexuality and ultimately lead to their ruin. This Whore of Babylon idea is explored throughout the text and visuals of the film, and it begs the question, what was Fritz Lang trying to say about women, particularly sexually liberated ones?

Maybe this is the wrong way to look at the film. Perhaps Lang and von Harbou were not trying to make a judgment on women but were instead trying to tie the Whore of Babylon symbolism back into a religious interpretation, in which the evil woman represents alternative faith. If that's the case, the robot Maria could represent anything opposed to the social order, and that she uses her sexual appeal in order to seduce the masses to overthrow the establishment. This theory ties together the complicated political and sexual themes of the film, but is still without an easy understanding. Personally I have no idea what the film means, but it obviously has a variety of interpretations, many of which are suggested by visual clues.

The mise-en-scène of Metropolis is without parallel. Russell writes in her review that "the panoply of design components include Orientalist motifs, Soviet-inspired constructivism, New York skyscrapers, retro-Napoleonic fashions, Teutonic Gothicism and Viennese Jugendstil." Certainly the film is a conglomerate of many different styles and schools of design, from Art Deco to Art Nouveau to Bauhaus modernism. It's a visual delight with pioneering special effects and fantastic lighting design. Fritz Lang is known to have put his cast and crew through hell and back during filming, which took two years and over five million Reichsmark. His actors, especially Brigitte Helm, were often physically hurt on-set by Lang's hyperrealistic demands for the film, which included Helm actually being tied to a stake with a burning pile of wood underneath her, which caused her dress to catch fire. Emotionally the shooting was not much better, with Lang causing serious distress to his actors by making them reshoot certain scenes upwards of 200 times before being satisfied. Lang's perfectionism, from his impeccably-crafted, artfully designed sets to his iron grip on the cast members and their sanities, had two results: the chaos of an over-budget, only moderately successful film that may have scarred the actors and crew, and a modernist silent masterpiece.

We may never know what Lang intended the film to mean. Richard Duff writes in his own review, "Metropolis embodies all of the themes that Lang worked with throughout his life- mob violence, insanity, seduction, good and evil, love and mysticism, the innocent hero, the master mind, religion, magic and science. But it is remembered not so much for its content, which is at times naively sentimental, but for the way Lang's vision and directorial genius manages to transcend such limitations." Truly, Metropolis is an iconic film, and an important one, both as an intellectual puzzle, a visual masterpiece, and an inspiration for all science fiction and dystopian films to follow it. 

Sources Used:

"Metropolis," by Catherine Russell, published in Cinéaste, Vol. 29, No. 1 (2003)

"Metropolis," by Joseph Ewens, published in Film International, issue 47.

"Using Film in the Humanities Classroom: The Case of 'Metropolis'" by Kenneth Jurkiewicz, published in The English Journal, Vol. 79, No. 3 (1990)

"Apocalyptic Imagery in Fritz Lang's 'Metropolis'" by Ake Bergvall, published in Literature/Film Quarterly, Vol. 40, No. 4 (2012)

"Metropolis" from Wikipedia

"The Whore of Babylon" from Wikipedia

All photos were sourced from Pinterest, Giphy, and FilmGrab.com