Everything about Metropolis Movie totally explained
Metropolis is a
science fiction film created by the famed
Austrian-German director
Fritz Lang. It was produced in
Germany in the
Babelsberg Studios and released in
1927 during the height of the
Weimar Republic. It was the most expensive silent film of the time, costing approximately 7 million
Reichsmark (equivalent to around
$200 million
USD in 2005) to make.
The screenplay was written in 1924 by Lang and his wife,
Thea von Harbou, and novelized by von Harbou in 1926. It is set in a futuristic urban
dystopia and examines a common science fiction theme of the day: the social crisis between
workers and
owners in
capitalism.
Plot
» Note: There are multiple versions of
Metropolis. The original, longest version remained unseen except for its initial premiere and release in Germany in 1927. Of this version, a quarter of the footage is now 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 Johann '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 firsthand 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 workers' living conditions, he joins her cause.
Meanwhile his father Fredersen consults with the scientist
Rotwang (
Rudolf Klein-Rogge), an old companion and rival. Fredersen learns that the papers found with dead workers are plans of the catacombs and witnesses a speech by Maria. Maria gives the workers hope by preaching about the coming of a "mediator" who would be the "heart" between the "head" (or Fredersen the conceiver of the city) and the "hands" (or the people who labor to make it a reality). Fredersen also learns that Rotwang has built a
robotic gynoid. Rotwang wants to give the
robot the appearance of Hel, his former lover who left him for Fredersen and died giving birth to Freder. Fredersen persuades him to give the robot Maria's appearance, as he wants to use the robot to tighten his control over the workers. Rotwang complies out of ulterior motives: he knows of Freder's and Maria's love and wants to use the robot to deprive Fredersen of his son.
The real Maria is imprisoned in Rotwang's house in Metropolis, while the robot Maria is first showcast as an
exotic dancer in the upper city's
Yoshiwara nightclub, fomenting discord among the rich young men of Metropolis. After descending to the worker's city, the robot Maria encourages the workers into a full-scale rebellion, and they destroy the "Heart Machine", the power station of the city. Neither Freder nor Grot, the foreman of the Heart Machine, can stop them. As the machine is destroyed, the city's
reservoirs overflow, flooding the workers' underground city and seemingly drowning the children, who were left behind in the riot. In fact, Freder and Maria have saved them in a heroic rescue, without the workers' knowledge.
When the workers realize the damage they've done and that their children are lost, they attack the upper city. Under the leadership of Grot, they chase the human Maria, whom they hold responsible for their riot. As they break into the city's entertainment district, they run into the Yoshiwara crowd and capture the robot Maria, while the human Maria manages to escape. The workers burn the captured Maria at the stake; Freder, believing this to be the human Maria, despairs but then he and the workers realize that the burned Maria is in fact a robot.
Meanwhile, the human Maria is 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 Fredersen (the "head") and Grot (the "hands"), fulfilling his role as the "Mediator" (the "heart").
Cast
Architecture and visual effects
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, hadn't 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 scientist' 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, the robot character played by
Brigitte Helm, was created by Walter Schultze-Mittendorf. A chance discovery of a sample of "plastic wood" (a pliable 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. Walter Schulze-Mittendorf (Mittendorff), the sculptor, is still the owner of the copyrights for the Maschinenmensch – Robotdesign.
Themes
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 and the creator of the world, high enough to reach the stars. Since they can't build their monument by themselves, they contract workers to build it for them for wages. The camera focuses on armies of workers led to the construction site of the monument. They work hard but can't understand the dreams of the Tower's designers, and the designers don't concern themselves with the mind of their workers. As the film explains, "The dreams of a few had turned to the curses of many". It then ironically inverts the original story's conclusion, noting that the planners and the workers spoke the same language but didn't understand each other. 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.
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." The Heart Machine is implied to be the electrical power station of the city and appears to be a massive electric generator, but the purpose of the M-Machine or the other vast machinery around it's never revealed. The dial machine at which Freder works also has no explanation in the film, although the novel reveals that it runs the massive system of
Paternoster-lifts in the New Tower of Babel. Technology is also visible in Fredersen's office: he's a
television-like device which allows him to contact the foreman in the factories, and built into his desk is an electronic console which allows him to remotely open doors. The office features two unfamiliar clocks: a
24-hour clock and a ten-hour clock, ten hours being the length of the workers' shifts. In the city itself, we see a mixture of futuristic
monorails and
airships combined with 1920s-style
cars and
aircraft.
Dualism is a running theme amongst many of the characters, who demonstrate that they can't be confined to the rigid class system of the city. The workers are dehumanised, existing either as part of a mob or as work-units, almost part of the machines themselves (the shots of them working don't let the viewer see their faces, and they work and move as rhythmically as the machines they operate), and yet they're also human beings who are being exploited. Rotwang is an intelligent philosopher, in many ways far more prescient than Joh Frederson, but also an obsessive and selfish man who uses his skills for his own purposes, and by the end of the film has deteriorated almost into machine-like monomania. Joh Frederson can't reconcile his role as ruler of the city and as a father, which leads him to make rash and damaging decisions. Meanwhile, Maria expresses this theme most literally of all by being physically replicated as a robot.
The ultimate expression of technology in the entire film is the female
robot built by Rotwang, referred to as the
Maschinenmensch ("Machine Human" or "Machine Man"). 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 other versions, The Machine Man is merely a fully functioning
automaton designed to replace human workers, whilst its appearance can be synthesised to resemble any human being - little or no connection is made between Hel and the robot, or Rotwang's motives in creating it.
In the U.S. version, the Machine Man is sentient, and eventually Rotwang loses control of it. 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. In the original version, the robot is apparently following Rotwang's instructions throughout, implying that the ruination of Metropolis and its master is actually the inventor's goal, not one chosen by the machine itself.
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 his visit to 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 decorated with a
pentagram which may be seen as being a symbol of
Pythagoreanism (an ancient Greek philosophy), magic/
occultism (the pentagram is inverted in Rotwang's laboratory),
Freemasonry, or
Judaism.
Release
On
January 10,
1927 the film premiered in
Berlin with moderate success. The film was cut and re-edited to change many key elements before screening. Also, theatre managers saw to it that the film was screened at an incredibly fast speed of up to 26 frames per second (as at its Berlin premiere). This affected the rhythm and pace of the original film, which had most likely been cranked at the standard speed of 16 frames per second. The butchered, sped-up version which was presented to European and American audiences in 1927 was disjointed and illogical in parts.
American and foreign theatre managers were generally unwilling to allow more than ninety minutes to a feature in their program, during a period when film attendance figures were high. Metropolis suffered as the original version was thought to be too long. Few people outside of Berlin saw Metropolis as Fritz Lang originally intended. 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.
Despite the film's later reputation, some contemporary critics panned it.
New York Times critic Mourdant Hall called it a "technical marvel with feet of clay." The
Times went on the next month to publish a lengthy review by
H. G. Wells who accused it of "foolishness, cliché, platitude, and muddlement about mechanical progress and progress in general." He faulted
Metropolis for its premise that automation created drudgery rather than relieving it, wondered who was buying the machines' output if not the workers, and found parts of the story derivative of Shelley's
Frankenstein,
Karel Čapek's robot stories, and his own
The Sleeper Awakes.
Joseph Goebbels was impressed however and clearly took the films message to heart. In a speech of 1928 he noted: 'The political bourgeoisie is about to leave the stage of history. In its place advance the oppressed producers of the
head and hand, the forces of Labour, to begin their historical mission.’[emphasisadded]
Fritz Lang himself expressed dissatisfaction with the film. In an interview with
Peter Bogdanovich (available in
Who The Devil Made It...), he expressed his reservations.
» :
"The main thesis was Mrs. Von Harbou's, but I'm at least 50 percent responsible because I did it. I wasn't so politically minded in those days as I'm now. You can't make a social-conscious picture in which you say that the intermediary between the hand and the brain is the heart. I mean, that's a fairy tale--definitely. But I was very interested in machines. Anyway, I didn't like the picture--thought it was silly and stupid--then, when I saw the astronauts: what else are they but part of a machine? It's very hard to talk about pictures--should I say now that I like Metropolis
because something I've seen in my imagination comes true, when I detested it after it was finished?"
In his profile for Lang featured in the same book, which prefaces the interview, Bogdanovich suggested that Lang's distaste for his own film also stemmed from the Nazi party's fascination with the film.
Restorations and re-releases
Several restored versions (all of them missing varying degrees of footage) were released in the 1980s and 1990s, running for 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. Although it restored a number of previously missing scenes and plot details from the original release, his version of the film runs to only 80 minutes in length, although this is mainly due to the original
intertitles being replaced with
subtitles, and being run at 24fps. 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. There have even been petitions to get the Moroder cut alongside the uncut version for future releases on DVD.
Enno Patalas made an exhaustive attempt to restore the movie in 1986. This restoration was the most accurate for its time, 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 film fell into the United States
public domain, but its
copyright was restored in 1998. The lawsuit
Golan v. Ashcroft unsuccessfully attempted to block Metropolis' copyright restoration.
The
F.W. Murnau Foundation released a 118-minute, digitally restored version in 2002, undertaken by Martin Koerber. It included the original music score and title cards describing the action in the missing sequences. Lost clips were gleaned from museums and archives around the world, and computers were used to digitally clean each frame and repair minor defects. The original score has been re-recorded with an orchestral ensemble. Many scenes have still not been recovered, however, and are considered lost. Among the missing scenes are the adventures of 11811, a worker who trades places with Freder; Maria's incarceration; Rotwang's gloating and her subsequent escape; and scenes which establish the longstanding rivalry between Joh Fredersen and Rotwang.
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 speed of 25 frames per second, which is the standard speed of
PAL video (the US DVD is a
conversion from PAL to
NTSC). This speed often makes the action look unnaturally fast. A documentary on the Kino DVD edition states that
Metropolis 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's no concrete evidence of Fritz Lang's wishes on this subject, it continues to be hotly debated within the silent film community.
Remakes and adaptations
Several remakes have been made of the original
Metropolis, including at least two
musical theater adaptations (see
Metropolis). The
2001 animated film Metropolis, is based on an original
manga by
Osamu Tezuka (see
Metropolis); Tezuka's manga was in fact inspired by a poster for the film, and he never saw the film itself. The anime's story is much closer to the original film than Tezuka's manga, although all three feature similar themes.
In December 2007, producer
Thomas Schuehly (
Alexander,
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen) gained the remake rights to
Metropolis. A director will be hired in early 2008.
Influence
The "Tower of Babel" structure is a key element in several films; in turn, Metropolis' 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.
The visual design for
Ridley Scott's
Blade Runner was influenced by Metropolis. These include a built up urban environment, in which the wealthy literally live above the workers, dominated by a huge building — the New Tower of Babel in Metropolis and the Tyrell Building in Blade Runner. "There is an awful lot of Metropolis in Blade Runner," says special effects superviser David Dryer, who used stills from Metropolis when lining up Blade Runner's miniature building shots.
Batman's
Gotham City, as designed by the late
Anton Furst for the 1989
Tim Burton Batman movie, borrows significantly from the noirish,
art deco mood of Metropolis. Although the most consistent depiction of Gotham is as an analogue of actual cities (such as
New York), comic book artists working on Batman stories frequently borrow elements from Furst.
Superman's Metropolis is a
comic book trilogy from
DC Comics in which
Superman,
Batman and
Wonder Woman inhabit the world of
German Expressionist cinema, including
Metropolis.
In the
1980s DC comic All-Star Squadron, there was a robotic villain named
Mekanique who had traveled from the future to ensure that her creator — Rotwang — would rule his era, and prevent a woman named Maria from starting a workers' revolution. The robot's back-story, and the images shown in the comic, are taken directly from
Metropolis.
In
Alan Moore's (in which various fictional characters exist side by side), Rotwang and Maria secretly served Kaiser Wilhelm II in the "Berlin Metropolis" before the First World War.
There are salient parallels in regards to the structure and socio-economic traits of the city of Metropolis and the city of
Midgar featured in the Japanese role playing game
Final Fantasy VII, as well as some of their inhabitants. In both cities the affluent citizens live decadent lifestyles at the expense of the working class who live in spatially lower segments of their respective cities. Also the theme of resented technology is evident in both cities. In addition the mad scientist stock character may be found in both cites. Moreover both cites adhere to the urban noir stereotype and there's a proletariat uprising in each city, both aided by a young woman of virtuous character, Maria in Metropolis and
Aeris in Midgar. Finally a parallel may be drawn between the Frederson father-son business relationship in Metropolis and the relationship between the president of the
Shinra corporation and his son
Rufus Shinra.
Chrono Trigger, another game released by Square Soft shortly prior to the development of Final Fantasy VII, also bears some similarities to Metropolis: the 12,000 B.C. era features a dualistic society where the Enlightened Ones live on the peaceful and majestic floating Island of Zeal, while the Earthbound Ones toil hard just to survive far below on the ground. The character Schala of Zeal is also alike in some respects to Maria of Metropolis: Schala tries to promote and assist the Earthbound Ones when possible, as Maria helps the workers of Metropolis. And while the workers of Metropolis had important work in tending to the "M-Machine," so also was the Mammon Machine of Chrono Trigger an important part of the Island of Zeal.
The electronic band
Kraftwerk has a song titled
Metropolis on
The Man-Machine album. The rock band
Motörhead has a song titled
Metropolis which was inspired by the movie.
The rock band
Queen uses some scenes of this film in the videoclip for their 1984 song
Radio Ga Ga, as did System of a Down in the video clip for their song Sugar. The
industrial rock band
Nine Inch Nails has similarities to
Metropolis in their video for
We're in This Together in which the singer,
Trent Reznor, is seen running through a city with a number of other men all wearing the same uniform, similar to that of the main character in Metropolis.
Madonna's video for her song
Express Yourself, directed by
David Fincher, is heavily influenced by
Metropolis.
In November 2007, U.K.
grime artist
Akala released a video for his song 'Electro Livin' that was entirely composed of scenes from the film 'Metropolis'.
Music
The original score
Like a lot of big budget films of the time,
Metropolis also received an original musical score meant to be performed by big orchestras accompanying the whole film in major theatres. The music was composed by Gottfried Huppertz who by then had already composed the original scores for Lang's
Die Nibelungen duology in 1924. As for this film, Huppertz composed a leitmotific big orchestral score for
Metropolis as well, which included a lot of elements from the music of
Richard Wagner and
Richard Strauss plus some mild modernisms for the city of the workers and the use of the popular
Dies Irae for some apocalyptical imagery. His music played a quite prominent role while shooting the picture since during principal photography a lot of scenes were already accompanied by him playing the piano to get a certain effect from the actors.
The score was rerecorded for the most recent DVD release of the film with Berndt Heller conducting the Rundfunksinfonieorchester Saarbrücken. It was the first release of the reasonably reconstructed movie, which was accompanied by the music that was originally intended for it.
Other Soundtracks
There have also been many other soundtracks created for
Metropolis, by many different artists. Releases include, but are not limited to:
1984 - Video Yesteryear, VHS release - The original score is performed by Rosa Rio at the Hammond organ.
1984 – Giorgio Moroder. Restored and produced the 80-minute 1984 rerelease. This soundtrack includes pop tracks by Moroder performed by the likes of Pat Benatar, Bonnie Tyler, Jon Anderson and Freddie Mercury, resulting in controversy from film purists. Soundtrack available on CD. Not available on DVD, but available on out-of print laserdiscs and videotapes.
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 – Rambo Amadeus, Serbia-based Montenegrin composer. At a movie screening at Sava Center, Rambo's music was played by Belgrade Philharmonic. The material was recorded in 1998 by Rambo himself along with Miroslav Savić and Heavily Manipulated Orchestra, and released as Metropolis B (Tour de Force).
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.
1996 – DJ Dado records techno version of the "Tower of Babel" section of Moroder's score. The German CD release contains several mixes.
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.
2002 - Art Zoyd - Metropolis
. French avant-garde/electronic band. Available on CD.
2004 – Abel Korzeniowski - Metropolis—Symphony of Fear (40-minute preview) (requires Flash).
2005 – South Australian group "The New Pollutants" (Benjamin Speed and Tyson Hopprich). Performed live for festivals 2005/2006. Not yet available as a release.
2006 - Original Film score created by Kurt Coble. Performed live by his 16pc Robotic Orchestra, The P.A.M. Band, Premiered in Littlefield Theater, University Of Bridgeport, Bridgeport,CT. Not yet available on CD
2007 - Original Film score played live by the VCS Radio Symphony accompanying the restored version of the film at Brenden Theatres in Vacaville, CA on August 1 & 2, 2007.Further Information
Get more info on 'Metropolis Movie'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://metropolis__film.totallyexplained.com">Metropolis (film) Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
