Metropolis, (1927), directed by Fritz Lang

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "I Feel Love", by Donna Summer

"The mediator between brain and the hands must be the heart."

     In my little write up of Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages, which you can find on my Long Dark Marathon of the Soul articles, I gave a little explanation as to my feelings on the ‘genre’ known as silent movies. As I said then, it’s not so much that I have an aversion to soundless films as that I’m not very experienced with them as a viewer. I’ve grown up in an age where the ‘talkie’ is a common thing after all, where the context of a film is gathered from the dialogue as much as it is the physical action, and it’s quite to split your attention between other things and still understand the events of the film. Watching silent films took a level of concentration that I wasn’t used to, and so in the past I haven’t been as involved mentally as more modern cinema. Now that I’m principally a ‘movie guy’ however, who is attempting to gain respect and perhaps actual legal tender from writing about films (and maybe making them, if I ever get the opportunity), I decided that it’s best for me and all you out there in internet land if I expanded my horizons as much as I can. You know, rather than try and improve my writing ability or anything like that, because that sounds hard and I’m too lazy.

     #truthbombs

     Even in it’s infancy, film was seen as an artistic medium as well as a business venture, and one of the most influential artistic movements in film is Expressionism. The most famous form of Expressionism in film is perhaps the so-called German Expressionism, which was most popular in the years leading up to WWII (by then they had other things on their mind). These Expressionist films, Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari or F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu for example sought to portray an inner, subjective view of reality in direct opposition to realism, which resulted in the famous warped buildings, extensive shadows and highly stylized surrealistic tone that has become iconic. Many of these elements would later be adopted by directors like Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles, and there is a definite connection between German Expressionism and Universal’s horror films, particularly in Dracula and Frankenstein. Hell, Tim Burton probably would be directing Burger King commercials today if not for the visual style pioneered by the German Expressionist movement. We wouldn’t have had to suffer through his film remake of Dark Shadows though, so there’s a tradeoff.

     When it comes to silent era German expressionist film directors, you don’t get much bigger than Fritz Lang, and when you’re talking about silent era Fritz Lang films, you don’t get much bigger than Metropolis, released in 1927. I’ve had this particular film in my to-watch queue for quite a while now, but only now decided to check it out totally on a whim. I suppose it was my aversion to silent films that had kept me away for so long, and partially because I wasn’t sure which version of it should attempt. On netflix there are two edits of Metropolis you see; Metropolis Restored, which used previously lost footage to recreate Lang original 2+ hour cut, and Giorgio Moroder Presents Metropolis, released in 1984 featuring a soundtrack handpicked by the 80’s music legend himself, whom you might remember from that one song on Daft Punk’s last album. Although I have a deep passion for synthtastic 80s music, I decided to to go for the restored version in order to get the ‘true’ experience of the film. Plus I've dipped into the 80’s far too much recently, so I figured it was time for a change.

     The year is 2026 and mankind has finally reached its cultural zenith. Nowhere is this more apparent than Metropolis, a enormous, gleaming utopia of a city, where the residents bustle about the streets like ants around the legs of an elephant. Life for those who move within the boundaries of this veritable Garden of Eden is one of leisure and the pursuit of comfort for its affluent citizenry. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Clubs of the Sons, where the offspring of these wealthy men engage in the recreation of the rich, which involves banging a new chick every day and running track for some reason. Or, if you don’t feel like banging chicks at the Club of Sons, you could always go to Yoshiwara, the most popular night club/brothel in all of Metropolis, where good times can also be found. Basically, if you’re not a fan of good times, then you wouldn’t have a good time here

     A city as large as Metropolis needs an equally large number of people to maintain it however, and it is here where our major conflict resides. In true H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine fashion, the people are divided into two classes: the rich who live the idyllic live up above, and the laborers who toil on the great machines in the underground city. Unsurprisingly, these almost-Morlocks are treated like slaves by the rich owners of the machinery (apparently Republicans are still around in the future), and the two get along like vomit and fine wine. Also unsurprisingly, the oppressed working class is abuzz with talk of mass revolt, probably because of that whole ‘forced to live in an gigantic ghetto and dying en masse due to faulty machinery’ thing. You’d think that in a hundred years people would have learned not to oppress the working class and that it only leads to problems, but I guess old habits die hard.

     The most pampered of all the member of the Club is the good-hearted Freder (Gustav Worlich), son of Joh Fredersen (Alfred Abel),architect of Metropolis and subsequently the most powerful man in the city. All that Freder knows are the things that his father has provided, but after a chance encounter with beautiful working girl Maria (Brigitte Helm), he starts to realize that there might be more to life than his olympian lifestyle. It just might be that Freder is The Chosen One, the prophesied mediator that will unite humanity together as one. Unfortunately for Freder and Maria, Ol’ Poppa Fredersen is none too keen on having his son fraternize with some lowly working girl, especially one preaching some sort of radical agenda. With the mad professor Rotwang and his mysterious Machine-Man, Fredersen plans to destroy Maria and Freder’s relationship and crush the rebellion before it even begins. Shenanigans abound, as they are known to do.

     Metropolis is essentially a big fairy tale: you’ve got a collection of archetypes, the whitebread hero, the pure damsel, the old ugly villain, the Christian imagery, all thrown together to tell a story with an obvious moral message (don’t put poor people in giant underground factories). Simple but effective, but where the film really stands out to me is in Lang’s visual design. Metropolis is a breathtakingly beautiful film, and Fritz’s Lang Expressionistic take on the future is every bit as fantastical as anything written by the Brothers Grimm. From the monolithic, monotonous housing complexes of Worker City to the radiant splendour of Metropolis itself, almost every scene looks like something out of a dream. Just an amazing sense of scale that I didn’t think was possible in the 20’s. Of course I’m a sucker for open space in film, as readers of my little write up of King Kong (or even my review of Easy Rider if you want to go obscure), but it is the space combined with the society that the director envisions that really strike me creatively. The combination of the old and modern is really fascinating to me, and really old sci-fi in general like in Batman: The Animated Series where there are robots walking around but the police department still uses zeppelins.

     As far as cons go, the ending seemed rather anticlimatic when compared to the buildup towards it. The subplot for setting up 11811 as an important character does little to establish that, so the resolution lacks the emotional impact it could have had. Some scenes also seem a bit foolish or otherwise are too deus ex machina for my tastes, such as Maria’s escape from her captors. I guess you could forgive it because of the time it was made, and sometimes you make allowances in the plot to tell a story, but there are just a couple moments where character actions made no sense and it was irksome to watch.

     As I mentioned earlier I watched Metropolis Restored, which added previously lost footage to bump it up to a 148 minute runtime, as opposed to shorter cuts like the 83 minutes Moroder edition. From what I could tell, the footage that was added was generally complimentary to the theatrical cut, and a lot of them expound on scenes that seemed to have been edited rather haphazardly back in ‘27. I’d say that you’re probably better off watching the Restored version, since it’s the closest to Fritz Lang’s original idea, but it’s your choice. That runtime is an obvious turnoff for some, but it’s a long movie that doesn’t really feel all that long to me due to how it’s paced. Which is the same way I felt about The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, which I also loved, and which coincidentally is another fairly long movie with a lot of open space. Who would’ve guessed?

Result: Recommended