METROPOLIS

METROPOLIS. Fritz Lang, dir. Germany: Ufa, 1926. Available in alternate versions, including attempts at restoration.[1]

Classic silent film of immense influence and continuing artistic value. We see in the film an apparently elevated pleasure-city for the elite and a mechanized underground portion of the Metropolis, where mechanized workers tend the city's machines. An important work for a robot femme fatale and the motif of mechanized underworlds; cf. ANDROID (film), A BOY AND HIS DOG, THX 1138, and EX MACHINA in this Category, and see under Fiction, E. M. Forster, "The Machine Stops," and H. G. Wells, The Time Machine and The First Men in the Moon.

In his review of The Black Mirror and Other Stories: An Anthology of Science Fiction from Germany and Austria, Leon Marvell calls our attention to the discussion by Franz Rottensteiner, the editor of that anthology, of the relationship between the film and Thea von Harbou's script, which see for the judgment of a significant scholar of SF, who dislikes von Harbou but acknowledges the importance of her contribution to the film.

For C. A. Rotwang of METROPOLIS as "the 'most influential scientist in the history of cinema,'" see Christopher Frayling's Mad, Bad and Dangerous? The Scientist and the Cinema (London: Reaktion Books, 2006), reviewed by Neil Barron, SFRA Review #278 (Oct.-Dec. 2006): 12. Barron notes what we have called the "hand of Rotwang"[2] as a motif in later works.

For discussion and illustration of the architecture, see Film Architecture: From METROPOLIS to BLADE RUNNER pp. 94-103. For JUST IMAGINE as an American response to METROPOLIS, see Film Architecture p. 112.

RDE et al., initial; MODIFIED 25Feb21; ref. added 26Ap23