Review: Metropolis

Set in a future city where hunched-over workers break their backs slaving away day and night in the subterranean levels of the city. Above ground are the affluent, including authoritarian Joh Fredersen (Alfred Abel), whose son Freder (Gustav Froelich) ventures below ground for the first time and receives quite the wake-up call. He also meets Maria (Brigitte Helm), who preaches peace and who wants to bring the city’s two divided classes of people together. Fredersen, of course, wants none of this and requests the aid of scientist Rotwang (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) to build a robot clone of Maria to swing sentiment around in his favour. Rotwang, however, harbours deep resentment for Fredersen and decides to use the robot Maria to cause chaos to descend upon Fredersen’s city. Fritz Rasp plays the aptly named Thin Man, a spy in Fredersen’s employ.

We often hear that ‘They don’t make ‘em like they used to’, and I often find that people believe that since the release of “Jaws” and “Star Wars”, the big (and often empty) blockbuster has largely (excuse the pun there) become the norm. This 1927 Fritz Lang (“The Testament of Dr. Mabuse”, “Man Hunt”, “Ministry of Fear”, “The Big Heat”) sci-fi fantasy proves that big, expensive, visual extravaganzas were being made as far back as the Silent Era. It’s also, on that level, an amazing film, just as “Jaws” and the “Star Wars” films are. I was actually shocked at just how visually impressive, grand-scale, and imaginative the film is. The visualisation of a future society is genuinely praiseworthy, though obviously the technology available to Lang at the time isn’t to the standard we have now. That didn’t bother me, though, because I was able to appreciate what I was seeing for the era in which it was made. It’s unlike any film from pre-1930s that I’ve ever seen (Not that the Silent Era is something I’m well-versed in, shamefully). Using forced perspective (to make things look grander than they actually are, ala “Citizen Kane” and the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy), the set design is truly impressive, and I just love me some German Expressionism (And apparently so did Hitler, who was said to be a fan of the film), and the exaggerated sets here are very much in keeping with that.

 It’s also one of the most influential films of all-time, particularly in its visualisation of a futuristic city and its rather oppressive society (“Minority Report”, “The Matrix”, “Blade Runner”, “Brazil”, etc), not to mention the whole Mad Scientist deal and a giant robot that looks a tad like C3PO. That giant robot, however, has become an iconic figure in the public consciousness in its own right, even for people who haven’t seen or even heard of the film. The giant mechanical clock is an unforgettably oppressive image as well (excellently staged flood, too) in a film that spells its themes out in big, grand visuals. Production designers Otto Hunte (Lang’s “Dr. Mabuse: Der Spieler”), Erich Kettlehut, and Karl Vollbrecht (“The Testament of Dr. Mabuse”), are, along with cinematographer Karl Freund (“Camille”, “The Good Earth”, “A Guy Named Joe”) a big reason for the film being as memorable as it is. The film seems to have Orwell written all over it (and Aldous Huxley now that I think of it), except that it is ultimately attempting to be uplifting and of course it predates Orwell’s concept of ‘Big Brother’.

The film’s sappy conclusion is actually one of the weakest elements to the film. I don’t know if it was tacked-on to send everyone home happy, but that (and the entire love story, to an extent) didn’t really do much for me. It rang false in an otherwise prototypical depiction of bleak dystopian sci-fi (Not to mention being a cautionary tale of how the then-current notions of the industrialisation and mechanisation of society might lead to the lack of necessity for man, or at least a dehumanisation). Having said that, for 1927, this is some really lofty and imaginative stuff being tackled, so I’m impressed simply on that level even if it is flawed. But there’s no doubt that narrative isn’t the film’s strong suit (Lang’s “Ministry of Fear” and “The Big Heat” are better yarns, if not as visually wondrous or conceptually grand), even in the longer cuts of the film. In fact, the version I saw felt too long, even though further editing would make things incoherent. I can only imagine what the poor souls only exposed to the shorter edits (some around 90 minutes) must’ve made of the story. The use of title cards to help fill the gaps left by lost footage help, but I must admit, it’s still a little difficult to get a grasp on it at times. Maybe the novel by Lang’s wife Thea von Harbou (Lang’s “Dr. Mabuse” films) is easier to follow, but as adapted by Lang and von Harbou herself, I did get lost from time to time. The fact that silent film actors were all seemingly made up to look exactly alike doesn’t help, either (Am I the only one who thinks this?). It’s also a bit hard to swallow the film’s robotic conceit, though it helps if you view it as fantasy, and one can’t really blame a film from the 1920s for not being as sophisticated in explaining fantastical elements in a truly palatable way. I also think that, overlong or not, longer cuts of the film would surely be superior to anything around 90 minutes, as I said earlier.

This is an extremely impressive film, and its visuals and worldview are effective enough so that you don’t really realise how silly the story is at times. Overall, it holds up remarkably well given its age, lost footage, wear and tear, and so on. All of the wear and tear is evident, but I would never hold that against the film. If nothing else, the film’s 1920s imagining of what the future would be like isn’t as irrelevant or silly as some films from much later decades. That’s a hell of an achievement (even if this is largely due to later books and films stealing from it, it’s still amazing). A must for any film buff, but sci-fi fans might want to give it a go, too.

Rating: B