Metropolis

The recent restoration based on the almost-complete version found in Buenos Aires, with the recording of the original orchestral score that was composed for the movie - that's the one you want. The shorter ones that are on Internet Archive are OK too, but you miss so much. There's still 8 minutes missing from the recent restoration though, but the restored one looks so much better (it even has the original title cards, which are much more ornate than the ones you see on the shorter versions).

The movie is probably the pinnacle of 20s German expressionist cinema, and Brigitte Helm is terrific. It's an absolute classic, despite some overacting, and if you like this then I'd also recommend the 1922 Nosferatu, Cabinet of Dr Caligari and ANYTHING with Lon Chaney (sr) in it.

one of the most awesomest movies in the entire film history, really breathtaking, 9,5/10.

Metropolis is one of the most visually impressive movie I've ever seen. It's creative look on the future of Metropolis is both stunning and unique. I'm still blown away from the visuals in this movie, because with a movie that's been released back in the 1920's and looks more convincing compared to the effect's today is really saying something. What I love about this movie is the imagination and the wonder that Metropolis presents is a treat to the eyes. Metropolis is one of the best silent movies I have ever see. The cinematography is magnificent, the film making itself is jaw dropping and this movie should be seen only on the big screen.

Great movie. Now I understand Janelle Monae.

[Written July 30, 2023]
I was certainly curious how I would respond to this sci-fi classic, and I'm happy to say it's positive. At its core, _Metropolis_ offers a story about class division, something which, at least now, is common. _Parasite_, the recent, much-praised thriller, is about the same thing. And despite _Parasite_ not being particularly subtle, its approach seems relatively subtle compared to this because here, the divide is very literal.

It's (of course) a silent film, and the words it does offer are minimal. Yet most of its effect is through its sweeping, imaginative imagery and incredibly expressive performances. While this expressiveness may be jarring compared to contemporary art, I think it a breath of fresh air to see a film and a world so alive and breathing compared to a lot of the clean, monotonic sci-fi.

But core to its narrative is how neatly divided its dystopia is, a city of majesty and comfort up above and the world below, full of machinery, quietly offering function to the city above. The people in this undercity are casually dehumanized, more or less integrated into the machinery, and treated as nothing more than machinery by those above. From this emerges a _Prince and the Pauper_-esque storyline with Freder, son of the man helming the city, swaps places with a worker in "the depths," he (and his father's spy) learns of a potential revolt by the workers and desires to function as the mystified mediator between the two worlds.

Part of me wishes it went in a different direction with its chosen-one narrative, maybe forming dread by proving its protagonist's ambitions to save the city futile. But what it does offer, another mediator that sends everyone down a less productive path, is adequate. An inventor deep in grief, under order to use his machine to quell any uprising, pretends to act in the best interest of the people above and below but doesn't care about the below and actively wants revenge on its leader above. He convinces those below to destroy the city, potentially spelling out their doom.

And after blackouts, riots, and the inventor's death upon pursuing the real Maria, believing her to be his lost Hel. This is all resolved by Freder, with the film's ending message: "The mediator between Head and Hands must be the Heart."

The severity to which you respond to how fascistic this can come across, with its organicism of society and how a singular person can complete a divided body, is up to you. But I think the film can also be seen as encouraging, in contrast to its dehumanization, simple empathy, and a universal call for unity through its cautionary tale about creating barriers between people.

This is the best movie of all the time that was and that is

Incredible. Beautiful set design, electric vision throughout. So far ahead of its time it could be made today. One of my favorites.

[9.2/10] Metropolis shouldn’t be as resonant as it is. It shouldn’t be as awe-inspiring as it is. It shouldn’t be as heart-wrenching and harrowing as it is. With nearly a century of distance, the ideas should seem quaint, the visions rudimentary, the emotions unavailing.

And yet, somehow, across the tides of time and culture, Metropolis remains a marvel of the cinema. A fever dream of metal and light, a parable of man and machine, a vision of overwhelming horror and splendor in turn -- the film manages to cut through the years, and reach right to the heart.

Perhaps that begins with the sad truths that have perpetuated from pre-Great Depression industrial rigor to a future not alike but not so dissimilar from the one imagined by director Fritz Lang and co-writer Thea von Harbou. Like so much in the film, the world of Metropolis is one of extremes and metaphors. The poor labor in regimented squalor underground. The wealthy play and idle above in splendid finery. The imagery is heavy-handed, and yet unwaveringly potent, of much and squalor to those consigned to the land down below, while their social betters crunch numbers or while away the hours in comfort and security above. The simplicity of the premise, and the inequality it brings to life in exaggerated, but that much more vivid terms, gives it power across eras.

It’s those illustrations of the wonders and sins of the titular megacity that drive these ideas home and remain a wondrous achievement even now. Lang and his collaborators turn the city itself into an elegant yet horrible machine, full of cogs and gears, where the rhythm of elevators and cranks and levers accrue to flashing lights, rolling cars, and even the bedraggled people forced to keep it moving on its steady regiment. There is a constant sense of movement to the film, where nothing in this city can stop, lest it, or they, be gobbled up by the machines that sleep not for a moment.

Therein lies the terror of the piece. In an early segment, Freder, the son of the city’s master, witnesses the monstrous clatter of the machines that provide his largesse, and is aghast at the human cost. The thundering contraption turns into Moloch, as lost soul after lost soul is ushered into its gaping, mechanical maw. Metropolis evinces a plain fear of industry, technology, and notions of the mechanized future at the dawn of the modern age. These larger-than-life abstractions and hallucinations drive that anxiety home better than anything.

Near the midpoint of the film, Freder’s love, Maria, a sainted figure of inspiration to the workers below, is duplicated via robot and sent to stir the passions of aristocrat and pleb alike. What results is a phantasmagoria, rapid-cut images of tantalizing hedonism and calls to violence, sketched out as a modern Whore of Babylon, the purity of flesh corrupted by electricity and steel. The iconography Lang channels creates an operatic tone for his piece, one that sees the celluloid as a battleground for ideas that still provoke on a visceral level with the fullness of time.

And yet, beyond the grand notion of the evils of the city fathers being alienated from the plight of the people on whose labor they depend, or of industrialization as a demonic corrupting force, or even the fantastical images Lang and his team conjure, this is also a personal story. Brought to the fore amid such grave revelations and constant tumult is a tale of individual epiphany, rivalry, and love.

Freder falls in love with Maria, who opens his eyes to the cruel excesses upon which his life depends. He’s aghast at his father, Joh Frederson, who not only knew about such trespasses, but believes they’re just and proper. Frederson has both a partnership and a rivalry with Rotwang, an inventor, as both of them pine for Hel: Frederson’s wife, Freder’s mother, and Rotwang’s lost love. Frederson dismisses his assistant Josaphat, leaving him crestfallen in his distress, but forging a friendship between him and Freder as they recoil from the indifference and caprice of the man who runs Metropolis.

The events of the film -- clandestine revivals, a worker’s revolt, a city on the brink of collapse -- are not abstract events, but rather channeled through the relationships and reactions of these main players. The cast more than rises to that challenge. Heightened performances match the tone of the film, but Freder is volcanic as a blind child turned penitent believer once he witnesses the atrocities that buttress his pleasures; Frederer cuts the perfect image of the cold steady man at the head of a cold steady berg; and Maria is the lightning bolt that runs through the city, mesmerizing in her looks and rapturous in her gesticulations.

The acting should be the toughest thing to translate across the ages. Instead, the high volume emotions are as affecting and arresting as they were in 1927, rooted in personal, relatable reactions to the events that are universal in the feelings they convey. At times, in the broader ambit of the story, the characters are avatars for callousness or compassion. But in the moment, they are human beings, shocked or touched by one another’s gestures, enraptured by someone they love spurring courage and devotion, grateful when those they care about turn up safe and sound despite the perils that abound above and below.

Or maybe they’re just rightfully terrified. Lang and his collaborators dream up any number of fantastical monstrosities in the heightened reality and picture box world they craft. But they also find much more quotidian means to chill the blood, with no less cinematic flair.

Rotwang’s pursuit of Maria through the catacombs, and eventually into his lair, is scary as all hell. The simple use of lightness and dark, to signify the few spaces left to hide and a lurking, advancing evil in rigorous pursuit, creates a tension that doesn’t go away until the spider catches his prey. What fills the space is, instead, the paroxysms of someone cornered and desperate, in the clutches of a madman, about to succumb to his haunting violations.

Even then, the most petrifying thing in the film may be Frederson’s henchman, credited only as The Thin Man, who stalks Freder and his associates through the middle portion of the film. He lacks even the tricks of light and sound that suffuse Rotwang’s chase. Instead, it’s his mere presence, with a disturbing look, unflinching air, and inhuman gait that make him the scariest specter on the screen. He does little that is explosive beyond grip a man’s hand, but his simplest gestures, coupled with an intimidating energy that stills every scene he’s in, unleashes the fear both on and in front of the screen.
Still, for being able to build such simple yet discomfiting moments, Lang’s Metropolis is an awe-inspiring exercise in scale. From the matte paintings and miniatures that communicate the scope of the titular metropolitan corpus, to the giant doors and other oversized approaches to set design that make the characters seem dwarfed in an environment much bigger than they are, to the legions of extras who show the lifeblood of the city pouring out of its buildings and into its causeways, the palpable sense of all that is teeming and immense runs through the picture.

The effects that Lang and company deploy to realize these incredible sequences stand the test of time. The iconic Machine Man is as transfixing as ever. The sequences where Maria’s visage is transferred onto her robotic counterpart carry the flash and zing of modern movie-making. And the climactic rendering of the “heart machine” and the ensuing flood of the lower levels is the peak of the film’s maximalist bent, with a heart-pumping race against time, rife with bravery and desperation. The confluence of special effects, makeup and costuming, and production design results in a unity of purpose that elevates all elements of the film.

For such a bleak beginning, a swath of villains, and a harrowing final act, though, there is ultimately something strangely hopeful about the trajectory of Metropolis. It is a story of over-industrialized, extreme and exploitative capitalism run amuck, with no shortage of examples of how such a system is reinforced by those whom it benefits and crushes those without under the bootheels of those who claim the fruits of their labor. But it is also a story of a young man who stands to gain from the status quo, seeing how wrong the machine that delivers his joys is, driven to remake it, and tear down the barriers that separate well-heeled men from their unseen cobblers.

He is the mediator, the much-ballyhooed “heart” who unites the “head” of men like his father who supervise the city, and the “hands” of the workers who run it. In him is the ardent optimism that there can be mutual understanding and care among these groups, in a world made to benefit both of them. In Maria, rests the belief that peaceful means can be used to restore the truth of universal brotherhood. There is something profoundly aspirational in that idea.

In one striking interlude, Lang brings one of Maria’s sermons to life, retelling the biblical story of the Tower of Babel. The lesson is plain, of man building too much and too high, until the bonds between people were cut and they could no longer communicate. The thrust of Metropolis is to restore those lines of communication, of faith and trust, until even those who would loom above and those who would toil below can again meet on the same same level, and see, hear, and understand one another.

With the film itself, Lang pulls off just such a feat. Differences in era and culture are their own Tower of Babel -- divisions that make it difficult, if not impossible, to consume and appreciate what may be vastly removed from your own experience. And yet, the truths Lang summons are so elemental, the images he creates so impressive, the emotions so universal, that when he and his collaborators speak across the ages, we sorry lot can still hear them too.

Elitist,Communist,Leftist undertones are part of overall way of thinking at time (mostly influenced by Lang's wife?) or am I missing larger point here? Film is breathtaking no doubt ; but ending is so thought provoking or rather blasphemous.Mediator between Head and Hands must be heart (So elitist group and Working class are not denied their existence).Or is it suggested mediator would blur distinction between these classes.I hardly think movie suggests that, we're led to accept it's existence with Working Class struggling as is just for their existence ; so melancholic.