Metropolis was a silent German Expressionist film that was directed by Fritz Lang and was released in 1927. The film focusses in a society that contains two classes – the workers, who live and work underground, are regimented, ruled by shift changes and only exist to make the world a better place for the ‘Sons’, who spend their time walking in luxurious gardens and enjoying life in the sun.
We then meet the city ruler’s son, a young man named Freder. While taking a stroll in the pleasure garden, Freder spots a young underclass women – Maria – showing the worker children the gardens. Freder is instantly smitten by her, and waves. But as soon as she sees Freder, she ushers the children back below.
But Freder is curious, and being the son Fredersen (the mayor), he decides to go underground. While there, he sees the machines that the workers maintain, sees them working like clockwork, and he sees men die. The machine (‘Heart machine’) has an amazing design… and when it overreacts and explodes, killing even more workers, it appears like a monster’s face, eating the bottom dwellers (the monster of capitalism anyone? No?)
Freder then goes to find his father to question him over the conditions the workers are kept in, but Fredersen isn’t interested. Fredersen’s assistant then enters, holding maps that came from the dead workers pockets and presenting them to Fredersen – but rather than be thankful for the maps, the mayor only questions why he heard the news from his own son rather than his assistant. Despite the assistants obvious terror, he sends the man below… and then goes back to the maps.
Freder is outstanded by his apathy, and learns to distrust his father. But Fredersen isn’t dumb, and tells his men to watch his son.
The mad scientist Rotwang is then introduced, and it is revealed that he was once in love with a woman named Hel, who ended up marrying Fredersen and died giving birth to Freder. Rotwang has built a robot that can take on Hel’s likeness, so he may be with her. Fredersen then shows Rotwang the plans, and he reveals that they are maps to the catacombs under the city. They make their way down, and see Maria addressing a crowd of workers – telling them that peace is the option moving forwards and the ‘heart is the mediator between head and hands’.
Fredersen then plots to use the Hel-robot to instead impersonate Maria, so she can encourage the working class to revolt giving Fredersen an excuse to retaliate. Rotwang agrees and captures Maria so he can lock her up and release the robot – but he ensures that the robot will only listen to him, not Fredersen. He then plans on killing Freder and taking over Metropolis.
The robot-Maria is released and goes to Fredersen, Freder sees this and falls into a delirious/ill state. While he hallucinates – an interesting sequence involving a dancing death – robot-Maria takes over the underclass, starting the riots and encouraging them to blow up the Heart machine.
Freder recovers just in time to go back to the catacombs and witness robot-Maria’s plotting. He tries to tell the workers that she’s a fake, but too little to late. They go and destroy the Heart machine. Then one worker realises that this means their city will be flooded, and quickly, they race to save the women and children.
Unbeknownst to them, the real Maria has already escaped and done this, but when they arrive to see their housing submerged in water, they turn on the robot-Maria and kill her.
Rotwang realises that his plan isn’t working, and confronts Freder on a roof. The two fight – high above everyone’s heads – and Rotwang falls to his death.
Only when Fredersen sees his son in danger, does he realise what he’s been doing. He then realises he needs to treat the workers well, and with Maria and Freder acting as the ‘heart’, they move into a new era.
Metropolis is undeniably a dystopia. Though there is a love story between Maria and Freder – and this is how Freder finds out about the living conditions below – the narrative is clearly driven by the divide between the two classes and the underclass revolting in order to regain proper living conditions – so it’s man against man.
There’s so many clear differences between the working class and the ‘son’s club’, which includes the costuming, cinematography and direction. While the ‘son’s club’ are dressed in white and frolic freely in the gardens, the workers are costumed in black overalls and only take stagnated steps in rigid lines. They have no freedom and are repressed.
The music as well – Metropolis is a silent film – is joyous and free when the son’s club are displayed, and laborious and dark when the workers are on screen. The disparity between upper and lower class is immensely obvious even without narrative.
And not only the cinematography is obvious, some of the political themes in the film were so blunt that the origional cut of the film – which was two and a half hours – was cut down to one and a half, the asserted reason being that it promoted communist themes. The only reason the origional exists is because a copy of it was found in the basement of a gallery in Argentina.
The film also flunked at the box office – which to me confirms it was the first of a genre, as the revolutionary things always manage to flunk initially, until the world is ready for them.
