Metropolis

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Metropolis

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Metropolis

Alfred Abel, Brigitte Helm, Fritz Rasp, Gustav Fröhlich, Heinrich George, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Theodor Loos

Fritz Lang's Metropolis belongs to legend as much as to cinema. It's a milestone of sci-fi and German expressionism. Yet the story makes minimal sense, and the "theme" belongs in a fortune cook...( read more  read more... )ie; to experience the film's pagan power, you have to see the movie. But for decades we couldn't, not really--not with so many versions, all incomplete, often in public-domain prints like smudged photocopies. This Murnau Foundation restoration changes all that. Some shots, scenes, and subplots may be lost forever, but intertitles indicate how they fit into the original continuity and the characters' individual trajectories. Most crucially, the images are crisp, vibrant, and three-dimensional instead of murky and flattened. The composite sequences (the Tower of Babel, a sea of lusting eyes) have been restored to their hallucinatory ferocity. And there's one moment when you can see a bead of sweat roll down a man's cheek--in medium long-shot. --Richard T. Jameson

Id: 9042105

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Metropolis Recent Reviews
  • sanjurosamurai
    July 3, 2009
    sanjurosamurai
    often considered cinema's first great masterpiece, its a shame that some of the scenes from this fritz lang classic are lost to us forever. i feel that the film only preserves so well despite its missing pieces because it is a silent film and can be filled in with text screens, ...( read more)because i was still engaged in the story from start to finish. the only real critique of the film is that some of the actions of the characters didnt fit the story that well, but overall this film is highly effective in its scale as it tells a great science fiction story for its era. an impressive film that any true film fan should see.
  • columbiatch
    June 28, 2009
    columbiatch
    Kind of a like a Michael Bay blockbuster, except more technically impressive (for its time). The sets are the stars rather than the actors, which give some incredibly histronic performances even for a silent. No matter how much I was impressed by the visuals and the avant garde p...( read more)arts of the film (probably the closest we can get of an Art of Vision remake by Michael Bay) I can't quite get past the nonsensical mess of a plot even though a lot of the film is missing, and the naive ideology of the film. And I hated the Heart-is-the-Mediator-between-Brain-and-Hand bullshit and that ridiculous ending. The band 3epkano did a great job though just like last year with Sunrise, so overall it was a very enjoyable experience.
  • ohagankieran
    May 28, 2009
    ohagankieran
    Fritz Lang's groundbreaking landmark remains one of the biggest mysteries in the world of cinema. How can a movie that'll soon turn 80 years old still look so disturbingly futuristic?? The screenplay by Thea Von Harbou is still very haunting and courageously assails social issues...( read more) that are of all ages. The world has been divided into two main categories: thinkers & workers! If you belong to the first category, you can lead a life of luxury above ground but if you're a worker, your life isn't worth a penny, and you're doomed to perilous labor underground. The further expansions and intrigues in the screenplay are too astonishing to spoil, so I strongly advise that you check out the film yourself. It's essential viewing, anyway! "Metropolis" is a very demanding film-experience and definitely not always entertaining. But, as it is often the case with silent-cinema classics, the respect and admiration you'll develop during watching it will widely excel the enjoyment-aspect. Fritz' brutal visual style still looks innovative and few directors since were able to re-create a similarly nightmarish composition of horizontal and vertical lines. Many supposedly 'restored' versions have been released over the years (in 1984 and 2002, for example) but the 1926-version is still the finest in my opinion, even though that one already isn't as detailed and punctual as Lang intended it. "Metropolis" perhaps is THE most important and influential movie ever made. "2001: A Space Odyssey", "Star Wars" and "Blade Runner" owe their existence (or at least their power) to it.
  • xXxHarleyxQuinnxXx
    January 25, 2009
    xXxHarleyxQuinnxXx
    ok I adore silent films but i jsut COULD NOT GET TROUGH THIS ONE! idk what it was, it was just so,,,, SLOW! and usually idont find silent classics tha way. i felt like there was something i wasnt getting,.....
    all in all-?????
  • mistershinobi
    September 18, 2008
    mistershinobi
    *Review coming soon*
  • 21rclemente
    November 10, 2009
    21rclemente
    Uhhh. ok? I've seen silent films in the past and don't get me wrong Metropolis die-hards but this movie needs to be reconcidered by the IMDB critics who place it so high on their lists. I understand that this movie was incredibly innnovative at the time... but only at that time. ...( read more)Its horribly dry and should be ranked with movie within its time period.
  • Epicouros
    November 8, 2009
    Epicouros
    It's an epic poem of urban dystopia (and class warfare) by a misanthropic director who, in his Weimar Republic phase, had a taste for spectacular imagery that, for all our modern digital wizardry, has not been aesthetically surpassed. And his imagined world remains, after all the...( read more)se years, eerily prescient.
  • Steel20
    October 26, 2009
    Steel20
    A great benchmark and something to aim for when it comes to science fiction or fantasy films. It is sad that some of it was lost, but good that the pieces that are still there have survived. I generally do not like silent movies (it is sad to be born in an era of great technology...( read more)) and the music drove me nuts. The story is beautiful and it played out well on screen. The sets were amazing and I don't want to imagine how long it took them to accomplish all of this back then. Some of the cinematography is astounding even for today's standards. I almost want to see a re-make of it....but afraid that it would ruin the story of this one and never reach the heights like this one has.
  • hayneslauren
    October 21, 2009
    hayneslauren
    Such a beautiful movie and my favorite silent feature.
  • ElCochran90
    October 18, 2009
    ElCochran90
    "There can be no understanding between the hand and the brain unless the heart acts as mediator."

    METROPOLIS (1927)


    Director: Fritz Lang
    Country: Germany
    Genre: Action / Adventure / Drama / Fantasy / Romance / Sci-Fi / T...( read more)hriller
    Length: 153 minutes

    Photobucket


    Metropolis is much more than just a sci-fi film. Certainly, we are talking about the most astonishing project of a German genius named Fritz Lang, who definitely had the guts of experimenting with something different in order to create cinema. What Fritz Lang offered to the world in 1927 became one of the most ambitious and fascinating cinematographic projects in cinema history, not only because of its thematic elements, but because of its visual style. Basically, Metropolis created a whole new world, a world that opened some people's eyes, and inspired other people start to reconstruct the world that existed by then, taking it to a higher industrialization level. The most characteristic aspect about Metropolis is the fact that it was done in a key historical moment of humanity. The First World War had already ended, and since the Industrial Revolution (and even before), the world structure started to divide itself into international great powers (which are nations capable of exerting their influence on a global scale) that sought for competition against the world in order to become the most advanced countries, socially, economically and technologically speaking. What Metropolis achieves towards its audience is to offer a chillingly accurate vision of a director about the path that the actuality (the actuality of the 20's, that is) was following by then. More than a simple sci-fi film, the movie constituted a controversial social commentary towards slavery caused by endless work and the nonsense this work caused in humanity.

    Metropolis is set in the year of 2026, in a futuristic city completely ruled by technology, constant work and the colossal influence of industry, and is divided into two main social classes: the city planners, who really don't know how anything works and who live on the surface, and the working class living underground in the machine level, which although it establishes and accomplishes its goals, it doesn't posses a vision, since the very social structure prevents it from doing it. The true plot of the film starts when the son of the city's mastermind visits the underground where the workers toil, and after being astonished by what he sees, falls in love with a working class woman who prophesies the coming of a savior that would act as a mediator between the differences among the social classes.

    The movie speaks like a person thinking out loud, like a hair-rising commentary towards modern society. It is curious how elements such as fantasy, society's constant riots and religion come to a point where they form a part of a whole and combine themselves in a very catastrophic way. The scenes including the workers walking together towards the machine level are pretty peculiar. The musical score is very attractive, and somehow represents irony contrasted with harmony. The rhythm in which the working class walks makes it seem like cattle, and like if it were conformed by inferior human beings.

    The cinematography alongside with the editing created a world that had never seen before, a world which is not based in real life, but in the possible consequences of the events that took place back in the 20's. That is why I consider Metropolis the mother of sci-fi films, and it is officially one of the first movies that were made concerning that genre. Another giant icon within the sci-fi genre is the short film Le Voyage dans la Lune (1902), directed by George Méliès. Metropolis is brilliant in every single aspect, and both the art direction and set decoration is ultimately unparalleled. In fact, both the art direction and the constructed sets for the film are the most impressive ones I've seen in cinema history. Also, Metropolis was one of the first feature films that handled scenes with great amounts of people in its shots. The movie included 37,000 extras including 25,000 men, 11,000 women, 1,100 bald men, 750 children, 100 dark-skinned people and 25 Asians. These scenes were extraordinarily shot and made. Certainly, Fritz Lang was the best director for the job.

    Metropolis also possesses the best special effects I have ever seen. Just like Le Voyage dans la Lune (1902), The Ten Commandments (1956), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Star Wars (1977), Aliens (1986), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Jurassic Park (1993) and The Matrix (1999) are films that I particularly admire because of their special effects and because they are the best representations of what technology can achieve in movies, Metropolis also has the best visual effects in the history of cinematography, as far as my opinion and taste go. Please consider that the technology that exists nowadays for creating some special effects in particular (such as the overused CGI) didn't exist in those times. We are talking about 1927! Analyze that figure. The most astonishing special effect of the film is some rings spinning around a machine up and down that transformed it into a guise of Maria. Audiences back then were left amazed, and I definitely felt the same way 4 years ago.

    As mentioned before, Metropolis is one of the best social criticisms ever made about automation along with Modern Times (1936), by Charles Chaplin. However, while Chaplin used a comical tone accompanied by irony, the purpose of Metropolis scatters terror. It is a very-well structured opinion, but very direct for its audience, especially for the 20's. Probably for those times the message of Metropolis wasn't understood in its totality. It is a film ahead of its time. One interesting trivia about the film is that reportedly it is one of Adolf Hitler's favorite films. Carefully analyzing the subject matter and the narrative structure utilized by the film, it isn't so surprising that one of the cruelest and greatest leaders that humanity ever had in its existence had favorite this film.

    Metropolis is, without a doubt, the best film by Fritz Lang for my taste, even better than his next sci-fi film Frau im Mond (1929), Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler - Ein Bild der Zeit (1922), which is the longest movie I have seen so far, M (1931), Le Testament du Dr. Mabuse (1933) and Fury (1936). Metropolis may go beyond our own comprehension; its incomparable dystopian and apocalyptic vision influence several artists and filmmakers in the future, specially within the cyberpunk movement that was highly promoted in Japan, being the best examples Akira (1988) and Kôkaku Kidôtai (1995), which influenced The Matrix (1999). Also, it is one of the first films that masterly established and portrayed the concept of the conflict between men and machines. Too many directors have paid tribute to Fritz Lang and his masterpiece for literally redefining a genre that really isn't so easy of treating. That is why Metropolis, being one of the most ambitious projects in movie history and the best sample of German Expressionism, is one of the best films of all time, and one of the best proofs of how a big budget can be productively used for a movie. The budget was around 5,000,000 marks which, adjusted for nowadays inflation, represents an approximate amount of $200,000,000. Finally, this was the first film (being the second one Los Olvidados [1950]) that was registered in the "Memory of the World-Register" of the UNESCO.

    100/100
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