"Metropolis - 1927" Topic

The mediator between the hands and the brain must be the heart.

--Epigram of Metropolis

Tonight on Turner Classic Movies, I saw Metropolis (dir. Fritz Lang, 1927) for the first time. I'm glad I did; it's one of those movies that has cast its shadow over all that came after.

For all its formidable Film School reputation, Metropolis is highly melodramatic and more than a little crazy. There are sinister machinations, revolution, Mad Science, and a good dose of religious symbolism; above all, there is True Love. Don't expect anything like naturalistic performances; the actors use choreography and pantomime to convey emotion and meaning.

This film is most famous today for its seminal production design, which has influenced a host of science fiction epics (almost every imagined future city owes something to this movie). This early attempt at world-building is surprisingly complete and coherent. Car enthusiasts should keep an eye open for a (final!) Rumpler Tropfenwagen appearance near the climax of the film.

I remarked earlier that the performances aren't naturalistic, but that doesn't mean that they aren't good. Joh Fredersen (portrayed by Alfred Abel) prefigures Moff Tarkin from Star Wars; Rudolf Klein-Rogge is fantastic as the archetypal mad scientist Rotwang (As an aside, never engage a mad scientist to do your dirty work. Seriously). On the heroic side of things, Freder (Gustav Fröhlich) is stalwart if a bit emotional. Finally, Brigitte Helm is not to be missed in a sensational dual role.

As a silent film that clocks in at nearly two and a half hours, Metropolis may not be to everyone's taste; nevertheless, see it if you get a chance. It is an important landmark in both science fiction and cinema.

Ron

I really like Metropolis, although I have to confess that the first time I saw it I did expect Queen to pop up singing Radio Gaga….

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This is indeed an excellent movie. What version will be on, one with a classic soundtrack, or the 80s version with pop songs?

Back in the early 80s I had a version on vhs with really horrible 1920s lounge lizard music, just awful. I had to make my own soundtrack and watch the film muted.

When the 1980's version came out, I was fortunately able to see it in the theater. Very cool to see it on the big screen.

TCM showed the restored Murnau Foundation cut (2008); it has the original 1920s score by Gottfried Huppertz. The movie is printed on regular black & white stock; some cuts were restored from a 16 mm print, and are a bit streaky. The Giorgio Moroder version is much shorter, with a pop soundtrack and is printed on colored stock.

Ron

A few years back in Toronto a film "eccentric" named Reg Hart used to show Metropolis and a lot of other silent classics in a small store front. He advertised by placing telephone post flyers

He was a character as his "introduction "to the film could go a while and become very political but it was a great venue to see the movies. Metropolis was one of his favourites and he had made a sound track that synced with the film making it very enjoyable

I would recommend the film as a great example of 1920's films and you will recognize many scenes that were later "borrowed" by other film directors The 1927 version of the future is different but familiar

imdb.com/title/tt0017136

Miniaturists,,like us ,should find the miniature city scapes fascinating

The very first time I saw 'Metropolis' was on my local PBS station back in the late-'70s, on their Saturday night movie block. I was hooked the first time and have been a fan of the movie ever since.

In addition to what's been said here so far, another point about 'Metropolis' is that this film is the archetypal dystopian vision of the future, from which many movies since have taken its lead. The contrast between the neat and clean Art Deco-inspired megacity and the grimy and punishing world of the workers to keep it going is stark. It clearly shows that man's inhumanity toward his fellow man still exists, even with all of his technological achievements and abilities. In a way, you could say that it allegorically foreshadows the rise of Adolf Hitler and his sweeping reform of a shattered Germany (i.e. "trains running on time" and the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin in contrast to the persecution and genocide of the Jews).

'Metropolis' is a film that should be seen, whether one is into movie history, science fiction, Weimar-era cinema, etc. I and many other fans are personally grateful to all of those who have discovered those once "lost" pieces of the film and helped with its restoration. On a personal note, in my research on local drive-in theatre and movie theater history, I've come to find out that 'Metropolis' played in Fort Worth in November of 1927 at a downtown movie house called the Hippodrome, which has long since been razed. I even have a copy of a local reviewer's article of the film, which generally gives it a positive review. Knowing what I know about it now, it would be fascinating and satisfying to go back to that time to see it at that little theater.

Metropolis is the Avatar of its day. Fritz Lang assembled a dream-team of artists, painters, sculptors and engineers to help create his vision.

It incorporates extensive miniature work, augmented by the Schufftan-process which uses mirrors with transparent areas through which live actors where filmed while the mirror itself was angled to reflect a miniatures. This was the precursor to the matte-painting.

For the night scenes the painter Kattelhut painted and repainted the various windows in sings and windows to make them look like a cityscape a night night.

The cars and planes in the wide shots of the city were done by stop motion animation.

Most amazingly the special effects like the robot's transformation into Maria were all done in-camera. Which means that parts of the negative had to be covered, the specific part would be shot, the camera would be re-wound, another area would be exposed and so forth, until dozens of passes were done, creating one single image.

Though some parts of the city were miniatures, Lang had huge sets built on the UFA backlot, including parts of the upper city, the Cathedral, Rotwang's house etc.

Fritz Lang shot the film using three cameras, Originally there would have been three negatives, one for domestic consumption, one for the US and one for export to other countries. The premiere version was recut behind Lang's back and became the "Paramount" version which was known to most people until the late 1960's when film archives around the world started to look at the film. Only one negative was preserved the Paramount version which is kept at the MOMA in New York.

Lang was a "perfectionist" he made his actors kneel, fall and punch so many times they were black and blue, often bleeding.

Brigitte Helm was very young, probably only sixteen rather than the 18 she was usually reported to be. She didn't care too much for acting, but in a post-war Germany in the grip of a depression she had clear star potential.

Brigitte Helm was not only required to play the saintly Maria and her evil double, it was also her inside the Robot's shell.

It was made by Walther Schultze-Mittendorff, a sculptor who discovered a sample of "plastic wood", a newly released product that would be idea for sculpting the robot's shape. He rolled out the various parts and stretched them onto a plaster cast of Brigitte Helm like a suit of armour and then painted it with varnish, mixed with silver and bronze powder to make it look like burnished metal.

To further the illusion that it really was a machine a wooden rig was constructed into the robot's throne and it would boost her to her feet without having to shift her centre of balance

I was extremely fortunate to make the acquaintance of the daughter of Walther Schultze-Mittendorff and pointed out that a good quality replica of the robot was missing. A few statues had been made, but they were fairly approximative.

Cooperating with Kropserkel a Canadian company they recently finished an accurate full scale replica of the robot.

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@ Patrick R- That was an excellent post, thanks!

I prefer the 2008 version, which is the one in my collection, but I also think the 80s version is good kitschy fun.

I love silent films, and have quite a collection of them. I have a two hour round trip commute by train to work, so I quite often watch a silent film on the way. Tomorrow I will start Napoleon by Abel Gance, but at four hours it will take two round trips to finish!

The version most people had seen for decades was the one by Channing Pollock which removed many of the references to "Hel", Freders's mother because they feared the name would disturb audiences.

The Soviet archives were among the first to do research and discovered differences in footage leading them to believe there were more than one negatives to start with.

The BBC did an early reconstruction with an electronic score in the late sixties.

But it was Enno Patalas of the Munich Filmmuseum who started work on reconstructing the original film as it premiered. Trying to gather all the known copies, he tried to reconstruct the original story. Two major discoveries helped him tremendously. The original censor notes with full intertitles and the annotated original music score which both gave instructions about the running time of the film and how the original scenes fit together.

The work had to be spread over many years because Patalas only had a very limited budget to work with. At the same time Georgio Moroder had the idea to rework an old film with a modern pop score and he came across Patalas and Metropolis. Moroder would fund Patalas' reconstruction in exchange for the right to make his pop version.

The 1980 version sparked a renewed interest in the film and while some bits of footage were rediscovered (Australian edit) and added into a new "best we can do" reconstruction in 2001, though a quarter of the film was considered permanently lost.

And then in 2007, when a 16mm copy was discovered containing almost the entire 1927 première version of Metropolis. The original was badly worn and dirty and there was fear it might be destroyed, so they quickly did a 16mm copy without trying to restore the footage. This version was preserved. This version was then restored and included in the 2011 "definitive" version though a few scenes are still missing. Because there were three negatives and many copies getting an absolutely correct version is near impossible.

Ideally you should check out the Pollock version and then the 2011 version, the Moroder, Patalas and 2001 versions are a bit orphaned by the newest version, worth checking out if you are a completist.

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I like the boobies on the girl robots!

BTW, Metropolis is FREE on Demand on xfinity, in the TCM section.

Awesome! Also, Spider Baby is back in same TCM section.

Saw it as a kid in grade school around early to mid '70's.

Fascinating bit of movie history. I saw a version in our college cinema at Vanderbilt back in the '80s (at least, I think I saw it then…) I don't recall any sort of "pop" soundtrack. The film is definitely surreal at points, and the actors' odd body movements add to the bizarre nature of it. I'd welcome seeing it again.
As said, the sets and effects are stunning even today, and the robot design is effective. (It is also clearly the inspiration for C3P0, and one suspects that the "evil silver twin droid" that appears briefly in The Empire Strikes Back might even be an homage to the Maria doppleganger-bot. Or at least I like to think of it as such…)

Critically, Metropolis is not considered one of Lang's best works in terms of story and composition, in comparison for example to films like M. But the visuals remain amazing, and it is certainly a landmark picture in film history, let alone science fiction film history.

And. of course, the "false Maria" bot might well be the first instance of the rather silly notion of including completely superficial mammary protuberances on a gender-less mechanical being (much to the delight of our good friend Smokey). At least in the film they do at least conform to the notion that the robot will underly a fake skin to duplicate the heroine, and so needs to have a woman's shape.

Anyway, thanks for sharing all your knowledge, Patrick R!

Parzival, the version you saw, was most likely the Pollock edit, which had removed most references to the relationship between Hel, Fredersen's wife and mother of his son and paramour of his rival Rotwang and using the litteral version of the term "Maschinenmensch" or Man-machine (as in the male context), rather than the more correct "Mechanical person/human" Oddly enough this lead to some weird interpretations. In one book the writer was puzzled why Fritz Lang had created a robot that looks like a woman, but is referred to as a man. Even weirder are references in other works to the robot having male parts … (probably caused by the use of low quality images and face value interpretation …)

It wasn't until the Patalas/Moroder version in the 80's that the original relationship was figured out and Hel's role was reestablished in the story.

Metropolis is a flawed masterpiece. Von Harbou's script was very Victorian in flavour, despite the overwhelming presence of early modernism and expressionism in the film.

Lang began to dislike the film and because it was recut after the release without his consent, he distanced himself from it, often saying "Why do you ask me about a film that doesn't exist any more ?"

Oddly enough, hear the end of his life, Lang claims that he talked to young people and he discovered that in the modern age they felt a clear lack of heart in society, the underlying message of Metropolis "Between the hands that work and the Mind that conceives, there must be a mediator, the heart." And Lang conceded that on that level Von Harbou might have been right all along.

But the political message in Metropolis and the tension between the elites and the workers has long been controversial. Communists disliked it because it ended on a vague promise of better working conditions, while Capitalists disliked it because it encouraged workers to rise up and demand better conditions …

I've been watching this in "installments" moving between the "unsilenced" (newest?) version and the original soundtrack version. That's so I can get the story with the dialogue/monologue in the modernized version, and then switch to the original to get the feel of how it was before people fiddled with it. I'm up to the part where Maria starts into her dance….

I only saw this movie relatively late (after 2000) and the first thing to cross my mind when I saw the robot was 'Cyberwoman' since I'm a fan of Doctor Who.

The version where Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" is looped through it as the musical background, is very cool. YouTube link