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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Metropolis
film poster
Directed by	Fritz Lang
Produced by	Erich Pommer
Written by	Thea von Harbou Fritz Lang (uncredited)
Starring	Alfred Abel Brigitte Helm Gustav Fröhlich Rudolf Klein-Rogge
Music by	Gottfried Huppertz (original version)
Cinematography	Karl Freund Günther Rittau Walter Ruttmann
Distributed by	UFA (Germany) Paramount Pictures (US)
Release date(s)	10 January 1927 (Germany) 6 March 1927 (US)
Running time	153 minutes/24 frame/s (German premiere cut) 114 minutes/25 frame/s (1927 US cut version)
Country	Germany
Language	Silent film German intertitles
Budget	5,100,000 Reichsmark (est.)

Metropolis is a 1927 silent science fiction film directed by Fritz Lang and written by Lang and Thea von Harbou. Lang and von Harbou, who were married, wrote the screenplay in 1924, and the story was novelized by von Harbou in 1926. It is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and examines a common science fiction theme of the day: the social crisis between workers and owners in capitalism. The film stars Alfred Abel as the leader of the city, Gustav Fröhlich as his son, who tries to mediate between the elite caste and the workers, Brigitte Helm as both the pure-at-heart worker Maria and the debased robot version of her, and Rudolf Klein-Rogge as the mad scientist who created the robot.

Metropolis was produced in Germany in the Babelsberg Studios by Universum Film A.G. (UFA) and released in 1927 during a stable period of the Weimar Republic. The most expensive film of its time, it cost approximately 7 million Reichsmark to make. The film was cut substantially after its German premiere, and there have been several efforts to restore it. Also, the American copyright lapsed in 1953, which eventually led to a proliferation of versions being released on video.

Contents 1 Plot 2 Cast 3 Architecture and visual effects 4 Release 5 Restorations and re-releases 5.1 Rediscovery 6 Music 6.1 The original score 6.2 Other soundtracks 7 Themes 8 Adaptations 9 Cultural influences 10 See also 11 Notes 12 External links

[edit] Plot

There are multiple versions of Metropolis. The original, longest version remained unseen except for its initial premiere and release in Germany in 1927. Of this version, a quarter of the footage was believed to be permanently lost, but the German paper Die Zeit reported on 2 July 2008 that a film museum in Argentina had turned up what scholars believe to be a print of Metropolis containing the missing footage. The American version, shortened and re-written by Channing Pollock, is the most commonly known and discussed.

Metropolis is set in the year 2027, in the extraordinary Art Deco skyscrapers of a corporate city-state, the metropolis of the title. Society has been divided into two rigid groups: one of planners or thinkers, who live high above the earth in luxury, and another of workers who live underground laboring to sustain the lives of the privileged. The city is run by Johann 'Joh' Fredersen (Alfred Abel), whose son Freder (Gustav Fröhlich) becomes infatuated with a beautiful worker woman who ventures to the surface one day. Descending to the machine rooms in pursuit of her, he is shocked to see the workers' constant toil and exhaustion. An explosion at the enormous "M-Machine" shows him the callous treatment of the workers by the above-ground elite; before the dead and wounded can be taken away, fresh men must be brought in to replace them. He visualizes the M-Machine as Moloch, who consumes a never-ending sacrifice of bodies and lives.

Freder takes pity on a worker and trades places with him, then finds a map to an underground meeting room in the man's clothes. Here he finds Maria (Brigitte Helm), the woman he saw earlier aboveground. Maria urges the gathered workers not to revolt, but to wait for the arrival of a "Mediator" who can bridge the gap between the thinkers and workers. Freder is persuaded to join the cause, and Maria begins to believe that he may be the Mediator.

At the same time, Fredersen speaks with inventor C. A. Rotwang (Rudolf Klein-Rogge), an old colleague and romantic rival. Rotwang has built a Maschinenmensch, or Machine-Man - a robot on which he plans to bestow the appearance of Hel, a lover who left him for Fredersen and died giving birth to Freder. Fredersen shows Rotwang some more maps taken from the workers killed in the explosion; Rotwang leads him underground and the two eavesdrop on the workers' meeting. Seeing Maria, Fredersen persuades Rotwang to give the robot her face instead so that it can be used to sow discord among the men. Rotwang captures her and does as Fredersen asks, but with an ulterior motive: he will use the robot to deprive Fredersen of his son.

Seeing the robot-Maria with Fredersen, Freder collapses in a sudden delirium and must be taken home. As he lies in bed and the real Maria remains imprisoned in Rotwang's house, the robot performs as an exotic dancer in the decadent Yoshiwara nightclub, sparking widespread fights among the young men in attendance. Freder snaps out of his fever and realizes that the entire city is in danger, while the robot goads the workers into a full-scale rebellion and Maria breaks loose. The workers and their wives destroy the "Heart Machine," the city's main power station, causing the reservoirs to burst and flood the workers' city farther below. Freder and worker foreman Grot are unable to stop them; Freder and Maria race down to the city and rescue all the children who have been left behind here.

Seeing the damage they have done and believing their children to be dead, the mob turns against Maria and chases her through the surface city streets. In the confusion, the real Maria slips away to the cathedral, while the mob captures the robot and burns her at the stake. Freder is aghast upon seeing this, but he and the workers soon learn that the burned woman was actually the duplicate. Rotwang chases Maria to the roof of the cathedral, with Freder in pursuit and a horrified Fredersen watching from the ground as the two men struggle. Eventually Rotwang falls to his death and Freder and Maria return to the street. Freder then fulfills his role as Mediator ("heart"), bringing Fredersen (the city's "head") and Grot (its "hands") together at last.

[edit] Cast

• Alfred Abel as Joh Fredersen
• Gustav Fröhlich as Freder, Joh Fredersen's son
• Rudolf Klein-Rogge as C. A. Rotwang
• Fritz Rasp as the Thin Man
• Theodor Loos as Josaphat
• Erwin Biswanger as Worker 11811 / Georgi
• Heinrich George as Grot, Foreman of the Heart Machine
• Brigitte Helm as Maria/robot
• Georg John as a worker

[edit] Architecture and visual effects

Metropolis features special effects and set designs that still impress modern audiences with their visual impact – the film contains cinematic and thematic links to German Expressionism, though the architecture as portrayed in the film appears based on contemporary Modernism and Art Deco. The latter, a brand-new style in Europe at the time, had not reached mass production yet and was considered an emblem of the bourgeois class, and similarly associated with the ruling class in the film.

Rotwang's Art Deco laboratory with its lights and industrial machinery is a forerunner of the Streamline Moderne style, highly influential on the look of Frankenstein-style laboratories of "mad scientists" in pop culture. When applied to science fiction, this style is sometimes called Raygun Gothic.

The effects expert, Eugen Schüfftan, created innovative visual displays widely acclaimed in following years. Among the effects used are miniatures of the city, a camera on a swing, and most notably, the so-called Schüfftan process,^[2] in which mirrors are used to "place" actors inside miniature sets. This new technique was seen again just two years later in Alfred Hitchcock's film Blackmail (1929).

The Maschinenmensch, the robot character played by Brigitte Helm, was created by Walter Schultze-Mittendorf. A chance discovery of a sample of "plastic wood" (a pliable substance designed as wood-filler) allowed him to sculpt the costume like a suit of armour over a plaster cast of the actress. Spraypainted a mix of silver and bronze, it helped create some of the most memorable moments on film. Helm suffered greatly during the filming of these scenes wearing this rigid and uncomfortable costume, which cut and bruised her, but Fritz Lang insisted on her playing the part, even if nobody would know it was her.^{[citation needed]} Walter Schulze-Mittendorf (Mittendorff), the sculptor, is still the owner of the copyrights for the Maschinenmensch – Robotdesign.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Release

On January 10, 1927, a 153 minute version of the film premiered in Berlin with moderate success. The film was cut and re-edited to change many key elements before screening. After sound films came in in late 1927, theatre managers saw to it that the film was shown using a sound film projector at the standard sound film speed of up to 26 frames per second (as at its Berlin premiere). This affected the rhythm and pace of the original film, which had been made to be shown at the standard silent film speed of 16 frames per second. The butchered, sped-up version which was presented to European and American audiences in 1928 was disjointed and illogical in parts.^[3]

American and foreign theatre managers were generally unwilling to allow more than ninety minutes to a feature in their program, during a period when film attendance figures were high. Metropolis suffered as the original version was thought to be too long. Few people outside of Berlin saw Metropolis as Fritz Lang originally intended. In the United States, the movie was shown in a version edited by the American playwright Channing Pollock, who almost completely obscured the original plot, considered too controversial by the American distributors, and is considerably shortened. In Germany, a version similar to Pollock's was shown on August 5.^[3]

As a result of the edited versions, the original premiere cut eventually disappeared and a quarter of the original film was long believed to be lost forever.^[4] In 2001, a new 75th anniversasry restoration, commissioned by the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung, was screened at the Berlin International Film Festival. This version, with a running time of 124 minutes, restored the original story line using stills and intertitles to bridge missing footage. It also added a soundtrack using the orchestral score originally composed by Gottfried Huppertz to go with the film. This restoration received the National Society of Film Critics Heritage Award for Restoration 2002.(ref: Koerber, Martin. Liner notes Kino Restored Authorized Edition, 2002) In June 2008, twenty to twenty-five minutes of lost footage were discovered in an archive of the Museum of Cinema in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It was believed this was a copy made of a print owned by a private collector, who brought the original cut to the country in 1928.^[5]

Despite the film's later reputation, some contemporary critics panned it. The New York Times critic Mourdant Hall called it a "technical marvel with feet of clay". The Times went on the next month to publish a lengthy review by H. G. Wells who accused it of "foolishness, cliché, platitude, and muddlement about mechanical progress and progress in general." He faulted Metropolis for its premise that automation created drudgery rather than relieving it, wondered who was buying the machines' output if not the workers, and found parts of the story derivative of Shelley's Frankenstein, Karel Čapek's robot stories, and his own The Sleeper Awakes.

Joseph Goebbels was impressed however and clearly took the film's message to heart. In a speech of 1928 he noted: "The political bourgeoisie is about to leave the stage of history. In its place advance the oppressed producers of the head and hand, the forces of Labour, to begin their historical mission".^[6]

Fritz Lang himself expressed dissatisfaction with the film. In an interview with Peter Bogdanovich (available in Who The Devil Made It...), he expressed his reservations.

The main thesis was Mrs. Von Harbou's, but I am at least 50 percent responsible because I did it. I was not so politically minded in those days as I am now. You cannot make a social-conscious picture in which you say that the intermediary between the hand and the brain is the heart. I mean, that's a fairy tale -- definitely. But I was very interested in machines. Anyway, I didn't like the picture -- thought it was silly and stupid -- then, when I saw the astronauts: what else are they but part of a machine? It's very hard to talk about pictures--should I say now that I like Metropolis because something I have seen in my imagination comes true, when I detested it after it was finished?

In his profile for Lang featured in the same book, which prefaces the interview, Bogdanovich suggested that Lang's distaste for his own film also stemmed from the Nazi party's fascination with the film. Von Harbou became a passionate member of the Nazi Party in 1933, and she and Lang divorced in 1934.

[edit] Restorations and re-releases

Several restored versions (all of them missing varying amounts of footage) were released in the 1980s and 1990s, running for 90 minutes.

In 1984, a new restoration and edit of the film was compiled by Giorgio Moroder, a music producer who specialized in pop-rock soundtracks for motion pictures. Moroder’s version of the film introduced a new modern rock-and-roll soundtrack for the film. Although it restored a number of previously missing scenes and plot details from the original release, his version of the film runs to only 80 minutes in length, although this is mainly due to the original intertitles being replaced with subtitles, and being run at 24 frame/s. The “Moroder version” of Metropolis sparked heated debate among film buffs and fans, with outspoken critics and supporters of the film falling into equal camps. There have even been petitions to get the Moroder cut alongside the uncut version for future releases on DVD and Bluray.

Enno Patalas made an exhaustive attempt to restore the movie in 1986. This restoration was the most accurate for its time, thanks to the script and the musical score that had been discovered. The basis of Patalas' work was a copy in the Museum of Modern Art's collection.

The film fell into the United States public domain, but its copyright was restored in 1998.^[7] The lawsuit Golan v. Gonzales unsuccessfully attempted to block Metropolis' copyright restoration.

The F.W. Murnau Foundation (which now owns the film's copyright) and Kino International (now the film's American distributor) released a 124-minute, digitally restored version in 2002, supervised by Martin Koerber. It included the original music score and title cards describing the action in the missing sequences. Lost clips were gleaned from museums and archives around the world, and computers were used to digitally clean each frame and repair minor defects. The original score was re-recorded with an orchestral ensemble. Many scenes had still not been recovered at that point and were considered lost. Among the missing scenes are the adventures of 11811, a worker who trades places with Freder; the Thin Man spying on Josephat; Maria's incarceration; Rotwang's gloating and her subsequent escape; and scenes which establish the longstanding rivalry between Joh Fredersen and Rotwang.

Most silent films were shot at speeds of between 16 and 20 frames per second, but the digitally restored version with soundtrack plays at the speed of 25 frames per second, which is the standard speed of PAL video (the US DVD is a conversion from PAL to NTSC). This speed often makes the action look unnaturally fast. A documentary on the Kino DVD edition states that Metropolis may have been filmed at 25 frames per second, but this is disputed. There have been reports stating that the world premiere of Metropolis was shown at 24 frame/s, but these, too, are unconfirmed. In the 1970s, the BBC prepared a version with electronic sound that ran at 18 frames per second and consequently had much more realistic-looking movement. Since there is no concrete evidence of Fritz Lang's wishes on this subject, it continues to be hotly debated within the silent film community.

[edit] Rediscovery

On July 1, 2008, Berlin film experts announced that a 16 mm reduction negative of the original cut of the film, which runs over 210 minutes in length, had been discovered in the archives of the film museum Museo del Cine in Buenos Aires, Argentina.^[8][9][10] The find has been authenticated by film experts working for ZEITmagazin. The print is badly scratched and will require considerable restoration before it is viewable.^[11] On July 3, 2008 the film with many lost scenes restored was shown to journalists in Argentina.^[12][13] The rights holders of Metropolis, the F.W. Murnau Stiftung, later confirmed that the newly discovered footage largely completes the missing footage, except for a single scene which was badly damaged due to being at a reel end, although the new footage is said to be in a “deplorable” condition. They announced in February 2009 that they had begun restoration work on the rediscovered film.[2]

Passed from film distributor, to private collector, to an Art Foundation since 1928, The Museo del Cine received the copy of Metropolis in 1992, where it stayed 'undiscovered' in their archives. After hearing an anecdote by the cinema club manager, who years before had been surprised by how long a screening of this film had taken, the curator of the Museo del Cine and the director of the film department of the Museum of Latin American Art reviewed the film and discovered the missing scenes.^[14]

Online sources have reported that this footage will appear on a new DVD and Blu-ray to be released in 2009.^[15]

A possible 9.5mm copy of the movie was found in 2005 in the film archive of Universidad de Chile. The copy has been sent to Germany for verification.^[16]

Another possible copy, located in New Zealand shortly after the restoration was discovered but there has not been an update regarding its status.^[17]

[edit] Music

[edit] The original score

Like many big budget films of the time, the original release of Metropolis had an original musical score meant to be performed by large orchestras accompanying the film in major theatres. The music was composed by Gottfried Huppertz, who had composed the original scores for Lang's Die Nibelungen films in 1924. For Metropolis Huppertz composed a leitmotific orchestral score which included many elements from the music of Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss, plus some mild modernisms for the city of the workers and the use of the popular Dies Irae for some apocalyptic imagery. His music played a prominent role during the shooting of the film, since during principal photography many scenes were accompanied by him playing the piano to get a certain effect from the actors.

The score was rerecorded for the most recent DVD release of the film with Berndt Heller conducting the Rundfunksinfonieorchester Saarbrücken. It was the first release of the reasonably reconstructed movie accompanied by the music that was originally intended for it. In 2007 the original film score was also played live by the VCS Radio Symphony which accompanied the restored version of the film at Brenden Theatres in Vacaville, CA on August 1 & 2.^[18]

[edit] Other soundtracks

There have been many other soundtracks created for Metropolis by many different artists, including, but not limited to:

• 1975 - The BBC version of Metropolis features an electronic score, composed by William Fitzwater and Hugh Davies.
• 1984 - Video Yesteryear, VHS release - The original score is performed by Rosa Rio at the Hammond organ.
• 1984 – Giorgio Moroder restored and produced the 80-minute 1984 re-release, which had a pop soundtrack written by Moroder and performed by Moroder, Pat Benatar, Bonnie Tyler, Jon Anderson, Adam Ant, Cycle V, Loverboy, Billy Squier, and Freddie Mercury. This resulted in considerable controversy, with film purists objecting to the use of contemporary pop music. The Moroder soundtrack is available on CD, but his version of the film itself is not available on DVD, only on out-of print laserdiscs and videotapes.
• 1991 – Club Foot Orchestra. Performed live to accompany the 80-minute Moroder version. Soundtrack available on CD.
• 1991 – The Alloy Orchestra formed to create a new original score to Moroder's version of Metropolis.
• 1994 – Rambo Amadeus, Serbia-based Montenegrin composer. At a movie screening at Sava Center, Rambo's music was played by Belgrade Philharmonic. The material was recorded in 1998 by Rambo himself along with Miroslav Savić and Heavily Manipulated Orchestra, and released as Metropolis B (Tour de Force).
• 1994 – Galeshka Moravioff. Score used in one of the variants of Filmmuseum Munich restoration.
• 1995 – Martin Matalon. Score used in another variant of Filmmuseum Munich restoration.
• 1996 – DJ Dado records techno version of the "Tower of Babel" section of Moroder's score. The German CD release contains several mixes.
• 1998 – Peter Osborne. Synth orchestral / electronic. For JEF/Eureka 139-minute B&W DVD version, released only in UK. Not available on CD.
• 1999 – Angel Tech. 3-piece group from Bristol, UK. Performed live to various versions in 1999/2000. Availability unknown.
• 2000 – After Quartet. Jazz group. Score by Brian McWhorter. Accompanies the 80-minute Moroder cut. Soundtrack available on CD.
• 2000 – Dan Schaaf. Performed live for festivals in 2000/2001. Available on CD.
• 2001 – Mute Life Dept. Portuguese group. Accompanied Filmmuseum Munich version, for live performance at Porto 2001. Available on CD.
• 2001 – Jeff Mills. Electronic artist. Available on CD.
• 2001 – Bernd Schultheis and Sofia's Radio Orchestra. Accompaniment for film festivals in 2001. Availability unknown.
• 2002 – The original Gottfried Huppertz score was rerecorded in this entirety for the DVD release by Kino International.
• 2002 - Art Zoyd - Metropolis. French avant-garde/electronic band. Available on CD.
• 2004 – Abel Korzeniowski - Metropolis—Symphony of Fear (40-minute preview) (requires Flash).
• 2005 – South Australian group "The New Pollutants" (Benjamin Speed and Tyson Hopprich) released Metropolis Rescore. It was performed live for festivals 2005/2006.

[edit] Themes

The film contains a scene where Maria retells a variation of the story of the Tower of Babel from the Biblical book of Genesis, but in a way that connects it to the situation she and her fellow workers face. The scene changes from Maria to creative men of antiquity deciding to build a monument to the greatness of humanity and the creator of the world, high enough to reach the stars. Since they cannot build their monument by themselves, they contract workers to build it for them for wages. The camera focuses on armies of workers led to the construction site of the monument. They work hard but cannot understand the dreams of the Tower's designers, and the designers don't concern themselves with the mind of their workers. As the film explains, "The dreams of a few had turned to the curses of many". It then ironically inverts the original story's conclusion, noting that the planners and the workers spoke the same language but didn't understand each other. The workers revolt and in their fury destroy the monument. As the scene ends and the camera returns to Maria, only ruins remain of the Tower of Babel. This retelling is notable in keeping the theme of the lack of communication from the original story but placing it in the context of relations between social classes.

The entire film is dominated by technology, with Lang using a mixture of both 1920s and futuristic devices. Much of the technology portrayed in the film is unexplained and appears bizarre—such as the enormous "M-Machine" and the "Heart Machine." The Heart Machine is implied to be the electrical power station of the city and appears to be a massive electric generator, but the purpose of the M-Machine or the other vast machinery around it is never revealed. The dial machine at which Freder works also has no explanation in the film, although the novel reveals that it runs the massive system of Paternoster-lifts in the New Tower of Babel. Technology is also visible in Fredersen's office: he has a television-like device which allows him to contact the foreman in the factories, and built into his desk is an electronic console which allows him to remotely open doors. The office features two unfamiliar clocks: a 24-hour clock and a ten-hour clock, ten hours being the length of the workers' shifts. In the city itself, we see a mixture of futuristic monorails and airships combined with 1920s-style cars and aircraft.

Dualism is a running theme amongst many of the characters, who demonstrate that they cannot be confined to the rigid class system of the city. The workers are dehumanised, existing either as part of a mob or as work-units, almost part of the machines themselves (the shots of them working do not let the viewer see their faces, and they work and move as rhythmically as the machines they operate), and yet they are also human beings who are being exploited. Rotwang is an intelligent philosopher, in many ways far more prescient than Joh Frederson, but also an obsessive and selfish man who uses his skills for his own purposes, and by the end of the film has deteriorated almost into machine-like monomania. Joh Frederson cannot reconcile his role as ruler of the city and as a father, which leads him to make rash and damaging decisions. Meanwhile, Maria expresses this theme most literally of all by being physically replicated as a robot.

The ultimate expression of technology in the entire film is the female robot built by Rotwang, referred to as the Maschinenmensch ("Machine Human" or "Machine Man"). In the original German version Rotwang's creation is a reconstruction of his dead lover, a woman called Hel (a reference to the Norse goddess Hel). Both Rotwang and Joh Fredersen were in love with her. She chose Fredersen and became Freder's mother, though she died in childbirth. Rotwang, insanely jealous and angry about her death, creates the Maschinenmensch Hel. In other versions, The Machine Man is merely a fully functioning automaton designed to replace human workers, whilst its appearance can be synthesised to resemble any human being - little or no connection is made between Hel and the robot, or Rotwang's motives in creating it.

In the U.S. version, the Machine Man is sentient, and eventually Rotwang loses control of it. It performs the required task of fomenting revolution, but then becomes an exotic dancer, turning the young men of Metropolis against one another for its own entertainment. This echoes themes from Karel Čapek's 1921 play Rossum's Universal Robots and anticipates the themes of many late-twentieth century films, in which seemingly unsentient machines gain consciousness and turn against the intentions of their creators. In the original version, the robot is apparently following Rotwang's instructions throughout, implying that the ruination of Metropolis and its master is actually the inventor's goal, not one chosen by the machine itself.

Part of Fritz Lang's visual inspiration for the movie came during a trip to Manhattan, New York. He is quoted on the DVD of the Murnau Foundation version as saying "I saw the buildings like a vertical curtain, opalescent, and very light. Filling the back of the stage, hanging from a sinister sky, in order to dazzle, to diffuse, to hypnotize." Lang, in his later years did claim his visit to New York inspired Metropolis, but a mention of the script for Metropolis being recently finished is made in the Licht-Bild-Bühne journal of June 1924, Lang traveled to New York in October of the same year (which means he had not originally visualized the Metropolis such and refined his visuals for the movie later).

Rotwang's home is decorated with a pentagram which may be seen as being a symbol of Pythagoreanism (an ancient Greek philosophy), magic/occultism (the pentagram is inverted in Rotwang's laboratory), or Freemasonry. It has been suggested that it was also meant as a reference to Judaism, but that is probably attributable to the pentagram being confused with the Jewish Star of David, which has six points.

[edit] Adaptations

Several adaptations have been made of the original Metropolis, including at least two musical theater adaptations (see Metropolis). The 2001 animated film Metropolis, is based on an original manga by Osamu Tezuka (see Metropolis); Tezuka's manga was in fact inspired by a poster for the film, and he never saw the film itself.^{[citation needed]} The anime's story is much closer to the original film than Tezuka's manga, although all three feature similar themes.

In December 2007, producer Thomas Schuehly (Alexander, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen) gained the remake rights to Metropolis.^[19]

[edit] Cultural influences

• Just Imagine, a film released in 1930 and set in 1980, features towering skyscrapers connected by highways and suspension bridges, similar to Metropolis. In Just Imagine, a man and a lady are in love (like Metropolis) and fly to Mars. In the novel Metropolis, Freder and Maria were supposed to fly away from earth in a spaceship, to the moon, not to Mars. In fact, the whole idea of Just Imagine could be considered Metropolis made into a vulgar broadway musical.

• In a Flash Gordon serial from 1936, the eponymous hero visits Vultan's city, where a sweatshop appears featuring a machine where the operator has to move huge dials to different parts of the machine while standing up. In Metropolis (novel) the machine is called the Paternoster-Machine, and it controls the series of elevators in the New Tower of Babel. In Metropolis (film), it has no purpose---it merely serves to show Freder in a crucifixion scene.

• Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster decided to name Superman's base of operations after the Metropolis of the film.^[20]

• The title character of Dr. Strangelove (1964) resembles Rotwang in many ways. He is a former Nazi scientist whose hand, encased in a black leather glove, threatens to strangle its owner and occasionally pops up in a Nazi salute.

• Franz Pokler, character in Thomas Pynchon's novel Gravity's Rainbow cites Metropolis as an inspiration.

• In the DC comic All-Star Squadron, first published in 1981 there was a robotic villain named Mekanique who had traveled from the future to ensure that her creator — Rotwang — would rule his era, and prevent a woman named Maria from starting a workers' revolution. The robot's back-story, and the images shown in the comic, are taken directly from Metropolis.

• The visual design for Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982) was influenced by Metropolis. These include a built up urban environment, in which the wealthy literally live above the workers, dominated by a huge building — the New Tower of Babel in Metropolis and the Tyrell Building in Blade Runner. "There is an awful lot of Metropolis in Blade Runner," says special effects supervisor David Dryer, who used stills from Metropolis when lining up Blade Runner's miniature building shots.^[1]

• Shots from the film are extensively featured in the video for Queen's 1984 song "Radio Ga Ga". The video also featured the members of the band in situations taken from the movie, inside a white adaptation of the film's set. The band's Freddie Mercury participated in Giorgio Moroder's soundtrack of the film.

• Much of the design for Gotham City in Tim Burton's Batman was influenced by Metropolis. Additionally, Burton pays homage to Metropolis in Batman's climactic cathedral scene, which parallels almost exactly the cathedral scene from Metropolis.^[21]

• The music video for Madonna's 1989 song "Express Yourself" was based on the story and visuals of Metropolis.

• The Square Enix Corporation (formerly Square) produced a video game called Chrono Trigger, which bears many similarities to Metropolis. In the 12,000 BC era, a group of humans known as the Enlightened Ones live on a peaceful, plentiful, and stable Island of Zeal (which, incidentally, floats in the air) and the Earthbound Ones toil underground just to survive. The character Schala of Zeal is very much like Maria of Metropolis, as she promotes and tries to assist the Eathbound Ones as much as possible, just as Maria helps the workers of Metropolis. Finally, just as the workers of Metropolis had important work tending to the M-Machine, so was the Mammon-Machine an important part of daily life on the Island of Zeal.

• The City of Midgar displayed in the video game Final Fantasy VII bears an array of similarities to Metropolis. In both cities, the rich citizens live spoiled and bossy lives at the expense of the working class, who live in spatially lower segments of the city. In each city, there is a proletarian insurgence, helped by a young woman of kind and intelligent character, Maria in Metropolis and Aeris in Midgar. Finally, similarities exist between the father-son relationship between Freder and Joh Fredersen, and the president of the massive Shinra corporation and his son, Rufus Shinra.

• The Stargate SG-1 episode "Beneath the Surface" (2000) has many elements of Metropolis, which is intentional, according to the DVD's commentary track, right down to the similar cityscape shown fleetingly in the background of one scene.

• Legendary Japanese manga artist/writer Osamu Tezuka used the film as the inspiration for his novel of the same name. The manga went on to spawn the subsequent anime film adaptation (directed by Rintaro) in 2001.

• In Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005), Anakin bears a resemblance to the mad scientist Rotwang. Both Anakin and Rotwang wear a menacing leather glove on one hand and are obsessed with saving – or resurrecting – a lost loved one. Also, Rotwang builds the Maschinenmensch android, whose appearance heavily influenced the image of Lucas' C-3PO, who was built by Anakin prior to The Phantom Menace.^[22]

• In Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier (in which various fictional characters exist side by side), Rotwang and Maria secretly served Kaiser Wilhelm II in the "Berlin Metropolis" before the First World War.

• The video for Nine Inch Nails' "We're in This Together" was an homage to the film.

• Australian pop star Kylie Minogue's X2008 Tour features imagery inspired by the film. Back in 2002 Kylie also appeared on stage as a cyborg queen which resembled Rotwang's Maschinenmensch android.

• The imagery of Warren Ellis's comic Ignition City was partially inspired by Metropolis.^[23]

[edit] See also

• List of German films 1919-1933
• List of dystopian films
• List of most expensive non-English language films

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

• Metropolis at the Internet Movie Database
• Metropolis at the TCM Movie Database
• Metropolis at Allmovie
• Metropolis at the Open Directory Project
• Metropolis at MetaCritic
• Metropolis at Rotten Tomatoes
• The official site of the previous (2002) restoration
• About the 2002 restoration 'Metropolis'
• Metropolis novelization by Thea von Harbou
• Metropolis at the UNESCO Memory of the World register
• Movie stills and literature
• Die Zeit reports original version found, July 2, 2008. IN GERMAN.
• screenshots from previously lost frames
• The Local reports on Die Zeit's story. In English.
• A 2009 re-edit with additional footage & new sound effects of Moroder's Metropolis to express a more complete story

v • d • e The films of Fritz Lang 1910s The Half-Caste • Master of Love • Spiders, Part 1: The Golden Lake • Harakiri 1920s Spiders, Part 2: The Diamond Ship • The Wandering Image • Four Around a Woman • Destiny • Dr. Mabuse the Gambler • Die Nibelungen: Siegfried • Die Nibelungen: Kriemhild's Revenge • Metropolis • Spione • Woman in the Moon 1930s M • The Testament of Dr. Mabuse • Liliom • Fury • You Only Live Once • You and Me 1940s The Return of Frank James • Western Union • Man Hunt • Moontide • Hangmen Also Die • Ministry of Fear • The Woman in the Window • Scarlet Street • Cloak and Dagger • Secret Beyond the Door... 1950s House by the River • American Guerrilla in the Philippines • Rancho Notorious • Clash by Night • The Blue Gardenia • The Big Heat • Human Desire • Moonfleet • While the City Sleeps • Beyond a Reasonable Doubt • The Tiger of Eschnapur • Das indische Grabmal 1960s The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse