metropolis film analysis essay

Metropolis – A Film Analysis

Very few films have defined a genre. One of these films is the 1927 German silent movie Metropolis . Directed by legendary filmmaker Fritz Lang, Metropolis is a dystopian sci-fiction movie that touches on important socio-political and even theological aspects of modern society. Made during the Weimar era—a time when Germany was in political and economic turmoil, and when cities often witnessed street battles between communists and fascists—the movie manages to be relevant even today as it was then. Why? This is something that we will try to understand as we analyze some of the movie’s key characters and narrative points.

The opening scenes depict the underground-dwelling workers of an enormous unnamed city toiling away at ambiguous machines that keep the city alive. After their ten-hour shifts of grueling manual labor, these crestfallen workers descend to the depths and limp away to their homes. We then move heavenwards, to the roofs of the skyscrapers, where the children of the rulers and the powerful play and enjoy gardens and private arenas. It is here where we meet our hero: a young man named Freder, who is the son of the city’s master, Joh Fredersen.

The setting makes visible the sharp class divide that exists in the city, and this divide has parallels to our own modern-day urban life. The cinematography perfectly utilizes the workers’ robotic movements to make them appear as extensions of the machines and ultimately non-humans—others. This divide of the classes and the other-izing of a segment of the city’s population gives the impression that something is lacking in society, and this lack gives way to a shattered and unbalanced way of life. Again, this is analogous to our real-life urban existence.

It is because of this missing component that our society is divided into warring factions who look to sacrifice one another to produce the perfect society. The working class and ruling class divide gave rise to Marxist thinking, something that the film addresses, albeit in a fragmented way. Marxist theory is a derivation of Hegelian thought, that society evolves through dialectical struggle and through revolution which produces a fair and desirable state of being. This struggle that Marxism describes is a variant of mimetic warfare—conflict that ends in human sacrifice and false hope for a better future.

Young Freder, during one of his escapades in the gardens, is dumbfounded at the appearance of a character named Maria and several children of the workers whom she has brought along with her. “Look, children,” Maria says, pointing to the sons and daughters of the wealthy rulers, “these are your brothers and sisters.” Maria is the Christ-Marian archetype of the story. She is the unconscious Christian insert by the writer Thea von Harbou, unconscious because her character is produced as a figure of innocence and beauty, and also because she inadvertently leads a curious Freder to the horrors of the underground machines of the city.

In the underground, Freder witnesses firsthand the anguish-ridden existence of the workers. One of the machines explodes when a worker fails to tend to it in time. Freder is thrown back by the explosion and he then hallucinates the gigantic head of Molech swallowing bound slaves and the workers who walk into the monster’s mouth in defeat. This entire sequence of events is an unconscious retelling of the Passion story in the New Testament. The Marian-Christ figure leads the pagan who is steeped in mythology into the reality of misery faced by the unquestioning innocents, and by doing so she unveils the ritual human sacrifice that sustains society. The shock treatment of this revelation opens Freder’s eyes. His world will never be the same again.

We are again brought back to this missing component—this absence of a bridge between the ruler and the ruled. The incomplete state of Metropolis means that violence links and sustains society and as a result, Molech—the Canaanite god of human sacrifice—swallows those who fail to do their work properly. The missing component means that natural law reigns in all its Darwinian glory. Might makes right! Human beings are mutated into lifeless and disposable machines. Such a society is bound to fail because it relies on an endless supply of scapegoats; Joh Fredersen denies this reality when his son rushes to tell him of the suffering of the workers.

Fredersen ignores his son’s plea for mercy. He recognizes that the expulsion of workers to the depths is a necessity, and this necessity—this myth—must not be broken or everything will fall apart. The later parts of the story prove him to be partially right. Fredersen is not overjoyed or passionate at this recognition; indeed, he is concerned about his son. He is, after all, faced with a dilemma as are his real-life counterparts. He must either choose the path of expulsion and keep the city running as he is obligated to or he can break the religious structure and risk an inversion of the hierarchy or, even worse, a war of all against all.

But Fredersen does not realize that there is a third way, and this way is discovered by his son Freder who voluntarily exiles himself to the underground and takes on the role of a worker himself. Freder discovers that the workers, after their shifts, go to the catacombs and devoutly listen to Maria who preaches about a coming ‘mediator’—a heart that will bring together the mind (the rulers) and the hands (workers). Maria explains this need for a mediator through a revisionist telling of the tower of Babel story wherein she claims that the tower could not be completed because of discord between the slaves and the chief planners.

So here we are told what the missing component is and what needs to be done to achieve equilibrium. Unbeknownst to Thea von Harbou, who was really pointing to a charismatic leader to fill in the role of the mediator, she is unconsciously arguing for the sovereign rule of a divine king, and not just any king but a king who is uniquely redeeming, non-violent, and persuasive through voluntary discourse. This king in all certainty is Jesus Christ. It is Christ who fulfills the unraveling of pagan mythology—the violence that serves as the foundation of cities. And it is Christ who, upon his advent, achieves the role as the perfect mediator and the perfect role model.

Also, the characters of Maria and Freder themselves are an indication of Christ in the world of Metropolis . Maria emerges from the place of the workers, therefore she represents, in a sense, Christ’s human nature. Freder comes from the place of the wealthy and the powerful; he represents the divine nature of Christ. The two natures sometimes overlap between the two characters. It is no wonder that both fall in love with each other, thus symbolizing the spiraling unity of the divine and the human in bringing about redemption to the world. From here onwards, after Maria almost supernaturally recognizes that Freder is the promised mediator, Freder and Maria work together to save Metropolis.

Next, we are introduced to the iconic machine-person and its creator, the mad scientist Rotwang whose name translates to ‘red cheek.’ Rotwang is the mimetic double of Fredersen. He was once a close friend of Fredersen but later becomes a rival due to his pursuit of Fredersen’s now-deceased wife Hel. The character of Rotwang ends up as a scientist who, in his model-obstacle relationship with Fredersen, attempts to play God. A scientist who ‘plays God’ is typically one who lacks any intention of preserving the life-affirming goal, i.e. healing of human life, given to science by the Gospel revelation.

One sign of the mad-scientist archetype is his act of creating an artificial being that rivals humans who are God’s creation. Rotwang’s creation is the Maschinenmensch —the machine-person. This machine-person takes on the likeness of Maria to lead the workers and eventually the whole city into a state of disarray. The machine-person is depicted as the ultimate scandal generator. She is comparable to the array of Christ substitutes—false Christs—that exist in our modern day societies. She is presented by Rotwang to the elites as a prostituted savior, a corrupted messiah who sells herself as a glittering object of desire and scandalizes society as a result.

The machine-person causes numerous rivalries and deaths amongst the elite. Those who burn in lust for her end up competing and fighting over her, thus killing rivals in fistfights and duels. The machine-person’s real-life counterparts are the various socialist, Marxist, and other such radicalized political and cultural movements that present to us numerous false-Christs—charismatic figures that claim to fight for victims but end up scandalizing society in an attempt to erase differentiation.

One characteristic of a false-Christ is his/her claim of protection of victims through violence. In order to fight evil, a false-Christ will always urge the use of violence, equal or greater than the perceived offense. This is made all the more clear when the machine-person impersonates Maria at the catacombs and sends the workers into a revolutionary rage by urging them to “destroy the machines.”

Freder recognizes the machine-person as an impersonator. “You’re not Maria!” he says, “Maria spoke of peace—not violence!” His words fall on deaf ears as the crowd turns on him before proceeding to wreak havoc on the machines that run the city. The crowd dances around the ruins, not realizing that the destruction has caused severe flooding of their own homes with their children inside. This scene is an obvious indication of the cannibalizing nature of violent revolutions. If there is violence, it will eventually come back one way or another. Such is the nature of violence.

Fortunately, Maria and Freder, who just narrowly escaped lynching by the crowd, join together and save the workers’ children from drowning. The children here represent the non-violent victims who fall in the crosshairs of mob persecution, emboldened in our world by unjust laws. We have numerous real-life examples: the millions murdered under the communist and fascist regimes, the separation of families due to the “war on drugs,” the drone attacks on innocents in the so-called war on terror, and the list goes on. Maria and Freder’s actions here are the only valid Christian response that we can take in the face of tyranny and mob persecution: the imitation of Christ which leads to the salvation of victims and the total rejection of the scapegoat mechanism.

Admittedly, the movie falters when it kills the primary antagonists, the machine-person and Rotwang; the former in a literal witch-burning by a crowd that has recognized the deception. Again, we must keep in mind that the narrative treats violence and the scapegoating ritual in a fragmented manner. The writer, not a Christian in any sense, had unconsciously inserted the anti-scapegoating segments as a result of the post-Calvary revelation—the innocence of the one persecuted by the many—that has haunted and continues to haunt the European psyche. Where the movie succeeds brilliantly is the salvation of the children of the workers and the resulting peace it manages to achieve between the workers and Joh Fredersen.

Upon the appearance of Fredersen, the crowd is poised to lynch him but they are made aware of the fact that it was Fredersen’s son who has rescued their children. Fredersen and the workers shake hands, solidifying peace in Metropolis and symbolizing the victory of mutual consent over tyranny. The message is overwhelmingly true: it is salvation and redemption that joins society together, not scapegoating. “There can be no understanding between the hand and the brain unless the heart acts as mediator,” Maria says. In a Calvary-haunted society, it must be argued that the heart cannot be anyone else other than Christ. Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou managed to recognize the power of the Gospel narrative in binding society together, and so should we.

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Stirred by the visionary power of “ Dark City ,” I revisited Fritz Lang ‘s “Metropolis” and once again fell under its eerie spell. The movie has a plot that defies common sense, but its very discontinuity is a strength. It makes “Metropolis” hallucinatory–a nightmare without the reassurance of a steadying story line. Few films have ever been more visually exhilarating.

Generally considered the first great science-fiction film, “Metropolis” (1927) fixed for the rest of the century the image of a futuristic city as a hell of scientific progress and human despair. From this film, in various ways, descended not only “Dark City” but “ Blade Runner ,” “ The Fifth Element ,” “Alphaville,” “ Escape From L.A. ,” “ Gattaca ,” and Batman’s Gotham City. The laboratory of its evil genius, Rotwang, created the visual look of mad scientists for decades to come, especially after it was mirrored in “Bride of Frankenstein” (1935). And the device of the “false Maria,” the robot who looks like a human being, inspired the “Replicants” of “Blade Runner.” Even Rotwang’s artificial hand was given homage in “ Dr. Strangelove .”

What many of these movies have in common is a loner hero who discovers the inner workings of the future society, penetrating the system that would control the population. Even Batman’s villains are the descendants of Rotwang, giggling as they pull the levels that will enforce their will. The buried message is powerful: Science and industry will become the weapons of demagogues.

“Metropolis” employed vast sets, 25,000 extras and astonishing special effects to create two worlds: the great city of Metropolis, with its stadiums, skyscrapers and expressways in the sky, and the subterranean workers’ city, where the clock face shows 10 hours to cram another day into the work week. Lang’s film is the summit of German Expressionism, the combination of stylized sets, dramatic camera angles, bold shadows and frankly artificial theatrics.

The production itself made even Stanley Kubrick’s mania for control look benign. According to Patrick McGilligan’s book Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast, the extras were hurled into violent mob scenes, made to stand for hours in cold water and handled more like props than human beings. The heroine was made to jump from high places, and when she was burned at a stake, Lang used real flames. The irony was that Lang’s directorial style was not unlike the approach of the villain in his film.

The story tells of a great city whose two halves–the pampered citizens of the surface and the slaves of the depths–are ignorant of one another. The city is run by the ruthless Joh Fredersen ( Alfred Abel ), a businessman-dictator. His son Freder ( Gustav Froehlich ) is in the Pleasure Gardens one day when Maria ( Brigitte Helm ), a woman from the subterranean city, brings a group of workers’ children to the surface. Freder, struck by Maria’s beauty and astonished to learn of the life led by the workers, seeks out the demented genius Rotwang ( Rudolf Klein-Rogge ), who knows the secrets of the lower world.

What follows is Freder’s descent into the depths and his attempts to help the workers, who are rallied by the revolutionary Maria. Meanwhile, Rotwang devises a robot, captures the real Maria, and transfers her face to the robot–so that the workers, still following Maria, can be fooled and controlled. (The electrical arcs, bubbling beakers, glowing rings of light and mad scientist props in the transformation sequence have influenced a thousand films.)

Lang develops this story with scenes of astonishing originality. Consider the first glimpse of the underground power plant, with workers straining to move heavy dial hands back and forth. What they’re doing makes no logical sense, but visually the connection is obvious: They are controlled like hands on a clock. And when the machinery explodes, Freder has a vision in which the machinery turns into an obscene devouring monster.

Other dramatic visual sequences: a chase scene in the darkened catacombs, with the real Maria pursued by Rotwang (the beam of his light is like a club to bludgeon her). The image of the Tower of Babel as Maria addresses the workers. Their faces, arrayed in darkness from the top to the bottom of the screen. The doors in Rotwang’s house, opening and closing on their own. The lascivious dance of the false Maria, as the workers look on, the screen filled with large, wet, staring eyeballs. The flood of the lower city and the undulating arms of the children flocking to Maria to be saved.

The gaps and logical puzzles of the story (some caused by clumsy re-editing after the film left Lang’s hands) are swept away by this torrent of images. “To enjoy the film, the viewer must observe but never think,” the critic Arthur Lennig said, and Pauline Kael contrasted its “moments of almost incredible beauty and power” with “absurd ineptitudes.” Even when the plot seems adrift, the movie itself never lacks confidence: The city and system are so overpowering they dwarf any merely logical problems. Although Lang saw his movie as anti-authoritarian, the Nazis liked it enough to offer him control of their film industry (he fled to America instead). Some of the ideas in “Metropolis” seem echoed in Leni Riefenstahl’s pro-Hitler “Triumph of the Will”(1935)–where, of course, they have lost their irony.

Much of what we see in “Metropolis” doesn’t exist except in visual trickery. The special effects were the work of Eugene Schuefftan, who later worked in Hollywood as the cinematographer of “Lilith” and “ The Hustler .” According to Magill’s Survey of Cinema, his photographic system “allowed people and miniature sets to be combined in a single shot, through the use of mirrors, rather than laboratory work.” Other effects were created in the camera by cinematographer Karl Freund.

The result was astonishing for its time. Without all of the digital tricks of today, “Metropolis” fills the imagination. Today the effects look like effects, but that’s their appeal. Looking at the original “King Kong” not long ago, I found that its effects, primitive by modern standards, gained a certain weird effectiveness. Because they looked strange and unworldly compared to the slick, utterly convincing effects that are now possible, they were more evocative: The effects in movies like “ Jurassic Park ” and “ Titanic ” are done so well, by comparison, that we simply think we are looking at real things, which is not quite the same kind of fun.

“Metropolis” has not existed for years in the version that Lang completed. It was chopped by distributors, censors and exhibitors, key footage was lost, and only by referring to the novelization of the story by Thea vonHarbou can various story gaps be explained. In 1984 a reconstructed version was released, adding footage gathered from Germany and Australia to existing prints, and that version, produced by Giorgio Moroder, was color tinted “according to Lang’s original intentions” and given an MTV-style musical score. This is the version most often seen today.

Purists quite reasonably object to it, but one can turn off the sound and dial down the color to create a silent black-and-white print. I am not crazy about the soundtrack, but in watching the Moroder version I enjoyed the tinting and felt that Lang’s vision was so powerful it swept aside the quibbles: It’s better to see this well-restored print with all the available footage than to stand entirely on principle.

“Metropolis” does what many great films do, creating a time, place and characters so striking that they become part of our arsenal of images for imagining the world. The ideas of “Metropolis” have been so often absorbed into popular culture that its horrific future city is almost a given (when Albert Brooks dared to create an alternative utopian future in 1991 with “Defending Your Life,” it seemed wrong, somehow, without Satanic urban hellscapes). Lang filmed for nearly a year, driven by obsession, often cruel to his colleagues, a perfectionist madman, and the result is one of those seminal films without which the others cannot be fully appreciated.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

• Alfred Abel as Joh Fredersen
• Gustav Froehlich as Freder
• Brigitte Helm as Maria
• Heinrich George as Grot
• Rudolf Klein-Rogge as Rotwang

Directed by

• Thea von Harbou

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The Definitives

Critical essays, histories, and appreciations of great films

Essay by Brian Eggert August 30, 2014

Metropolis contains such magnificent visuals that all else about the film recedes, allowing its all-consuming mythical status to take over. A technical masterwork of the Silent Era by Austrian director Fritz Lang, the 1927 picture’s incredible, cutting-edge special effects and futurist imagery have become immeasurably iconographic and made the picture a landmark of influential science-fiction filmmaking. Lang set out with the ambition to produce a film costlier and grander in scope than anything achieved before, enlisting thousands of extras, colossal sets, and sights never imagined for a motion picture. However, as a narrative experience, the sociopolitical subtexts present in the film would be less imposing, though not by design. Attempts by Lang and his wife, Thea von Harbou, who wrote the novel on which the film is based, to imbue their co-written screenplay with meaningful themes about the ongoing struggle between slave labor and their masters result in mixed messages between the film’s Marxist indoctrination and its curious sentimentality. And the ironic, notorious history of the film’s production under its mercilessly authoritarian director, as well as its subsequent favor among members of the Nazi party, further complicate the filmmakers’ intentions and Metropolis ‘ lasting impact, which, nonetheless, supersede any contradictions or questionable associations the film may have by the sheer force of its mythic standing.

Fritz Lang was born in 1890 in Vienna to an architect father and a Jewish mother, the latter of whom converted from Judaism to Catholicism and raised young Fritz as a Catholic. Though initially following in his father’s footsteps, he lived a poor and bohemian lifestyle as he studied art at the Academy of Art and Design in Munich and later the Académie Julian in Paris, where he discovered himself and his lifelong affection for female escorts, painting, and tales of murder. In Paris, he later recalled seeing The Great Train Robbery (1904) and other early works of cinema that made him realize “you could also paint using a camera.” But his yet-unrealized aspirations to become a professional painter or filmmaker would have to wait until after World War I; Lang volunteered for duty in January of 1915 and listed his occupation as “artist,” though his education would ensure his rise to the rank of lieutenant. Lang’s enthusiasm toward the “adventure” of war earned him several medals but also several injuries, including one that left him nearly blind in his left eye, where he would wear a monocle for his remaining years—an infamous signifier of the film director’s prying, detailed-obsessed exactitude. Then again, contradictory stories have arisen concerning the origins of Lang’s monocle, suggesting Lang wore it before the war or even that he adopted it after the war when nitrate film stock exploded in his face. Wherever its origins lie, the opposing stories underscore the truth that Lang’s early life is suspect because the later filmmaker often exaggerated or falsified his history in interviews for anecdotal entertainment.

While recovering in the hospital from war injuries, Lang began to keep a journal of his day’s events, thoughts, and story ideas, and he would continue to journal his daily activities to an almost compulsion-level extreme until the end of his life. With the war ending in 1918, Lang was torn between which path he should take, painting or filmmaking, and he soon had the opportunity to share many of his journaled ideas with a young Erich Pommer, the German producer who oversaw the Bild-und-Film-Amt (Bufa), the army’s department of propaganda and entertainment, which later absorbed into Universum Film Aktiengesellschaft (Ufa), arguably Germany’s greatest film studio. Pommer hired Lang to write screenplays for his production company, Decla, and Lang quickly yearned to become a director. Within a few short, busy years between 1918 and 1924, Lang began directing increasingly ambitious motion pictures and rose to the height of the German film industry with titles like the two-part thriller The Spiders (1920), The Wandering Image (1920), and the four-hour Dr. Mabuse the Gambler (1922). During this prolific period, Lang met Thea von Harbou, who would co-author a number of his screenplays; the two would be married in 1920, and together they explored themes that reflected the tortured postwar identity of Germany through perversity, criminality, and the fantastic—themes that, though pointedly German at the time, nonetheless persisted in Lang’s work until the end of his long career. In 1924, Lang released the spectacle Die Nibelungen , another lengthy two-parter and a fantasy based on a thirteenth-century epic poem called Nibelungenlied . The hugely popular and successful production showcased the director’s embrace of special effects within the camera, which would be taken to their limits in his next film.

Lang’s self-serving anecdote about how the idea for Metropolis came to him was told again and again by the director, as well as numerous biographers and film historians since. Standing on the deck of the Deutschland as it approached American ports in the autumn of 1924, Lang, there with Pommer, supposedly eyed the sprawling New York City from afar and was jolted by this “city of the future”—thus the seed of Metropolis was born. Lang’s story was just great myth-making on his part, compelled not only by his bombastic ego but also by the producing studio, Ufa, to make a much-needed lasting impression on the American market and sustain the German film industry. Indeed, in early-to-mid 1924, Erich Pommer had already begun telling people about Lang’s next script for Metropolis while the director was putting the finishing touches on and conducting publicity tours for Die Nibelungen . Moreover, as early as three months before his supposedly inspiring trip to America, Lang and von Harbou had vacationed together to, according to an Austrian newspaper, “finish the screenplay for their new film Metropolis .” Von Harbou had often written novels before her screenplays or completed novelizations for release alongside a given film. In the case of Metropolis , screen credit was given to von Harbou for the source “based on a novel by Thea von Harbou.” Regardless of when the story was completed, pre-production meetings at Ufa began by the end of 1924, and Pommer would attempt to persuade, sometimes unsuccessfully, the studio’s best talent to once more work with the already demanding director of some ill-repute for his most elaborate production yet.

Lang and von Harbou’s story is a modern retelling of the Tower of Babel, prefaced and concluded by the epigram, “The mediator between the brain and the hands must be the heart!” High above the futuristic city of Metropolis is its master, Joh Fredersen (Alfred Abel), resident “brain” of the bourgeoisie leisure class, among them his spoiled son, Freder (Gustav Fröhlich). Below are the “hands” who toil over the Heart Machine, workers like the rugged foreman Grot (Heinrich George). Deep beneath the city, under awful conditions, the proletariat strains themselves on the punishing machines, but further down beneath in subterranean levels are catacombs where word of suspected rebellion brews. Freder sympathizes with the workers and soon sides with them, his interest piqued by his attraction to Maria (Brigitte Helm), a figurative character amalgamating Christ and the Madonna, who brings children to the surface to see how the upper classes live. In turn, Freder visits the Heart Machine and witnesses the workers’ subjugated efforts first-hand, and later learns of the secret meetings held in the catacombs. Attending a secret meeting, Freder watches as Maria stands in a cave amid spire crucifixes and the Reichsadler eagle (later used in Nazi imagery) and prophesizes to the virtually zombified workers that a mediator will come to bring an understanding between Joh Fredersen and the labor class. Inspired, Feder believes he can serve as the prophesized mediator.

Above, Joh Fredersen learns of his son’s betrayal and the workers’ slipping productivity within his enforced 10-hour day, and he schemes with Rotwang (Rudolf Klein-Rogge), an inventor with a somewhat possessed robotic hand (an influence for Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove ). Rotwang reveals he can build Machine-Human facsimiles and shows Fredersen the living inner skeleton of a female robot he’s built. Fredersen permits Rotwang to create an identical cyborg of Maria to infiltrate the workers. But Rotwang also wants revenge on Fredersen for stealing his love, a woman named Hel, who died giving birth to Freder, and so Rotwang plots for his false Maria (distinguishable only by her darkened eyes and lips, her sharp movements, and the glint of madness in her eyes) to provoke an uprising. At the robo-Maria’s order, the workers leave their children behind in the underground city and rush to destroy the machines that power the city above. Fredersen allows the revolt to continue, if only because he knows the machines will back up and incite a flood in the workers’ underground home. Soon, the flood wipes away the workers’ city—though Freder and the real Maria narrowly rescue the children. Once the workers learn of this, they believe their children dead and blame who they believe to be Maria, resolving to burn the robo-Maria “witch” at the stake. The robo-Maria is revealed to be a robot as it goes up in flames; now the mob turns to Fredersen. Elsewhere, Freder saves Maria from the maddened Rotwang and fights him off until the villain falls to his death. With the mob calmed once they learn of their children’s safety, Freder lives up to his promise and pronounces himself the Heart: “The mediator between the brain and the hands.”

Filming began in May of 1925 and ended in October of 1926, a production of staggering length and with a price tag of five million marks. Some 38,000 extras were hired in addition to the principal actors, and if moviegoers were meant to think the 10-hour workdays imposed by Joh Frederson were cruel, Lang pushed his cast and crew much harder, with morning-until-midnight work hours and rarely a Sunday off. Fröhlich wrote in his autobiography, “In scenes of physical suffering, he tormented the actors until they really did suffer.” Lang forced Fröhlich to reshoot a scene for two days where Freder falls to his knees before Maria, always finding some excuse (an incorrect camera angle, his acting wasn’t as “deeply felt” as it should be) to shoot it again, until Fröhlich could barely stand. Lang was hardest on reluctant actress Brigitte Helm, whom he corrected fussily, if not torturously. For weeks, Helm, then a teenager, was forced to endure “liquid wood” molds for the robo-Maria costume, requiring her to keep a rigid stance for hours on end. The molds had been taken while Helm was standing, but for the robo-Maria’s throned unveiling, the actress was required to be seated, thus the mold caused her great pain. (Rittau had conceived the sequence’s effect, where rings of light encircle robo-Maria and simultaneously rotate up and down and around her, by shooting a silver ball looping in front of a black velvet backdrop.) Lang’s autocratic, bullying behavior on the set extended beyond the primary cast; he almost came to blows with designer Otto Hunte and proved temperamental when decisions were made without his prior approval. And whatever frustrations he had about minor losses of control were exacted on his cast and crew tenfold.

For the flooding sequence, Lang rounded up hundreds of slum kids from around Berlin and forced them into cold water for nearly two weeks of shooting; their torment was offset by regular doses of warm meals, toys, and cocoa. For the adult extras, Lang benefited from Berlin’s high unemployment rates when he needed to film a dream sequence where half-naked men leap into the mouth of Moloch, god of fire, as imagined by Freder when he first sees the Heart Machine. Though the sequence appears swelteringly hot in the film, in reality, the set was freezing cold and filled with smoke, and the steam from the smoke created a chilly drizzle that fell onto the heads of shivering, hungry, skinny, jobless men. Lang’s cruel orchestration of his picture culminated during the filming of the Heart Machine’s destruction, where the puppeteer-director literally dangled his extras from strings to create the impression that they were blown away from the machine. It wasn’t all freezing temperatures; for Maria’s retelling of the Tower of Babel legend, Lang required 1,000 extras to shave their heads and drag huge actual stones through an actual desert landscape. Between shots, the extras could do nothing but wait around and get horribly sunburned. The cast and crew whispered about Lang’s “abnormal” approach and demands, believing him nearly murderous. When Lang’s methods caused the production to be over-schedule and over-budget, Pommer, who was the voice of reason on-set, was blamed by the studio, and so Lang was free to continue unhindered. One of the last, most dangerous sequences entailed burning robo-Maria at the stake, and Lang insisted Helm experience the heat of real flames for authenticity; while filming the scene, Helm’s dress caught fire and, after being rescued by Lang and the on-set fire department, she passed out in Lang’s arms.

But if the restoration has confirmed anything beyond the visual force of Lang’s film, it has reinforced the notion that the story of Metropolis is trivial, confused, and illogical no matter the cut being viewed. In a scathing but incisive review published in the New York Times in April 1927, science-fiction author H.G. Wells ( The War of the Worlds , The Time Machine ) summed up the film and its implausible predictions about the future nicely, writing, “It gives in one eddying concentration almost every possible foolishness, cliché, platitude, and muddlement about mechanical progress and progress in general served up with a sauce of sentimentality that is all its own.” To be sure, Wells’ discussion about the “muddlement” of the machines and progress is difficult to discount, as it tears down any hope for logic or meaningful sociopolitical commentary in Metropolis . Consider how laborers in the film toil away to maintain a city where the middle-class, political presence, and civil servants are unseen or nonexistent. Who else but the labor class and upper crust inhabits this city? And why must the laborers waste away on ostensibly nonfunctional machines? Wells observed, “Much stress is laid on the fact that the workers are spiritless, hopeless drudges… But a mechanical civilization has no use for mere drudges; the more efficient its machinery the less need there is for the quasi-mechanical minder.” Wells does not see a benefit from the intense labor depicted in the film, and so he wonders what the labor produces, if anything, and for whom? Lang later admitted to interviewer Peter Bogdonovich that the central, simple-minded theme of the picture was “unrealistic” and “a fairy tale” and conceded, “I was very interested in machines.” Lang’s fascination does not extend beyond the machines themselves, their daunting beauty, sharp lines, and imposing stature within his frame. He does not intentionally intellectualize the machines, and therefore they are empty components of the narrative. (Wells said of the narrative, “Originality there is none. Independent thought, none.”)

Without a doubt, the advanced machines are not the origin of conflict in Metropolis , nor does the film’s treatment of technology correspond to science-fiction worlds often paranoid about the threat of robotics and artificial intelligence—established in literature before Metropolis in everything from Karel Čapek’s robot play R.U.R. to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein . The danger of the machines is inherent to how humans use those machines through cruel labor and manipulation. But in a world capable of a convincing human replicant, why is there a need for such drudgery? Nevertheless, the machines, even the robo-Maria, do what they’re told and nothing more, and the human worker (exclusively male; women are either Madonna or the Whore) sweats physically, fruitlessly, to the end of his workday no less like a hamster on a wheel, serving as “living food” for machines, for which humans feel a dogged need to maintain to their own limits. Wells pointed out, “The contrivers of this idiotic spectacle are so hopelessly ignorant of all the work that has been done upon industrial efficiency that they represent him as working his machine-minders to the point of exhaustion so that they faint and machines explode, and people are scalded to death. It is the inefficient factory that needs slaves; the ill-organized mine that kills men.” In other words, in the world of Metropolis , such a grand and impeccably designed city would be impossible given the complete lack of efficiency shown operating underneath it. Additionally, the film dreams up a fantastical and much-romanticized resolution to its industrialized regimentation when the forces of labor and management meet in a grand public display and agree to mediation through sentimentalized morality. In its expressive, blown-up dramatic quality, the film operates more like an opera and certainly earns the adjective “operatic”—excessively so, even for viewers accustomed to the emphatic drives of Silent Film stylization.

After finishing Metropolis , Lang would go on to make more successful pictures for Ufa, including Spies (1928), Woman in the Moon (1929), his masterful M (1930), and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse . Meanwhile, Hitler rose to power, and Joseph Goebbels became the head of the National Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. Jewish businesses were being condemned by the National Socialist party, and suddenly Lang was being identified as Jewish in film-related publications. (Whether or not this exposure of Lang’s family line could be attributed to von Harbou, who was divorced from her husband by 1933, remains uncertain.) That Lang was at the top of the German film industry and of Jewish heritage was not overlooked, though Goebbels was a definite fan of Lang’s films. Many in the European film industry (Billy Wilder, Max Ophüls, Fred Zinnemann, etc.) had already begun to flee Hitler’s impending raid on surrounding countries, but it took the German Board of Film Censors banning The Testament of Dr. Mabuse from exhibition to incite Lang (who received favorable treatment from Goebbels and appeared alongside him, allegedly in full Nazi dress, at least once at a public conference), to join the others and head to Hollywood. But before Lang escaped, he met with Goebbels about their censorship of The Testament of Dr. Mabuse , and during that meeting, Goebbels asked Lang, on behalf of Hitler, to head the German film industry. Despite Lang’s lineage, Goebbels vowed to make him an “honorary Aryan” and insisted, “We decide who is Jewish or not.” After all, Hitler “loved” Metropolis , and the Nazis would later embrace the film’s imagery in their own visual iconography, from the Reichsadler eagle to the use of massive lines and architecture employed for Leni Riefenstahl’s 1935 propaganda piece Triumph of the Will . Lang was on a train the next day, leaving everything behind.

Then again, certain facts of Lang’s encounter with Goebbels, often told and retold by Lang with varying detail, have since been debunked and, though probably not completely false, the story was surely edited and sensationalized by Lang for maximum peril and excitement, further adding to his own mythology, and the film’s. Perhaps it’s a case of Lang’s penchant for anecdotal entertainment, not unlike tales surrounding his monocle. In his book Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast , author Patrick McGilligan posits that Lang’s story was likely a combination of multiple visits with Goebbels. However true or untrue, as a result of Lang’s brief association with Goebbels, not to mention von Harbou’s Nazi affiliations, it’s virtually impossible to watch Metropolis today and not see why its obsession with machine-like movements and larger-than-life imagery impressed the Nazis, who were themselves so dependent on visual iconographies to support the authority of their party. When city workers march in lines to and from the job, the procession and its carefully orchestrated movements recall Nazi rallies—the “mass-ornament”—and their orderly arrangements are so frightening in their mechanical-yet-human physicality. These associations, compounded by the weak and idealistic narrative of the film, would leave Metropolis a masterpiece of visual distinction, where the aesthetic power of an image is greater than the meaning of that image. Lang would later realize the error of his film’s rather ambiguous, under-explored message, attributing the politics to von Harbou (Lang had originally considered an ending where Maria and Freder fly off in a spaceship but conceded to his wife). In an interview with the Cahier du Cinema in 1965, he suggested there was an unnecessary moral element in the film, but “the problem is social, not moral,” he said.

In the 1920s, the film’s oversimplified ideological message about industrialization would have been more relevant, even if most critics responded to its social commentary with intellectual rebuffs. Today, the message is far less applicable, but Metropolis ‘ lasting effect is how Lang has delighted us with the scope and splendor of the city’s design. Given the film’s bombastic, unforgettable sights, it’s impossible to grasp  the impact  of Metropolis on its original Berlin audiences in 1927. We see a grotto of the future, Freder’s “Club of the Sons”—a prehistoric-looking garden that seems like something out of Jules Verne, filled with enormous plants and willing consorts. Above, Fredersen’s office is bare save for a rear-projected clock to track his 10-hour day. Far below, if the Heart Machine itself weren’t impressive enough, Lang shows us a dream image where Freder sees the machine as the altar of an ancient temple upon which workers are lined up and sacrificed into a smoky abyss. Zombie-like workers marching in rows; the under-city flooding in mass destruction; hundreds of children grasping in desperation; robo-Maria rising from her throne of light rings, and then stepping forward into eternity; Helm as a simulacrum, contorting her gestures and expressions; a collage of eyes gazing in Dali-esque voyeurism; the Tower of Babel rising above the cityscape. But no image is more powerful in Metropolis than the cityscape itself—with moving cars, trains, planes, and pedestrians, all in motion before the great Tower. The shot is even more impressive in a night sequence where skyscrapers are illuminated by bright streetlights, flashing signage, and glowing buildings.

The noted divergence between Metropolis ‘ narrative and thematic forms against the film’s immeasurable visual luster has been a point of contention since the picture was first screened, but the degree to which the film has been embraced and emblematized in the decades since its release has ensured its visual impact is timeless. Countless examples from science fiction have been inspired by its imagery. Its sprawling cityscapes can be found in Blade Runner (1982), The Fifth Element (1997), and Dark City (1998); its robo-Maria is the mother of nearly every robot in film history, from Gort in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1957) to the titular RoboCop (1987); and Snowpiercer   (2014) retold a similar tale about the lower classes revolting against those who rule them. The controversy that surrounds the making of the picture and, through the lens of hindsight, the available associations to various political factions (from the Bolsheviks to Nazism), leave Metropolis an important historical marker, as opposed to an enduringly germane timeless classic. Lang’s film belongs on a list next to D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915), David O. Selznick’s production of Gone with the Wind (1939), and even Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will as a politically or thematically problematic motion picture whose technical achievements, influence on other filmmakers, and place in history has been firmly established and whose mythology is transcendent.

Bibliography:

Elsaesser, Thomas. Metropolis. (BFI Film Classics). 2nd Edition. British Film Institute, 2012.

Kreimeier, Klaus. The Ufa Story: A History of Germany’s Greatest Film Company . Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.

McGilligan, Patrick. Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast . New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997.

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• Table Of Contents

Metropolis , German silent film , released in 1927, featuring director Fritz Lang ’s vision of a grim futuristic society and containing some of the most impressive images in film history.

(Read Lillian Gish’s 1929 Britannica essay on silent film.)

The great future city of Metropolis in the film is inhabited by two distinct classes: the industrialists live off the fat of the land, supported by the workers who live under the city and endure a bare-bones existence of backbreaking work. The story concerns a forbidden love between Freder (played by Gustav Fröhlich), a young man from the industrialist class, and Maria ( Brigitte Helm), an activist who preaches against the divide between the two classes. The subterfuge and deceit involving a robot duplicate of Maria culminate in a revolution that quickly spells disaster for all involved.

Despite advances in filmmaking technology, no other film has surpassed Metropolis in terms of its impact on production design. Its influence can be seen in many subsequent science fiction films, including Ridley Scott ’s Blade Runner (1982) and Terry Gilliam’s Brazil (1985). Lang’s eye for magnificent set pieces and special effects resulted in memorable images, notably the immense skyscrapers that dominate the skyline of Metropolis and the scenes in which the robot takes on Maria’s features.

Metropolis was not a success in its initial German release. It was cut by about a quarter from its original length of 153 minutes for its American release and a German rerelease. These shortened versions were further reedited many times over the decades, and various versions exist in different countries. For example, in 1984 an 87-minute print was released with a rock sound track constructed by composer Giorgio Moroder. The original 1927 release print seemed lost forever, but in 2008 a deteriorated but nearly complete print that ran 147 minutes was discovered in the archives of the Museum of Cinema in Buenos Aires , Argentina . After several months of restoration in Germany, the reconstructed Metropolis had its first showing at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2010.

• Studio: Universum Film AG (UFA)
• Director: Fritz Lang
• Producer: Erich Pommer
• Writers: Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou
• Running time: 153 minutes
• Brigitte Helm (Maria/The Robot)
• Gustav Fröhlich (Freder)
• Alfred Abel (Joh Fredersen)
• Rudolf Klein-Rogge (Rotwang)

by Fritz Lang

Metropolis themes, exploitation of the working classes.

The skyscrapers reaching high into the urban madness of the city that gives Metropolis its title are representations of the economic inequality which drives the entire narrative of the film. The rich live in luxury high rises above the city, while the workers labor underground. The story moves inexorably toward a labor strike in which those down below rise up against the upper classes, but to disastrous effect. The film explores the exploitation of the working class by the ownership class. Throughout the film we see that society is split into those who work and those who do not, and a major tension in the narrative is the fact that the luxury experienced by the rich is at the expense of those working below.

Awakened Consciousness

Whether we approach it from the standpoint of Marxist theory or from a more religious perspective, it is easy to see Metropolis as a movie about raising the consciousness of those blinded by their station in life. Feder can be viewed as a messianic figure whose consciousness is awakened by his realization that he is privileged while there are those that suffer. This realization is what leads him to go down into the workers' city, in turn mobilizing the overall plot.

Additionally, Maria 's class consciousness leads her to teach the workers that they are being exploited and that they need to be reconciled with the forces that are using their labor. She brings them into an awakened state of consciousness in which they are able to see their positions more clearly. While this awakened consciousness is yet further exploited by the evil Rotwang and his robot, the workers go through a change of understanding and consciousness.

The idea of the heart reoccurs throughout the film and is a major allegorical theme in Metropolis. The heart represents some kind of ethical center in the story—the bridge by which the logic of the head and the utility of the hands might connect. One of the film's central ideas is that, as the final intertitle states, "The mediator between head and hands must be the heart." Freder becomes the stand-in for this necessary heart, joining the hands of the foreman and his father at the end of the film. Thematically, the idea of the heart serves as the ultimate balm to the tension between the working and upper classes in the city.

Industry & Machines

The factory workers toiling down below the surface of the earth have lost their personalities to become essentially faceless cogs in a machine. By the time the narrative begins, the dehumanization of the workers has begun to take its toll, and it is this merging of man with machine that so disturbs Freder when he first visits the industrial under-lair. A major theme in the film is the fact that industry is what keeps society running and progressing, but it comes at the cost of certain human lives, and is not inherently humane.

In order to combat the poor conditions in the workers' city, the workers want to stage some kind of revolution. They have begun meeting in the catacombs, and under Maria's tutelage, discussing options for how they might improve their conditions. She proposes that they resist peacefully, with a mediator who can lead them towards a deliverance. By contrast, Rotwang sends the robotic form of Maria to create chaos in the workers' city, by sowing an ethic of violence and unrest among the workers. This is another kind of revolution, one that imagines violent overthrow and dismantling the system, destroying the very machines that sustain life in Metropolis. Thus, a central theme in the film is the revolution of the working classes against the upper classes, and the question of whether to stage peaceful or violent revolutions to improve conditions.

Freder and Maria are the two central lovers in the film, brought together by their shared idealism. Each of them believes that their society can be improved by a peaceable connection being made between the upper and working classes. When Maria first appears in the film, she comes into the Club of the Sons surrounded by schoolchildren and tells them that the wealthier people who live above ground are their "brothers and sisters." While the children are in a vastly different social station, Maria imagines the ideal world in which they are equals. Her idealism instantly rubs off on Freder, who longs to help bridge the two disparate classes and goes in search of Maria to help her find a way to connect the working class to the upper class. It is their shared idealism that binds them together.

The antagonistic force in the film comes from Rotwang, the evil and eccentric inventor, who seeks to wreak havoc on the whole of society by creating a robot who will do his bidding. Rotwang is motivated primarily by his bitterness towards Fredersen, who long ago stole the woman he loved, and his entire plot with the robot is an elaborate revenge plot, an apocalyptic taste for destruction and upheaval.

Metropolis Questions and Answers

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Above the chair where the creation is seated is a symbol, what is the significations of it?

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Study Guide for Metropolis

Metropolis study guide contains a biography of Fritz Lang, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Metropolis
• Metropolis Summary
• Character List
• Director's Influence

Essays for Metropolis

Metropolis literature essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Metropolis.

• Sex and Violence, Religion and Technology: Themes in Fritz Lang's "Metropolis"
• Visual Distinctions of Class and Wealth in Three German Films of the Silent Era
• Rebellion Across Media: Analyzing "1984" and "Metropolis"
• Metropolis: God from the Machine
• Humanity's Fear: A Comparison of 1984 and Metropolis

Wikipedia Entries for Metropolis

• Introduction

Metropolis (1927)

Surreal, sprawling, and operatic, drawing on biblical and medieval Christian imagery as well as H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine , Fritz Lang’s deeply influential pulp allegory Metropolis colonized a new realm of the imagination that has shaped subsequent science fiction from Flash Gordon to Star Wars , from "The Jetsons" to Blade Runner .

Artistic/Entertainment Value

Moral/spiritual value, age appropriateness, mpaa rating, caveat spectator.

The futuristic cityscapes that are a staple of science fiction, with their impossibly massive skyscrapers and flying vehicles threading concrete canyons, all owe a debt to Lang’s film, one of the high points of German expressionism.

As social allegory, Metropolis depicts a world in which the privileged sons of society live in ease and luxury on the surface while deep in the bowels of the city a chattel underclass labors out of sight on the machinery that supports Metropolis. In time, this oppressive situation must eventually lead to class conflict.

As Internet writer Michael E. Grost perceptively observes in a helpful essay to which I am indebted for the next two paragraphs, Lang’s scenario bears a striking resemblance to the back story of the future world visited by Wells’ Time Traveller, where the subterranean Morlocks once labored on underground machines to serve the bourgeois Eloi.

Yet in The Time Machine this class conflict eventually leads to what is in effect Marxist revolution, with the proletarian Morlocks rising up and subjugating the bourgeois Eloi. Metropolis , in a strikingly contrasting vision, takes its class conflict to a diametrically opposite resolution, drawing on religious imagery and inspiration in advocating non-violent reconciliation between classes.

In fact, Metropolis advances the provocative thesis that revolutionary violence actually serves the self-interest of the ruling class, since it allows them to respond by crushing dissident elements. Small wonder that Metropolis has long been criticized by Marxist commentators as naive!

The dreamlike plot, which relies on emotional and poetic rather than logical connections, involves a childlike young hero named Freder (Gustav Fröhlich) whose dictatorial father (Alfred Abel) is the master of Metropolis, an idealistic young woman named Maria (Brigitte Helm) who tries to offer hope to the oppressed workers, and a sinister scientist named Rotwang (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) whom Freder’s father enlists to subvert Maria’s efforts by building a robotic doppelgänger of Maria.

More important than the story are the unforgettable images: the endless columns of workers marching in nightmarish synch to and from their terrible labor; the monstrous "M" Machine, revealed in a visionary moment to embody the spirit of Moloch, the bloodthirsty deity of Old-Testament Canaan; Freder agonizingly laboring at the clock machine looking like Christ crucified; the mecha-Maria’s lascivious striptease seducing the privileged fathers of Metropolis into the Seven Deadly Sins; the immense gothic cathedral in which the final showdown occurs.

Religious allusions are everywhere. Maria and her evil doppelgänger suggest the Virgin Mary and the Whore of Babylon. Freder, the son, is a Christ-like agent of reconciliation, while the father Joh is a self-styled Jehovah taking the place of God in his own world, even unleashing a flood to destroy his people when they have displeased him. Joh’s offices are in a skyscraper called the New Tower of Babel, and the climactic conflict is replete with references to the Apocalypse.

Some of these religious references were among the elements cut by censors in the sad and complicated history of the film, which remains even today fragmented and incomplete, despite the best efforts of restorationists.

Product Notes

For many years Metropolis was available only in a very problematic 1984 restoration with an inappropriate score. A 2002 restoration, with plot points from missing footage reconstructed from the novelization of the film by Lang’s wife , was a major advance over previous editions. However, a 2008 discovery of an additional source promises to yield a still more complete restoration in 2010.

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Metropolis’ Women: Analysis of the Movie’s Feminism & Examples

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Introduction

Feminism in metropolis, reference list.

Fritz Lang’s 1927 movie, Metropolis , was introduced and created following the industrial revolution that affected Europe in the 20 th century. The creation of the film also coincided with the 10 th anniversary of the 1917 Russian Revolution. As such, the Industrial Revolution had a huge impact many of the film’s aspects.

The background of the story to the film is set in 2026 exactly one hundred years after the film had been set. The setting of the film is in a futuristic dystopia made up of two separate and distinct groups- the workers and the thinkers (Brockmann, 2010). The film is a depiction of class struggle between the aforementioned two opposing entities. Metropolis brings forth a reflection of women in the 20 th century. One of the main themes that the film has sought to address is that of feminism.

This film is an endeavor to examine the image of the female depicted, the oppression that they have to endure before they are liberated, as well as the expectations of men with regard to the behavior of these women. The female has also criticized women and their role in the society. For example, in the film, women a\re depicted as lustful and seductive creatures.

Image of female

We can classify the image of the female as depicted in Fritz Lang’s film, Metropolis , into two categories. The first category consists of a kind, peaceful, and pure female. In a bid to depict the aforementioned female image, the arrangement of the film is such that Maria, who happens to be a working girl, falls in love with Frederson.

In addition, Maria is also very popular with the other workers. On the other hand, we have a second image of the female from the film- that of an evil and sexual fantasy. This image of a female is best provided using the cyborg of Maria (Bachmann, 2003). In this case, her sexual dancing was welcome by her male audiences and thanks to her sexy lifestyle society was convinced that the cybor Maria synthesis managed to become a success.

Based on the two female images described above, we can arrive at a conclusion that the men in the Metropolis believe that an ideal woman is one who is peaceful enough to be controlled by men, and that the main role of a woman that of a wife. Also, men in the Metropolis believe that a woman should be a sexual object for appreciation and entertainment

Feminism liberation

The different images of Maria as depicted by the film shows that women too can have a lot of influence on society, even rising to the power and positions held by men. Maria is depicted as a charismatic woman and for this reason, the rest of the workers are attracted to her.

Completely mindful of the despair and suffering that faces her fellow workers, and in the full knowledge that a revolt is just about to begin, Maria campaigns for patience and peace. She also foretells that a “mediator’ is about to come, who would act as a link between the workers and the thinkers.

The city of Metropolis has been dominated by males and as such, female plays a very minor role in this society (Bachmann, 2003). Through the popularity that she has gained in the society, Maria is in a position to assume the role of a spirit leader among her fellow workers. Maria’s position has frightened majority of the men who have dominated the city for so long.

This is a sign that men are constantly wary of the issue of feminism and that they are also afraid that one day, the female might usurp power from them and dominate the society. Men are convinced that they are the only ones who have the capacity to manage and control the city. Watching this film, one is left wondering if at all women are in a position to control the society.

Feminism oppression

In his film, Fritz Lang seems to concur with the idea of female liberation but in the real sense he is opposed to it and feels female oppression is okay.

Lang notes that although women can be powerful figures in the society, nonetheless, they should not be allowed to demonstrate such control over their male counterparts. By demonstrating the destructive nature of the cyborg Mario, Lang is in essence arguing that feminism could impact on the society negatively. As such, we need to oppress females. Such a viewpoint is also a suggestion that women do not have a right to hold onto power.

If they did, it would have negative implications on society. This scene is best depicted by the irrational scene of robot Maria who is seen agitating on the workers’ emotions, which resulted in the flooding and eventual destruction of the city. Lang seems to suggest that only men are in a position to solve the problems that the female has created in the society

Female deprecation

In designing the robot in this film, the filmmakers indented to have both the female and the robot share the same identity. This is a sign that the female and the cyborg are both indifferent in the eyes of men, and that the role that omen occupy in society can be taken over by the cyborg.

Consequently, this action deprecates the female to a great deal and is a sign that the female lacks a rational mind, knowledge, and self-thinking. Further, the film suggests that only men can control the female and as such, she should be ready to submit to men.

Male’s expectation of the female

The moviemakers have turned Maria into a cyborg, a neuter and asexual being that do not require being “born” by the female. The cyborg also enables men to construct a new “life” on their own. The idea of a cyborg is in sharp contrast to the expectations of society about the place and role of a woman in society. In this case, the female is expected to sire children and acts as a mother to them. However, turning Maria into a cyborg appears to have renders these roles useless.

It is also an indication that in the Metropolis city, men have the desire to control their female counterparts completely. It is also a sign that the men have no desire to delegate the power that they hold to the females. Lang has also depicted Frederson as being fearful of the females, and this entails women’s nurturing and emotions (Bachmann, 2003). The robot is viewed as a combination of femininity, sexuality and technology via the male imagination.

The robot has been created with the intention of portraying the fear possessed by men on both women and technology. Machines, nature, and women instill fear in men since they act as a threat to male control and dominance. The female robot has instill fear in men and seems intimidates men on the notion that technology might become so advanced and large to an extent that it may one day span out of control, effectively destroy humanity.

In the film, Frederson feels threatened by Maria due to her nurturing and emotions (Brockmann, 2010). For example, in one of the film’s scenes, we see Frederson heading down the catacombs led by Rotwang so that he may watch Maria preaching a message of peace to her fellow workers.

Clearly, this is an ideal portrayal of male fear over domination by the concept of femininity. Fredeson experience this fear because he lacks the necessary control over the situation at hand as he is ill-informed about the catacombs that also gives him a the film seems to suggest that if at all men are to contain their insecurities regarding their dominance over women, then they have to control theses women.

One of the main themes in Fritz Lang’s 1927 movie, Metropolis, is feminism. The film was set in the 20 th century and during this time, male domination was very rampant in the society. Women were relegated to the roles of mothers and wives and they had no say in society. In a bid to depict the control that men had over women, the depiction of Maria as a cyborg goes to show that men viewed women as sexual objects to entertain them and fantasize with.

They view women with seduction and lust and according to the men in Metropolis city women should ideally be peaceful enough to allow their men to control them. The influence and popularity that Maria has gained amongst her fellow workers goes to show that women too can liberate themselves from the oppression and suffering that they have been subjected to at the hand of their male counterparts.

Bachmann, H. (2003). Fritz Lang’s Metropolis: Cinematic Visions of Technology and Fear. Rochester, New York: Camden House

Brockmann, S. (2010). A Critical History of German Film. London: Camden House.

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IvyPanda. (2018, June 11). Metropolis' Women: Analysis of the Movie's Feminism & Examples. https://ivypanda.com/essays/feminism-in-metropolis/

"Metropolis' Women: Analysis of the Movie's Feminism & Examples." IvyPanda , 11 June 2018, ivypanda.com/essays/feminism-in-metropolis/.

IvyPanda . (2018) 'Metropolis' Women: Analysis of the Movie's Feminism & Examples'. 11 June.

IvyPanda . 2018. "Metropolis' Women: Analysis of the Movie's Feminism & Examples." June 11, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/feminism-in-metropolis/.

1. IvyPanda . "Metropolis' Women: Analysis of the Movie's Feminism & Examples." June 11, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/feminism-in-metropolis/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Metropolis' Women: Analysis of the Movie's Feminism & Examples." June 11, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/feminism-in-metropolis/.

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