Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927) is a silent science fiction epic set in a futuristic urban dystopia in which a class of workers who live underground slave away for ten hours a day while a pampered wealthy class lives in a beautiful city above them. The two sides are ignorant of one another until one day Freder Frederson (Gustav Froehlich), son of a wealthy businessman, meets Maria (Brigitte Helm), a beautiful girl from underground. Freder is immediately taken with her, and shocked to learn of the underground workers and their situation. He decides to leave the comforts of his home to go below in an attempt to help the workers. To learn more, he seeks out Rotwang (Rudolf Klein-Rogge), the mad genius of the underground, while Maria rallies the workers together with a message of hope for a better future. She predicts that a mediator will come to join the underground society with the above ground one.
Rotwang throws a wrench in Freder and Maria's revolution by kidnapping her and transferring her likeness onto a robot that he controls. Robot Maria then goes back to the workers and convinces them to indulge themselves in all manner of fantasies. Despite the excellent crazy eyes Helm used to distinguish Robot Maria from Real Maria, none of the workers notices anything amiss, except Freder. The workers don't believe him when he protests Robot Maria's message of destruction (the exact opposite of Maria's original message), and continue to follow Robot Maria. Eventually, the workers realize that they have been tricked, but not before their city is destroyed in a giant flood caused when the workers stopped the machines they had been slaving over at Robot Maria's bidding. The real Maria escapes from Rotwang just in time to rescue all the workers' children, who were left in the city when their parents stormed out under Robot Maria's spell, from drowning in the flood. Finally, Maria and Freder are reunited and Freder becomes the mediator Maria predicted.
Is that complicated enough for you? Because there's actually more to it than that. And it can be hard to follow because, after it's release, it was re-edited and censored by various distributors, resulting in the loss of roughly a quarter of the film. In 2008, a print of Lang's original was discovered in Argentina and restored with the original score. Twenty five minutes of footage thought lost was put back in. Some frames are still missing though, and where those would be, they put in title cards to explain what happens in the story. I watched the restored version, and it was still a little hard for me to keep up with it. I'd seen it once before, which helps, but I was also trying to work on other things while watching it, which doesn't. Especially with a silent film.
Visually, it's stunning. It's part of the German Expressionist movement, which is known for it's distinct visual style. It's purposely theatrical, and revolutionary in it's use of the technology available at the time. Some films used unique and avant-garde camera angles and played with light and shadow. Others used special effects in new and innovative ways. Metropolis is one of the latter. In terms of special effects, it is way ahead of its time. In the scene in which Maria's likeness is transferred onto Robot Maria, Robot Maria is surrounded by light rings that move up and down around her as though they are scanning Maria's features onto the robot. In another scene, as Robot Maria dances provocatively in front of the workers, their eyes suddenly fill the screen. Freder's fever dream after he discovers Robot Maria with his father is a whole sequence of impressive special effects. It's a great spectacle, even if the story doesn't always make perfect sense. See for yourself.
That, by the way, is not the score in the restored version.
I don't think the confusing nature of the story is necessarily a bad thing though. I think it adds to the experience of watching the film. It's more of a challenge to the viewer because it's not always comfortable. And I don't think it was meant to be. It doesn't seem like it's supposed to be easy. It puts the viewer in the same position as the characters-trying to figure out what's going on in the midst of spectacle and chaos. Which makes it more engaging to me than a lot of the contemporary films it inspired.
Up next in the queue is Wendy and Lucy; another one I had to bump up due to limited streaming availability, but it's one I've been looking forward to seeing for a while.
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