Movie Review: Metropolis (1927)
One of the joys of Summer rerun season is getting back into watching films all the time. On Sunday, Tommy wanted to worship the sun, and I, with my pasty ass white Irish skin told him to have fun and bid him farewell.
“Say “Hi!” to cancer!”, I said as he drove off, beach supplies loaded in his car, music blaring out of his car window.
Ahhhh…a Sunday afternoon all to myself. 90 degrees and ridiculously humid. A perfect day to hide in the cool, dark basement and watch a movie with my dogs. Now, anyone who is a movie buff who has a significant other who is also a movie buff will understand my next dilemma…what to watch. I have to choose this film carefully, as I don’t want to see anything that would elicit the ever favorite, “Oh, so you watched it without me. That’s ok, I’m not important” comment that is inevitable in any film relationship. Lucky for me, Tommy isn’t a big fan of old movies, and he’s really not a fan of silent films, and I was in the mood for black and white, so I settled on a film I’ve never seen, but have heard about forever: Metropolis!
Metropolis, directed by Fritz Lang, was released in 1927 and ended up basically bankrupting the studio that produced it. With an operating budget of about five million Reichsmarks (the precursor to deutschmarks-over $200 million in today’s dollars), and a cast that included tens of thousands of extras, it is hailed as a grand technical achievement and a “Great Movie”. I will admit up front that, as a general rule, I don’t love silent films. I acknowledge their importance in film history, I enjoy the stories behind the stars and filmmakers, and I love seeing moving images of times past, but, for the most part, I find them boring. There are exceptions, of course, Nosferatu (1922) and The Artist (2011) are the two that spring to mind, and I will also admit to not having seen enough of them to write them off completely, so I dived into one of the first sci-fi movies ever made.
Yep. Boring. The story centers around the son of the man who built Metropolis, Freder Fredersen, who apparently was named by Stan Lee and belongs in a 1960’s Spiderman comic. As the film opens, we see young men running on a track. I’m not sure why. I’ve always assumed that in the future we would have figured out a way to not have to run, like in Wall-E, where all the rich fat people float around on magic, comfy chairs. Then we cut to Freder being charmed by 3 nymph-like women. That’s how he spends his days, literally running after scantily clad women (nipple alert! This is a pre-code film, after all!), who are trying to catch his fancy. Remember, he’s the son of Joh Fredersen (no Spiderman comics for him!) who built the city and is rich and powerful. But, alas, these gay times (it was 1927, gay didn’t mean “homo” yet) are going to come to a crashing halt.
You see, the city can only function if it has an enslaved working class working at keeping everything running. They work long days in horrible conditions doing…1927 sci-fi movie jobs, most of which are just a series of repetitious movements that don’t really seem to do anything. They live below the city, underground, working day in, day out to keep Metropolis perfect, while the upper class enjoys the easy life. But, there is a beautiful, young woman named Maria. We know she’s beautiful because all of the men fawn over her lasciviously-otherwise, we’d think she was ugly and a little off-putting, but I’m getting off topic. She shows up where Freder is wooing one of the nipple-women with about 30 dirty children from “below”.
Freder immediately falls in love. We know he’s in love because he stares at her with wide eyed amazement and gestures at her like a child molester in an ice cream truck trying to get some kids attention. She wants everyone to see the poor kids and feel sorry for them. Security forces her and her sad, little urchins back through the doors. Freder has to find her and make her his, spoiled little rich bitch that he is, but to do so, he will have to go below and see what the proletariat are up to.
Then we have the side plot. Freder’s mom died during childbirth, but, before she married his father, she had a little thing with Rotwang (I did NOT make that up), the inventor. We know Rotwang is evil because his house is covered in upside down pentagrams. He’s built a “Man-Machine”, which is obviously a woman because it has breasts, so he can recreate his lost love. Joh Fredersen is upset because he believes the working class is going to stage some kind of rebellion, so he comes to Rotwang (I just LOVE that name) to help. They go below and watch as Maria, surrounded by crosses, preaches to the poor, dirty, underclass, that one day the mediator will come and save them from desperation. That’s it! We’ll make the robot look like Maria, then we will have Machine-Maria come down and quell the rebellion!
Why didn’t I think of that? So much easier than offering a 401k or a week of vacation.
Rotwang kidnaps Maria and, using futuristic technology that in 1927 consists of long glass tubes with different colors of…boiling water in them (?), manages to copy Maria’s face onto the robot. We know the robot is evil because she has a smokey eye and wears lipstick. But Rotwang hates the elder Fredersen, and double crosses him by making Robot Maria act like a whore and seduce all the men who live in the city. She does this by dancing for them in a club. It’s quite an amazing dance, I think the style was epileptic disco, and at first I thought the men watching were as horrified by her…movements (?) as I was, but then I realized that that’s just how straight men ogle women. I’m really surprised more women aren’t lesbians.
So Freder is down below, trying to find Maria (who is now kidnapped and imprisoned with Rotwang), Robot Maria is driving all the men above crazy, and now she’s below driving all the workers into a rebellious frenzy. They destroy the machine that keeps Metropolis going. The “below” gets flooded. All the adults think their kids died in the flood (they didn’t, thanks to Spider…I mean Freder), and they blame Maria!
“Burn the witch!”
Seriously. They say this in the future. An hour ago, Maria was their savior, but, since she’s seducing men (they don’t know she’s a robot), she must be a witch. They catch her, tie her to a stake, and burn her! Freder is heartbroken. The love of his life who he just met is on fire…and she’s laughing the whole time. Freder isn’t very bright. Apparently he didn’t notice the smokey eye and lipstick.
Neither are the workers. They just burned a witch and, lo and behold, she’s actually a robot! I’d be like, “Yep, that’s a witch. She probably cursed us, too. Now we’re all gonna die. Good job, folks!” But no-one seems really upset about the fact that their savior-turned-whore is now a metal sex toy. Meanwhile, Rotwang is carrying Maria up to the roof of a big, gothic church, so he can escape. Whenever I want to escape from somewhere, the first place I ALWAYS head, is the roof. Big stupid fight, bad guy dies, movie ends with Joh Fredersen shaking hands the leader of the workers rebellion, all thanks to Freder.
It’s a little heavy handed with the “rich people, bad-poor people, good” crap. It was intended as a message movie, and it delivers as a message movie. Part way through the film I considered napping, and I don’t mean that in a negative way. Silent movies have a sleepy, dreamlike quality to them-the black and white, the quiet, the music. It’s easy to feel like you’re drifting off when you watch them. This is a good thing. The dawn of film making came about as the middle class was discovering the joy of “free time”. Time when you just wanted to be entertained, excited, maybe scared a little. I appreciate that, in 1927, filmgoers were probably amazed at what they saw here-the use of miniatures, multiple exposures, huge sets. It’s quite a spectacle.
For me, as a film, it’s not very good. As a conversation topic, it’s amazing. There is a reason why Superman lives in Metropolis and not New York City. You love Star Wars? Guess where the idea for C3P0 came from? The metal sex toy! It’s ironic how the point of the film is how horrible it was for the “Above” people to treat the “Below” people so horrible, when the director of the film put the cast and crew through hell making the movie. Back then, getting hurt on a film set was just part of the job, now it’s a lawsuit.
Bottom line, should you see Metropolis? If you are a film history buff, an old movie buff, or just plain curious, then, yes, you should. It’s an important film for what it did and how it did it. I’m glad I saw it. I look forward to discussing it with other movie nerds. The DVD has some extras that I look forward to seeing, too, but I doubt I’d watch the film again. Casual movie goer? Skip it. It’s a bit ludicrous, heavy handed, poorly acted, and looooong. There are several different cuts of the film, the one I watched was 124 minutes, but it felt like 4 hours. The films tag line is, “HEAD and HANDS need a mediator. THE MEDIATOR BETWEEN HEAD AND HANDS MUST BE THE HEART!”. Someone was probably really proud of themselves to come up with that line. But then, they probably didn’t see the movie.