I just finished watching, with a bunch of friends, the Kino restored print of Metropolis. I'd only ever before seen the film in a scratchy VHS version in late high school or early college. (Even before its premiere in 1927, the film had been edited down from its original runtime of 153 minutes to 114 and 93 minutes for both American and German distribution. See below for outrage.) It's still not perfect. About a quarter of the film is still missing—nitrate that we'll likely never see again—and the absent scenes have been summarized by intertitles or what looked like quotes from the shooting script. And. That said.
Wow.
Fine, there are problems. There are some real problems. I can understand how the subplot in which the privileged Freder saves his father's dismissed secretary from suicide and temporarily changes lives with an exhausted worker* might have been, in a pinch, considered expendable—it does not immediately further the story. But without the backstory of the romantic triangle between Joh Fredersen (the city's industrialist ruler; Freder's father), C. A. Rotwang (der Erfinder, perhaps the original cinematic mad scientist), and Hel (the woman they both loved), much of both characters' motivations is reduced to the conventional and their complexity diluted.
Fredersen presents himself** as a man of pure intellect, the all-father who always knows best, the businesslike ruler of a pristine city whose industrial depths he never glimpses himself—but his blood once ran hot enough to seduce another man's wife. Rotwang has not created his Maschinen-Mensch out of some nebulously crazed ambition, but to recreate his lost love, who betrayed him and died bearing Joh Fredersen's child.*** He agrees to lend his invention to Fredersen as an agent provocateur only so that he can use her to further his own plans: "Du wirst Joh Fredersen vernichten—ihn und seine Stadt und seinen Sohn—!" ("You will destroy Joh Fredersen—him and his city and his son—!") These intricacies of plot and counterplot**** likewise fall by the wayside in edited versions of the film. And only Rotwang's obsession with Hel, that finally renders him unable to distinguish between the dead woman, the robot he built to replicate her, and the saintly girl whose image he stole to clothe his creation, explains his dazed pursuit of Maria ("Hel—! Meine Hel—!!") in the film's final scenes.
Whoever took the scissors to this masterpiece was an idiot.
But then there are the film's iconic images, which no amount of senseless butchery on the part of editors with an eye to cinematic "normality" can erase. Freder crucified on the clock whose hands he must swing with his own arms, gasping in the steam-choked air, crying out to his father who cannot hear him: "Vater—! Vater—! Nehmen zehn Stunden niemals ein Ende—??!!" ("Father—! Father—! Will ten hours never end—??!") In response to Joh Fredersen's command ("Ich will, daß Du zu denen in der Tiefe gehst, um das Werk Deines Vorbildes zu vernichten!" / "I want you to go into the depths, to destroy the work of your model!"), the false Maria nods—her mouth spreads into a sexual smile and one eye rolls half-shut, the salacious wink of a broken doll. She dances like a frenzied, glittering Salome and men pant like dogs, reduced to transfixed eyes, one lustful gaze reduplicated over and over. The robot herself, all metallic curves and sheathing, and the moment that her static, woodcut features blur over with Maria's soft face. Freder's vision of the ceaseless machines of Metropolis, down in the clanging depths, become the fiery mouth of Moloch into which workers are dragged and thrown. The skyscrapers of Metropolis, lit up like a cross between New York and Las Vegas.° There are moments that don't even look like 1920's cinematography, such as Rotwang's pursuit of Maria in the catacombs: the beam of his flashlight skids across her terrified face and the camera lurches forward, following the light, like the steps of a man over broken stone and skulls.
I am sorry that no one in 1927 took the chance that an audience would respond to a film that fused the science-fictional and the mythical,°* political fables and Biblical allusions, and let the film stand as Fritz Lang intended. But I am not sorry that it survives, even in mutilated form. It's gorgeous and strange and resonates with the strength of the archetypes that it drew upon and created, and no matter what Ridley Scott and George Lucas may have intended, I don’t think anyone has ever created anything like Metropolis again.
Mittler zwischen Hirn und Hände muß das Herz sein. The mediator between the brain and the hands must be the heart. I think Fritz Lang had all three going for him, when he made this film.
*These actions are present in the cut prints; they underscore Freder's evolution from the thoughtless, pampered son of money and power to the man who will become the workers' messiah-like Mittler. But their ramifications, particularly the worker Georgy's plunge into the privileged hedonism that Freder has just abandoned and the appearance of the Thin Man (Der Schmale, Joh Fredersen’s agent who stalks both Freder and the secretary Josaphat), have been excised. And while much of the Rotwang-Fredersen material has been restored, the Freder-Josephat-Georgy plot exists only in a few clipped scenes and a lot of intertitled summary. Rrrgh.
**As does the film, certainly: when the "heart" must mediate between the "brain" and the "hands," Joh Fredersen is clearly the brain. Still.
***Oddly enough, Freder never seems aware of this history, nor does it come to light as the story unfolds. At least in the audience's eyes, however, the knowledge that Freder's mother served as the prototype for Rotwang's robot adds several Oedipal layers to the robot's assumption of Maria's identity: not to mention Freder's discovery of (the false) Maria in his father's arms. And it doesn't hurt the myth any.
****To the captive Maria, whose likeness he has transplanted to his robot, Rotwang exults in his cleverness: "Joh Fredersen will, daß die in der Tiefe sich durch Gewalttat ins Unrecht setzen, damit er das Recht zur Gewalt gegen sie bekommt . . . / Wenn Du zu Deinen armen Brüdern sprachst, hast Du zum Frieden geredet, Maria . . . heute hetzt ein Mund auf Befehl Joh Fredersen zum Aufruhr gegen ihn . . . / aber ich habe Joh Fredersen betrogen! Nicht seinem Willen folgt Dein Ebenbild—nur meinem allein! . . . / und zweifach habe ich Joh Fredersen betrogen—! Denn ich verschwieg ihm, daß sein Söhn der Mittler Deiner Brüder sein will—und Dich liebt—!" ("Joh Fredersen wants those in the depths to commit illegal violence, so that he will have the right to use force against them . . . / When you spoke to your poor brothers, Maria, you talked about peace . . . today, as a mouthpiece for Joh Fredersen, you stir up insurrection against him / . . . but I have cheated Joh Fredersen! Your image does not follow his will—but mine alone! / . . . and twice I have cheated Joh Fredersen—! Because I kept secret from him that his son wants to be your brothers' mediator—and loves you—!") And for once this kind of Villain Explains All(TM) moment comes back to bite its speaker, because Joh Fredersen overhears . . .
°I don't know where to find them, but I know articles must have been written on the ways that Metropolis shaped the visual vocabulary of science fiction, everything from Frankenstein to Blade Runner and no doubt many lesser films in between. I wonder, too, if there were ways in which it shaped the world beyond the screen. Would we have built cities crammed with skyscrapers and overpasses, riddled with neon, if we hadn't had Metropolis to model on?
°*For a handy example, look at the name of the woman whom Fredersen and Rotwang both loved, and the name that Rotwang applies to his robot creation: Hel, the mistress of the Norse underworld, half a beautiful woman, half a corpse. I do like that sort of thing.
Wow.
Fine, there are problems. There are some real problems. I can understand how the subplot in which the privileged Freder saves his father's dismissed secretary from suicide and temporarily changes lives with an exhausted worker* might have been, in a pinch, considered expendable—it does not immediately further the story. But without the backstory of the romantic triangle between Joh Fredersen (the city's industrialist ruler; Freder's father), C. A. Rotwang (der Erfinder, perhaps the original cinematic mad scientist), and Hel (the woman they both loved), much of both characters' motivations is reduced to the conventional and their complexity diluted.
Fredersen presents himself** as a man of pure intellect, the all-father who always knows best, the businesslike ruler of a pristine city whose industrial depths he never glimpses himself—but his blood once ran hot enough to seduce another man's wife. Rotwang has not created his Maschinen-Mensch out of some nebulously crazed ambition, but to recreate his lost love, who betrayed him and died bearing Joh Fredersen's child.*** He agrees to lend his invention to Fredersen as an agent provocateur only so that he can use her to further his own plans: "Du wirst Joh Fredersen vernichten—ihn und seine Stadt und seinen Sohn—!" ("You will destroy Joh Fredersen—him and his city and his son—!") These intricacies of plot and counterplot**** likewise fall by the wayside in edited versions of the film. And only Rotwang's obsession with Hel, that finally renders him unable to distinguish between the dead woman, the robot he built to replicate her, and the saintly girl whose image he stole to clothe his creation, explains his dazed pursuit of Maria ("Hel—! Meine Hel—!!") in the film's final scenes.
Whoever took the scissors to this masterpiece was an idiot.
But then there are the film's iconic images, which no amount of senseless butchery on the part of editors with an eye to cinematic "normality" can erase. Freder crucified on the clock whose hands he must swing with his own arms, gasping in the steam-choked air, crying out to his father who cannot hear him: "Vater—! Vater—! Nehmen zehn Stunden niemals ein Ende—??!!" ("Father—! Father—! Will ten hours never end—??!") In response to Joh Fredersen's command ("Ich will, daß Du zu denen in der Tiefe gehst, um das Werk Deines Vorbildes zu vernichten!" / "I want you to go into the depths, to destroy the work of your model!"), the false Maria nods—her mouth spreads into a sexual smile and one eye rolls half-shut, the salacious wink of a broken doll. She dances like a frenzied, glittering Salome and men pant like dogs, reduced to transfixed eyes, one lustful gaze reduplicated over and over. The robot herself, all metallic curves and sheathing, and the moment that her static, woodcut features blur over with Maria's soft face. Freder's vision of the ceaseless machines of Metropolis, down in the clanging depths, become the fiery mouth of Moloch into which workers are dragged and thrown. The skyscrapers of Metropolis, lit up like a cross between New York and Las Vegas.° There are moments that don't even look like 1920's cinematography, such as Rotwang's pursuit of Maria in the catacombs: the beam of his flashlight skids across her terrified face and the camera lurches forward, following the light, like the steps of a man over broken stone and skulls.
I am sorry that no one in 1927 took the chance that an audience would respond to a film that fused the science-fictional and the mythical,°* political fables and Biblical allusions, and let the film stand as Fritz Lang intended. But I am not sorry that it survives, even in mutilated form. It's gorgeous and strange and resonates with the strength of the archetypes that it drew upon and created, and no matter what Ridley Scott and George Lucas may have intended, I don’t think anyone has ever created anything like Metropolis again.
Mittler zwischen Hirn und Hände muß das Herz sein. The mediator between the brain and the hands must be the heart. I think Fritz Lang had all three going for him, when he made this film.
*These actions are present in the cut prints; they underscore Freder's evolution from the thoughtless, pampered son of money and power to the man who will become the workers' messiah-like Mittler. But their ramifications, particularly the worker Georgy's plunge into the privileged hedonism that Freder has just abandoned and the appearance of the Thin Man (Der Schmale, Joh Fredersen’s agent who stalks both Freder and the secretary Josaphat), have been excised. And while much of the Rotwang-Fredersen material has been restored, the Freder-Josephat-Georgy plot exists only in a few clipped scenes and a lot of intertitled summary. Rrrgh.
**As does the film, certainly: when the "heart" must mediate between the "brain" and the "hands," Joh Fredersen is clearly the brain. Still.
***Oddly enough, Freder never seems aware of this history, nor does it come to light as the story unfolds. At least in the audience's eyes, however, the knowledge that Freder's mother served as the prototype for Rotwang's robot adds several Oedipal layers to the robot's assumption of Maria's identity: not to mention Freder's discovery of (the false) Maria in his father's arms. And it doesn't hurt the myth any.
****To the captive Maria, whose likeness he has transplanted to his robot, Rotwang exults in his cleverness: "Joh Fredersen will, daß die in der Tiefe sich durch Gewalttat ins Unrecht setzen, damit er das Recht zur Gewalt gegen sie bekommt . . . / Wenn Du zu Deinen armen Brüdern sprachst, hast Du zum Frieden geredet, Maria . . . heute hetzt ein Mund auf Befehl Joh Fredersen zum Aufruhr gegen ihn . . . / aber ich habe Joh Fredersen betrogen! Nicht seinem Willen folgt Dein Ebenbild—nur meinem allein! . . . / und zweifach habe ich Joh Fredersen betrogen—! Denn ich verschwieg ihm, daß sein Söhn der Mittler Deiner Brüder sein will—und Dich liebt—!" ("Joh Fredersen wants those in the depths to commit illegal violence, so that he will have the right to use force against them . . . / When you spoke to your poor brothers, Maria, you talked about peace . . . today, as a mouthpiece for Joh Fredersen, you stir up insurrection against him / . . . but I have cheated Joh Fredersen! Your image does not follow his will—but mine alone! / . . . and twice I have cheated Joh Fredersen—! Because I kept secret from him that his son wants to be your brothers' mediator—and loves you—!") And for once this kind of Villain Explains All(TM) moment comes back to bite its speaker, because Joh Fredersen overhears . . .
°I don't know where to find them, but I know articles must have been written on the ways that Metropolis shaped the visual vocabulary of science fiction, everything from Frankenstein to Blade Runner and no doubt many lesser films in between. I wonder, too, if there were ways in which it shaped the world beyond the screen. Would we have built cities crammed with skyscrapers and overpasses, riddled with neon, if we hadn't had Metropolis to model on?
°*For a handy example, look at the name of the woman whom Fredersen and Rotwang both loved, and the name that Rotwang applies to his robot creation: Hel, the mistress of the Norse underworld, half a beautiful woman, half a corpse. I do like that sort of thing.
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