Metropolis (1927)

You've all seen the images before. The city of the future, its monumental buildings that soar hundreds of stories into the air. Elevated highways along which people and cars move effortlessly. Clean people living in a clean world free from care and strife. Flying cars. Robots. And the dark secret under their feet. Every utopia has its ugly center hidden within its fluffy shell. Hoards of downtrodden workers, tired, hopeless, living in squalor, working the great machines that keep the city running. The Labor upon whose backs Capital lives. This is the city they thought we would be living in today. This is the future that never was. This is Fritz Lang's masterpiece, Metropolis.

Metropolis has existed on the periphery of my life since I was ten years old. That was the year that I discovered science fiction. That was the year that my uncle gave me a Jules Verne novel to read. That was the year I first saw such classics as The First Men in the Moon, Master of the Universe, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and many others. That was the year that my cousins introduced me to the SciFi and Horror fan mags. On their pages I first saw the iconic images from Metropolis, images that were seared into my consciousness. They became metaphors against which I judged the world about me. It is because of those images that I became a fan of science fiction. I wanted to see that movie. I was obsessed with seeing it. But these were the bad old days, prior to DVD, to VHS. The only way to see a film like Metropolis was to wait and hope that it would air on the Friday Night Creature Feature - after all, robots are creatures too. If you lived in a large enough city, you might be lucky enough to have it shown at an alternative movie house. Neither happened for me. I was in my mid-thirties before I was finally able to view it. I was transfixed from the moment it started until the last credit rolled. It's not often in life that the reality measures up to the expectation. Metropolis did just that.

What's the point of me summarizing the plot. You know it already. The cold and distant head of the government, seated in his lofty office high above the city, concerned only with efficiency; his naive and idealist son; the beautiful young woman who's intent on saving her people and who the son will undoubtedly fall in love with; the evil mad scientist who is bent on destroying every one's good time; the oppressed workers, too downtrodden to even raise their heads as they trudge to work on the great machines. And the robot. How can I leave out the robot, iconic image of an iconic film? She - yes, it's a girl robot - is the grandmother of C3PO and the centerpiece of the movie, almost its star. See her rise slowly from her throne and approach the distant head of the government. Watch in amazement as her metal body, wrapped in rings of electric power, is covered with flesh and transformed into a wicked likeness of the beautiful young woman. See how she uses her new body to destroy everyone in the great city.

Metropolis is the grandaddy of all science fiction movies. Have you seen Blade Runner? The Fifth Element? Dark City? The City of Lost Children? Star Wars? They all owe their existence to this movie, because they all copied it. In fact, it's fairly safe to say that ALL movies made since the release of Metropolis about futuristic cities derive their imagery from this film.


Sadly, Metropolis is also the most butchered movie in the history of cinema. First released in Germany at 210 minutes, it was hacked down on its American release to 114. That's 96 minutes of film gone. 144,000 frames of film. That's not editing. That's slaughter! The movie has not been seen in its entirety since then. In 2002, the Murnau Foundation released a restored version of the film with a 123 minute run-time, and title cards describing what the restorers thought was occurring in the missing sections. Then, in 2008 a nearly complete version of the film was discovered in an archive in Argentina. Unfortunately, the film was badly deteriorated. And it was 16mm. Still, restorers were able to create a new version, released in 2010 with a 145 minute run-time. Barring some miraculous discovery, this is probably the most complete version of Metropolis we will ever get to see.

Metropolis is rated G. Although the film has been lovingly restored, the quality of the film varies due to the level of deterioration of various segments.