I saw this on the big screen at a theater downtown, it looked and sounded fabulous! Whenever I hear ‘Radio Gaga’, I think of Metropolis.
I like it visually, but I don’t appreciate being hammered over the head with a message. To me, this is a serious flaw in a movie no matter when it was made.
I love it! One of my all time favs! German expressionism using form and light turns my crank. Metropolis used this to bring a social and political push typical of Soviet Eisenstein to a new level in German film. When I watch it, I think of what the people of Germany and much of Europe had gone through in WWI, what the Germans were going through in the Republic at that time, and ominously, what they and much of the world were about to face in WWII. Metropolis held out a hope, that tragically was not to be.
It holds up today, particularly when keeping in mind how expressionism has been used in many films since then, not the least of which being another one of my all time film noir favs, Orson Welles “The Third Man,” or any number of anti-realism films today often in the speculative fiction realm.
As far as oppressive hammering of the message throughout the film goes, the Moroder soundtrack (yes, I’ve seen the reconstructed film with the Huppertz score) turned that repetition into rhythm, bringing an aural heartbeat to the silent film – a repetition of theme and motion and music more familiar to early music videos, and entirely in line with expressionism.
Metropolis stands up today as a masterpiece.
I’m going to have to vote:
Boring, tedious, heavy-handed, and made by a political crank.
It may have had amazing special effects for its time, but unless you are a film history buff or a political crank, there’s not much to recommend it.
Put me down for another “I love it” vote.
I saw it about 15 years ago with a live rock orchestra. I also own the DVD and watch it every few years.
Nitpick: Carol Reed’s The Third Man
Welles only worked on that film as an actor- though, additional accolades are in order as he did deliver one of the greatest improvised speeches since the invention of the cuckoo clock.
I wonder how many people notice the decimal clock?
I saw one or another of the restored versions in the 90’s. It was worth seeing it because so many books I’d read as a kid featured stills from it and cited it as an influential, important sci-fi/horror movie. However, like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, it proved to be a movie I had no urge to ever view a second time.
Quite right. Thanks for the correction.
I did.
Did you notice that the wristwatch the Master of Metropolis wears isn’t a decimal clock?
He isn’t a slave to the clock – he can afford to have a 12-hour watch.
I love Metropolis. I’ve watched the film go from the appallingly bad print that used to circulate to the somewhat restored version by Giorgiou Moroder (with its modern score, that I (and maybe 20 other people) loved). I hadn’t realized until then that the movie had an animated title – on the print circulated in the US it was so washed out that it was virtually invisible. It was also the first time I saw the film with music that wasn’t ludicrously inappropriate. (Insert your anti-Moroder joke here, if you want. But the music he added at least tried to be relevant to what was going on onscreen). I used to show clips from the Moroder version side-by-side with clips from the abysmal version I grew up on. I also noticed that Moroder’s version was exactly the same length as the abysmal version. Comparing segment by segment, I found that, although he restored long-lost clips, he actually deleted scenes in the interest of running time.
Then I saw the first restored version in the theater. I was more impressed. I had, by this time, read Fritz Lang’s statements about the film (“Why,” he wondered, “would anyone want to see a film when more than half of it was missing?”). This newest version restored much of that loss, didn’t make any of the cuts Moroder had, and added material he didn’t have. I’d also read Thea von Harbou’s novelization several times in the interim.
It was still disappointing to not know what the hell was going on with The Tall Man, and I’d have liked to see some of those scenes that were only summarized in the Moroder and first Restored version. But it was infinitely better.
Then they found the version in South America, and I bought the DVD of that when it came out. I’ve played it numerous times. I’m always amazed at what we can finally see. I’;m also amazed at the “musical” structure of the film, which none of the previous restorations had really captured. The newest version is missing only two scenes, and we have the original score and intertitles.
I think it’s a helluva show. It had its problems (mostly the kinda sappy “mediator between the Mind and the hands must be the Heart” – they should show this fil more often at MIT, where the motto is Mens et Manus. Not to mention the ludicrous organization that makes the worker’s levels flood when the machines go off – thart’ll prevent worker’s revolts, but it’s a pain if power goes down in an emergency. Or Joh Frederson’s willingness to let the workers destroy themselves.) But it also had gorgeous scenes – the first real Robot on film, Rotwang’s laboratory (the first real extended Mad Scientist Lab sequence in film – I don’t count things like the 1910 Frankenstein – complete with electrical effects that predated and almost certainly inspired the 1931 Frankenstein), the Tower of Babel sequence, the Moloch Machine, and the grand cityscapes of Metropolis itself.
H.G. Wells hated the film and its effects, but there’s no doubt in my mind that the effects were better than in Wells’ own Things to Come, and the film’s a lot less boring.
I hate to disagree with you Exapno, but I have to on this. I;'ve seen many of those 1920 SF films, and even the 1910s. None of them, are on scale of Metropolis, which was the most expensive film made to that point, and damned near bankrupted the studio. I love The Lost World (which has itself been extensively restored in recent years – Twice! By two different groups), but it’s not on the same scale at all. Aelita is ambitious, but nowhere near as ambitious (and most of it is boring as hell).
But Metropolis, for all its abuse and mishandling, still stands as the most influential of those films, and probably the most viewed of them. Even in its grossly abridged version, it was a highlight of the first WorldCon.
I saw it in Berkeley with a live Klezmer orchestra providing the music. It was wonderful! Really supported the high-drama aspects of the film.
So - how’s the book report going?
I always wanted to see “Destiny”-is it ever shown these days?
*Aelita *is boring as hell, absolutely. But it was ambitious.
Playing the “first” game is extremely subjective. Getting into an argument of what “ambitious” means is as tedious as Aelita. *Metropolis *is the peak of the decade and not many 30s films rivaled it either. But several of those earlier films were as ambitious as their era could handle. I get itchy when people point to the most famous one and make claims about it. That’s especially prevalent in science fiction and I get my jollies playing whack-a-mole with those claims.
Good description! 
What about Le Voyage Dans La Lune (1902), though?
Thanks for this detailed analysis! Indeed, I myself probably should go watch Metropolis as soon as I can!