Archived Pages from 20th Century!!



This page was last updated on 3 February 1997

  "To begin with, I should say that I am a visual person." -- Fritz Lang  


Welcome to the Metropolis Home Page!

You've found the central clearinghouse for information on the World Wide Web related to Fritz Lang's classic 1926 film, Metropolis. Within, you will find lots of cool graphics, background information, commentaries and reviews, as well as hot-links to related pages of interest. This home page is purely a labor of love, designed and kept with the sole purpose of introducing those who don't yet know about the film to the first big budget science fiction movie ever made, and to provide an arena for exchange of information for those who do (so please don't sue me). Come on in and look around! Just don't break any of the big machines...


The Internet Movie Database Metropolis Page
The Filmmuseum Munich Home Page
Weimar Film Page (Video Clip of Metropolis)
Augusto C.B. Areal's Metropolis Page
Will Jayroe's Film Examination & Criticism Page
Damian Cannon's Review of Metropolis
Rebecca Arwen Sim's Papers on Metropolis
Chris W. Morris's Metropolis Image Page
Fritz Lang Biography Page
Thea von Harbou Biography Page
 Hyde Flippo's page on Fritz Lang and Metropolis
 The Internet Source for Early German Film Metropolis Page 
 The Basement Metropolis Film Review
Dan Newman's Metropolis Page
Time Magazine's "From Metropolis to ID4" Metropolis Page
  Cal Berkeley Film Critisism Class Review of Metropolis
Sci-Fi Weekly's "Classic" Metropolis Page


What It Is

It is the future, and humans are divided into two groups: the thinkers, who make plans (but don't know how anything works), and the workers, who achieve goals (but don't have the vision). Completely separate, neither group is complete, but together they make a whole.

Fritz LangOr, at least, that's what the blurb on the back of the video cassette box says. In point of fact, Fritz Lang's highly experimental (and hugely expensive) 1926 sci-fi film suffers from more than one major theme, an artifact from Lang's collaboration with his wife, Thea von Harbou, who wrote the script for the film. For Lang, Metropolis was primarily an exploration of the conflict between the magical and the occult (represented by Rotwang, the film's evil scientist and necromancer) with the modern and the scientific (embodied by Joh Fredersen, the Master of Metropolis), a theme which was at odds with von Harbou's vision of the "heart mediating between the head and the hands," a vision which was not received uncritically when the film was released in '26. Even though these competing themes run parallel throughout the film, most critics tend to focus on the more sentimental moral that von Harbou brings to the film (especially at its conclusion), which strays far from Lang's darker vision of competing human forces lurking at the heart of even our greatest accomplishments -- a theme which was later to be taken up by such directors as Stanley Kubrick , who would echo this vision in his own sci-fi film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. The management-and-worker theme which has come to predominate the existing versions of the film was really the counter-melody of the story and not the major theme of the work as Lang had envisioned it. Indeed, Lang had originally planned several scenes which thrust the occult vs. the scientific theme to the fore of the movie, but which for various reasons never made it to the released version of Metropolis. Lang had originally planned much more powerful visions of evil forces being loosed by the creation of the robot (such as demons breaking free of the Catholic Church, which in the final version of the film is relegated to Freder's fever-induced dream), but was fearful that the film's audience wouldn't be able to understand his vision and would be turned off. Lang's failure to better express the mystical symbolism of his story is why the sentimental symbolism of von Harbou has come to predominate the modern understanding of the movie itself.

During the Weimar years, between the end of the First World War and the rise of the National Socialist movement, German cinema was preoccupied with images and stories of the growing industrialization of labor, where the individual worker was becoming more and more a cog in the giant machine of progress. (The horrid state of economic affairs brought about by having to rebuild their industrial base fed this fear rather dramatically.) Metropolis capitalizes on this fear of the worker becoming a part of the machine itself; in the film, workers are faceless drones who march in unison, slaves to the huge machines which lurk under the city of Metropolis and perform functions beyond their ability to understand. The stratification of the society between the rich management types (the "head" in von Harbou's vision) who live in luxury in the glittering city skyline, and the desperately poor and oppressed workers (the "hands") who live in gray vaults far below even the levels of the machines, clearly comments on the growing separation between the very rich and the very poor in post-war Germany (and in modern America, as well). Interestingly enough, the film also lacks the communist worker theme which characterized other films with similar messages during the same time period. Rather than the worker's revolt being a success, when at the end of the film they destroy some of the machines which run the city, they flood their own living areas and almost kill their own children -- who are saved, predictably, by the worker heroine and the management hero, who also happen to be in love (the "heart"). It is Freder (the hero) together with Maria (the heroine) who in the end manage to bridge the gap between the workers and the managers, the "hands" and the "head," through their understanding that they must live and work together in love (the "heart") -- an ending which, even at the time the film was made, seemed silly and overly sentimental, not to mention disconnected with Lang's vision of human duality struggling at the heart of modern society.




Quicktime Movie (664k)

Metropolis Film Clips!

NEO Magazine, an Italian online magazine, had these movie clips on their web page for several months. Since they've revamped their e-zine, the clips vanished, but not before I found them and rescued them from electronic oblivion. Both files are in-line flattened QuickTime movies, so you'll need Apple's QuickTime Video plug-in to view them. Just click on the image and away you go!


QuickTime Movie (779k)


Film Credits

  

Directed by Fritz Lang

Produced by Erich Pommer

Written by Fritz Lang & Thea Von Harbou

Cinematography by Karl Freund & Guenther Rittau

Music by Gottfried Huppertz
(1984 re-release score by Giorgio Moroder)

Production Design by Otto Hunte & Erich Kettelhut & Karl Vollbrecht

Costume Design by Aenne Willkomm

Model and Sculpture design by Walter Schultze-Mittendorf


Versions Information

Metropolis originally ran 2 hours 30 minutes, an outrageously long film by the standards of the day. Over his objections, Lang's film was shortened by the distributer, UFA (Universum Film Aktiengesellschaft), to 63 minutes for its American release. No original prints of the complete film exist, although there are several restored versions. In 1928, a year after its initial release and shortening, Lang put together a longer re-edit of the film, known as the '28 German version. Currently an American video publisher, Good Times Video, is distributing the 1928 German re-edit of the film. Another restored but shorter (87 minute) version was re-released in 1984, featuring a soundtrack produced by Giorgio Moroder. This version is also color tinted, supposedly according to Fritz Lang's original vision. The version prepared by the Filmmuseum Munich, restored according the original script, has the lost scenes replaced either with stills or titles, and runs 138 minutes. (As far as I know, the Filmmuseum version is not available commercially, although the original American UFA 63 minute version, the 93 minute German re-release version and the Moroder version are all available in the U.S.)

1927 Original version (no longer existant): 150 minutes (approx.)
1927 American/German release: 63 minutes
1928 German re-release (later distributed in the U.S. and abroad): 93 minutes
1984 Giorgio Moroder version: 87 minutes
1995 Filmmuseum Munich version (not commercially available): 138 minutes


Main Cast

 

Alfred Abel .... Joh Fredersen

Gustav Froehlich .... Freder

Brigitte Helm .... Maria / The Robot

Rudolf Klein-Rogge .... Rotwang

Heinrich George .... Grot

Theodor Loos .... Josaphat

Hanns Leo Reich .... Marinus

Erwin Biswanger .... Georg (No. 11811)

Olaf Storm .... Jan



Metropolis: The Musical

Yes, boys and girls, there was indeed a musical version of Metropolis, which was first preformed at the Piccadilly Theatre
(Denman street, Piccadilly Circus, London) on the 8th of March, 1989.

 

Production Credits

Music by Joe Brooks

Book and lyrics by Dusty Hughes & Joe Brooks

Additional material by David Firman

Produced by Michael White
& Metropolis Theatrical Productions Ltd

Production musical supervisor David Firman

Musical director Mark Warman

Assistant choreographer Stella Segar

General managers Joanne Benjamin
& Robert Cogo-Fawcett for Theatre Associates

Associate director Peter Walker

Sound designed by David Hersey

Choreogphy by Tom Jobe

Production designed by Ralph Koltai

Directed by Jerome Savary

Musical Cast

Brian Blessed .... John Freeman

Judy Kuhn .... Maria/Futura

Graham Bickley .... Steven

Jonathan Adams .... Warner

Stifyn Parri .... George

Lindsey Danvers .... Jade

Colin Fay .... Groat

Megan Kelly .... Lake

Robert Fardell .... Marco

Lucy Dixon .... Lulu

Kevin Power .... Worker 1

Gael Johnson .... Beso


Check out the opening theme from the Metropolis Musical! (QuickTime audio file, 2764K)


thanks to Benedetto di Salle for providing the information about the musical
thanks to Chris Morris for providing some much-needed cast screen captures


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This page is maintained by "Doug the Dog" Quinn, CSP.