Day 144: Metropolis (1927)

Movie #93 – Metropolis (1927) - 118 min, cert PG.

Set in the far future, the gulf in society between the rich and the poor has expanded to the point where the rich live a carefree Utopian lifestyle, while the poor dwell underground and operate the vast machinery that powers everything. This society is ruled over by Joh Frederson who is one of the few people who is aware of what goes on in the undercity. His son Freder descends into it and meets a young woman named Maria who wants to try to bridge the gulf between the two classes. Meanwhile, a mad scientist has created a robot to do his bidding. He kidnaps Maria, gives the robot her appearance, and uses it to lead the workers in a revolution.

I may not know much about movies and movie-making, but it doesn’t take a genius to see that this film was many years ahead of its time. For 1927, the special effects were amazing. OK, a lot of them look pretty tame these days – the flooding of the underground city is clearly a model, but the scene where the robot becomes animated still looks quite good today. Lang doesn’t like to break up his action with too many captions, so a lot of the dialogue is intimated through actions alone. This has the effect of making most of the physical movements of the actors very over the top, almost comically so.

I believe there might be a more complete version of the film than the one I saw. My one had quite a few scenes missing which were replaced with captions to keep the viewer up to date with the plot. I have read that a copy was found somewhere in South America that allowed a lot of these gaps to be filled in, but quite frankly it was quite long enough without these extra scenes. In its entirety it would run to nearly two and a half hours, according to IMDb.

Overall, it was certainly an enjoyable film. Although, probably more so when viewed as an interesting piece of cinematic history than as a story on its own right.

Score – 6/10. An interesting museum piece.

Next up is Gladiator. I have this one on DVD and it’s a great film. Russell Crowe in a role ideally suited to him.