Metropolis continues to be highly regarded and influential to a new generation of film makers. Since the time of its initial public screening, Fritz Lang's futurist drama has motivated critics and others to comment on aspects of its production, the many filmic elements, narrative structure, and way in which it reflects and comments upon so many aspects of Weimar Germany and German culture during a period of great turbulence and social change. They have also attempted to define its place in the developing history of cinema. However, such an expansive, multifacetted film as Metropolis is not easily pigeon-holed. The New York Times reviewer in 1927 called Metropolis:
...a remarkable achievement....a technical marvel with feet of clay...a picture as soulless as the manufactured woman of the story...
During the twenties the barriers separating film from art became decidedly blurred in Germany and Europe. Abstract Expressionism, Dada and the Modernist movement carried over into motion picture making, and directors such as Fritz Lang, Friedrich Murnau and Sergei Eisenstein absorbed many of the ideas being put forward by artists and writers of the time. The infuence of the German Bauhaus School in regards to the use of light, arrangement of objects (staging), architectural innovation, and modern design was especially strong. Cinematographers, set designers and script writers were also similarly influenced, such that the team which produced Metropolis were of like mind in seeking innovation and looking to push the boundaries of film as art. Fritz Lang spelled out this philosophy in an article published during October 1926, towards the end of the final editing phase of Metropolis:
There has perhaps never before been a time so determined as ours in its search for new forms of expression. Fundamental revolutions in painting, sculpture, architecture, and music speak eloquently of the fact that people of today are seeking and finding their own means of lending artistic form to their sentiments. Film has an advantage over all other expressive forms: its freedom from space, time, and place. What makes it richer than the others is its natural expressiveness inherent in its formal means. I maintain that film has barely risen above the first rung on the ladder of its development, and that it will become the more personal, the stronger, and more artistic the sooner it renounces all transmitted or borrowed expressive forms and throws itself into the unlimited possibilities of the purely filmic... (F. Lang, Die Literarische Welt, 2, 1 October 1926)
Initial German reviews of the director's 17 reel (elsewhere given as 9 or 14 reel), 4189 metre long, three hour plus film were decidedly mixed, finding fault in elements such as the narrative structure, and critical of its Socialist / Communist elements. The visuals were generally highly praised and audiences flocked to see this cinematic spectacular throughout 1927-8. Fritz Lang's masterpiece was almost immediately recognised as a landmark in German Expressionist filmmaking, whilst its use of lighting to set mood (a common expressionist device partially revived in the late 1940s as a prominent element in Film Noir), state-of-the-art special effects, and overpowering set design, all marked new standards in the developing art of the motion picture.
The film's central theme of workers revolting against domination by exploitative management, their soulless machines, and new technologies, also struck a chord with reviewers and the general public, though many critics in America and Britain objected strongly to this anti-Fordism / anti production-line tale. As such, Metropolis, with its many themes and sub-texts - inluding the almost obligatory 'boy meets girl, boy looses girl, boy finds girl' - was a controversial film from day one. It garnered both positive and negative comment wherever it was shown, and generated much critical discussion in the press upon release.
Due to pre-release publicity in Germany during 1925-6 in association with the large scale of the production - it was supposedly the most expensive German film production to date, costing some 5 million Marks - and UFA's self-promotional activities, a great deal was expected of the film; and whilst a great deal was in fact achieved by Lang and his team, the resultant film was subject to indept scrutiny and criticism from a number of quarters. This largely adverse criticism was due, in part, to factors beyond the director's control. For example, the film was savagely cut and re-edited to change many key elements prior to screening outside of Germany. American and foreign theatre managers were generally unwilling to allocate more than ninety minutes to a feature in their program, during a period when film attendance figures were high. Metropolis suffered accordingly as the original version was thought to be too long. Also, individual projectionists and theatre managers saw to it that the film was screened at a ludicrously fast speed of up to 26 frames per second (as at its Berlin premiere!), thereby affecting the rhythm and pace of the original film, which had in all likelihood been cranked at the standard speed of 16 frames per second. As such, few people outside of Berlin saw Metropolis as Fritz Lang originally intended. The butchered, speeded-up version which was presented to European and American audiences in 1927 - and which we continue to see to this day - was disjointed, illogical in parts, and therefore open to criticism on a number of fronts. Lang could rightly claim that by the middle of 1927 his original film no longer existed.
Cover for Gottfried Huppertz's original score to the film Metropolis. Published by UFA in 1927.
Metropolis, UFA poster, Designer - Jósef Bottlik, Berlin, 1927. Designed for the release of the film in Hungary.e Helm as the robot Maria, in Metropolis
Brigitte Helm on the set of Metropolis.
(1927) by Fritz Lang.
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