transfeminine frankenstein’s review published on Letterboxd:
Who is the living food for the machines in Metropolis? Who lubricates the machine joints with their own blood? Who feeds the machines with their own flesh? Let the machines starve, you fools! Let them die! Kill them, the machines!
When Metropolis first premiered in 1927, it received mixed reception and was quickly, severely trimmed down in length for subsequent screenings. I used to think that this shortening of the film was a tremendous loss for film history—and don't get me wrong, the failure to properly preserve the cut footage was tragic—but after watching the 150-minute "complete" Metropolis, I can't say I don't disagree with the decision. This movie's long as fuck, especially for a silent film. Yet there is so much plot, so many imaginative sequences, and so much critical symbolism crammed into those two (and a half) hours that to watch anything but the complete version is a disservice.
Lang, and his cinematographer Freund, masterfully emphasize scale above all else in this film; not just small people next to big things but masses of hundreds and hundreds of small people moving together, and the representation of being a tiny, meaningless part of some massive, Kafkaesque contraption-society. Yet even Lang himself has regretted the naivete with which he utilized the rage and alienation this imagery evokes.* The good Maria is a perfect, saintly priestess who advocates waiting patiently for a benvolent mediator between the bourgeoisie ("mind") and proletariat ("hands"). Her evil doppelganger is an exotic dancer, a sex worker, who demands direct action, strikes, and revolution against their oppressors. The only way that the film can make the latter position untenable is by depicting the workers as so gullible that they would destroy the means of production instead of seizing them. The result is a film that appealed a lot to the Nazis, who were gracious for such a simplistic, black-and-white, apologetic parable of labor relations.
So despite the incredible production design, spectacular sequences, and groundbreaking special effects, the film is overall disappointing, especially by the midpoint where you know that it has written a check that it can't cash and that it must nosedive into a disappointing, mealy-mouthed ending for which all of the action and intensity is for nothing but the praise of mediators and moderates. And as much as I love Rotwang, the film very clearly doesn't know what to do with him after Maria escapes from his lair, resulting in a tacked-on "climax" between two characters who only feel like the hero and villain by default.
I do have a lot of thoughts re: the Machine-(wo)Man and Rotwang for my Frankenstein thesis, but too many thoughts to stick onto this general review. Another place, another time.
* In an interview with Peter Bogdanovich in Who The Devil Made It: Conversations with Legendary Film Directors.