1927 Directed by Fritz Lang
In a futuristic city sharply divided between the working class and the city planners, the son of the city's mastermind falls in love with a working class prophet who predicts the coming of a savior to mediate their differences.
Gustav Fröhlich Brigitte Helm Rudolf Klein-Rogge Alfred Abel Heinrich George Theodor Loos Olaf Storm Fritz Rasp Erwin Biswanger Helene Weigel Margarete Lanner Hanns Leo Reich Fritz Alberti Heinrich Gotho Grete Berger Curt Siodmak Rolf von Goth Helen von Münchofen Georg John Arthur Reinhardt Henrietta Siodmak
Reportedly one of Adolf Hitler's favourite films.
A part of me thinks he didn't quite get it...
Decades Project: 1/2 of the 20's
"But the hands that built the Tower of Babel knew nothing of the dream of the head that conceived it. The hymns of praise of one man became the curses of others."
Fun fact: Metropolis is actually just Star Wars in disguise. A rebellious young man joins a group of underdogs and learns the ways of a strange religion while on a quest to overthrow his tyrannical father's evil empire by destroying its greatest creation. That's right, Fritz Lang was secretly a no-talent hack using a time machine to steal ideas from the future.
So if that doesn't make it obvious enough, I'll just come right out and say it: I have a new…
90/100
MKE Film Fest #4
('The Complete Metropolis' with live performance by the Alloy Orchestra)
"For her - all seven deadly sins!"
Truly a dream alive on the screen. Continues to be immensely influential - so much so that naming all the examples could result in its very own click-bait list (I'm sure there's already one out in the wild) - and each frame is lush, crisp, and inventive in a way that is astonishing - even more so today. The final 20 minutes, combined with the tremendous Alloy Orchestra score reverberating within the theater, are as climatic as cinema gets, rising towards the heavens, a hero fully reborn.
Film School Drop Outs Challenge 2017 Week 3 - Movement - German Expressionism (1920-1927)
Ach Mein Gott...!
Metropolis has a whole heck of a lot going on. Class conflict, generational squabbles, unchecked scientific progress, spirituality and romantic notions, demagoguery and popular revolt. All of it melds together into an action packed dystopian melodrama on an epic scale. It apparently took Fritz Lang a whole year to make Metropolis, thousands of people were engaged as extras and it was the most expensive film he ever made.
Hitler must have made good use of this film. It was apparently amongst his favourites and would have been easy to co-opt for his political agenda. Much like Soviet dialectical montage films from this period,…
Fuck this film. Fritz Lang is a really lazy director. One of his films was just called M! Jebuzz Cripes! The guy couldn't be fucking arsed to write a proper title for his bullshit, and all of the characters were talking in a made up language and there was writing all over the screen and I heard a rumour that this guy is a German! I saw the anime version of this Metropolis film and I thought that it wasn't very good. That is an observation that I made and then I wrote it down. I'm now an film critique. This dumb-ass film is shot in the black and the white which is the stupidest shit that the cavemen ever…
Film #14 of Project 20
”There can be no understanding between the hand and the brain unless the heart acts as mediator.”
In a pessimistic depiction of human race’s future Fritz Lang mixes the elements of sci-fi cinema with politics, religion and mythology to create an extremely gripping and utterly compelling piece of cinema which with its dark portrayal of future life and its poetic look at human relationships holds enough power and glory to mesmerize, shock and provoke the viewers , Metropolis is the jewel in the crown of silent cinema and a movie which showcases the matchless charm of storytelling through the marriage of riveting musical pieces with mind-bending images.
One thing about Metropolis which thrills the viewers…
Yeah yeah it’s a masterpiece and all, but I don’t think I can ever go back to any other “more complete” version after seeing the Moroder cut, despite the probable sacrilege of its existence.
I feel like the first half of this is really strong, where it shows the oppression of the worker class by greedy capitalists and then a revolution from the inside, is super good and emotional. The latter half devolves into violence, and I sort of tuned out the last 20 minutes because i thought it kept hitting the same beats again and again. It's funny because I have the exact opposite problem with Big Heat lol
Above all else this is a triumph of imagination and creativity. The movie's influence can be felt in nearly every science fiction or dystopian film to this day. Even after the movie has been aped by others, "Blade Runner", "Watchmen","Snowpiercer" "The Matrix" "Dr. Strangelove", Batman's Gotham City, I could feel the originality and power of Fritz Lang's vision. It is a movie about that vision, about spectacle. It's an epic of operatic, balletic power.
Though the special effects are dated, there's a power to them. I stopped many times during the movie and thought, "Oh man, a real-live person did that, or they did that in the camera. That's so cool. I wonder how they did that." There's a special…
This epic fuses genres and motives like science fiction, the Freaky Friday-routine, a love story and social drama perfectly and casual like it isn‘t a big deal. Production design and special effects are perfectly over the top. Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou were way ahead of their time. Metropolis is absolutely worth its two and a half hours runtime.
Damn you Fritz... I could only imagine what glorious films you would give if you were still around... This film was groundbreaking way ahead of it's time... great editing.. the shot of all eyes blinking was stunning thank you Mr Lang now I can watch Scarlet Street without regret
Also vorab einmal: Ich mag Stummfilme eigentlich nicht, kann aber die Arbeit die dahinter steckt und den kulturellen Wert von Metropolis durchaus schätzen.
Denn noch ist Metropolis aus heutiger Sichtweise nicht mehr zeitgemäß bzw. man kann ihn nicht mehr so genießen wie früher. Und eben das finde ich schade: Ein Film sollte über seine Zeit hinweg faszinieren. An Ideen fehlt es ihm sicher nicht, denn noch muss ich sagen, dass es durchaus ältere Filme mit besserem Pacing gibt.
THE MEDIATOR BETWEEN HEAD AND HANDS MUST BE THE HEART!
An incredible and timeless piece on the dangers of class divisions.
The editing, cinematography, decors, fashion, effects (so... basically all the visuals) and it's ambiguous narrative are all very ahead of its time and, after already inspiring a whole genre, still manage to inspire many forms of art, including the music industry, the fashion world and of course the world of cinema. Metropolis still holds the title of being one of the most influental cinematic works of all time and I found myself to be deeply in love with every aspect of it.
#12 on my 100+ favorites list
The conflicts brought upon us when class disparity becomes too extreme. The fact that this was made in 1927 or even made at all is astounding. Beautiful set design, cinematography, and editing. Very creative all around.
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