Metropolis

Elephants Gerald

Something I learn as I watch more and more films is that the cultural perception of silent films as quaint relics without much teeth is utterly wrong. METROPOLIS, for example, as as weird, feverish, grotesque, and artistically incisive as anything made half a century later.

Howard Orr

More a hyperbolic, nightmare version of the Fordist production line, mapped onto the social structures of the 1920s than a sci-fi vision of the future. At its heart is perhaps the death of a tragic, mythic world, and how this can be confronted; in this cerainly I feel it is a sequel to Lang's "Niebelungen". The brilliant idea of the femme fatale as demagogue (social seductress) was not developed by subsequent films.

ronny

this movie is everything. so many works of art post-1927 took something from "Metropolis." it's an incredible experience seeing this for the first time, and catching all the tropes from all your favorite movies.

Addy K.

It's fun to think of how METROPOLIS has been appropriated in popular culture: from Peter Sellers' Dr. Strangelove to Madonna videos to BLADE RUNNER. Discussing its pervasive influence is easy. What interests me more is Lang and cowriter Thea von Harbou's meshing of modernity with occultism. Rotwang's old world of magic exists uncomfortably between the "hands" and "brain" of society. All superseded, of course by love.

msmichel

2010 restoration. Essential cinema. Lang's classic silent was given new life after years of public domain edited copies with discovery of lost footage from an archival print found in Argentina. With a digital re-master Lang's vision was brought back to life. Endlessly influential this masterpiece is the template for an entire genre. Ingeniously produced with visual mastery beyond the constraints of the time period.

Jimmi HRS

A futuristic dystopian wonderland that continues to inspire sci-fi even to this day. I can't even begin to imagine how mind blowing this would have looked at its premier at Ufa-Palast am Zoo in Berlin in 1927. A true masterpiece, wunderbar!

THE APOLL0

The best science fiction should act as a foil for social commentary of the day which Metropolis paved the way for.

Matthew_Lucas

Fritz Lang's 1927 masterpiece about a futuristic society run on the backs of oppressed laborers, who are inspired to revolt by a machine created to sew discord by their suspicious leader, remains a jaw-dropping spectacle. The design and early special effects are staggering, as is Lang's sense of pace and rhythm. Perhaps the greatest science fiction film of all time.