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Metropolis

Director: Fritz Lang
Year: 1927
Run-time: 2 hours 28 min
Source: Kanopy

"I have recently seen the silliest film. I do not believe it would be possible to make one sillier," begins H.G. Wells' review of Metropolis.  He found it to be extremely unrealistic, and hopelessly sentimental.  In modern terms, Wells wanted hard sci-fi, and Lang's film is as soft as it comes.  One of Wells' main points is based on economics.  In a truly mechanized society, Wells claims, there would be no lower-class workers, since the machines would equalize the distribution of wealth.

Our future doesn't look on the surface like Lang's steampunk nightmare, but here he gets it right.  When machines can replace men, men need to act more like machines to get by.  Wells is right, though: Metropolis isn't hard sci-fi.  The strength of this movie is that it cares more about people.  We remember it for its stylized art style, and the incredible performance of Brigitte Helm as the robot, but in watching it a second time, I was much more moved by the plot, and how its really all about empathy.

Metropolis brings together so many trends in earlier films.  It takes the fantastical sense of scale from the "city symphonies" like Manhatta.  It takes the heightened emotions and Gothic sensibilities of its German Romanticist forebears like Nosferatu.  It takes the rapid pacing and communalism of the Soviet montage movement.  1927 may be the best year for film, primarily because we see so many ideas merging in films like Napoleon, this film, and the next on our list.


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