"Metropolis. The mother city. City of mothers. Mother of all cities" (Metropolis (DVD))

Name: hogsflesh

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Product:	Metropolis (DVD)
Date:	25/05/06 (178 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Excellent 20s vision of the future

Disadvantages: The film is perhaps a bit long

Hardly anyone watches silent films anymore, which is a shame. Probably it’s the obvious old-fashioned-ness that puts people off. Silent cinema appeals to me at least partly because it’s so different to modern cinema, but I also love the sense of scale that you get in some of the films (it seems that building enormous sets that probably cost more than Belgium was not unusual), and also the way you can see film as a narrative medium developing. If silent films are frequently clumsy and unsubtle, later films refined their methods and became what we have today. Besides, I rather like clumsy and unsubtle.

And Metropolis, made in 1927, is certainly clumsy and unsubtle. It’s also one of the greatest films ever made, and one of my all-time favourites. The best films of the silent era – wonderful, weird and inventive – were made in Germany. (That they effectively invented the horror movie is a big point in their favour as far as I’m concerned.) A lot of German silent films are described as ‘Expressionist’, which tends to mean that the characters’ internal thoughts are reflected in what we see on the screen. This was the era in which Modernism was taking the arts in all kinds of unusual directions, but Germany seems to have been the only place where commercial cinema had serious art-house aspirations. I can’t think of any other instance where popular films have so embraced the avant garde.

Anyway, enough tedious history lessons. The story of Metropolis is charmingly silly. In the future (the year 2000, heh), there is a huge city, ruled by Frederson, its cold-hearted architect. He lives in his huge headquarters, the Tower of Babel. (If I were creating a huge dystopian city, I would *certainly* name my base of operations after the universally recognised metaphor for man’s hubris.) The idle rich live a life of sybaritic luxury above ground, without a care in the world. But of course, all is not well. The city is maintained by the drudge-like, subterranean slaves, constantly forced to operate the machines that power the world above. A young lady, Maria, has begun to teach the slaves a message of religious love and equality, and they’re getting restless. Frederson obviously doesn’t like this – there’s no room for concepts like love in his cold heart – so he goes to the local mad scientist, Rotwang, and asks him to sort Maria out. Rotwang animates a robot he’s built, and disguises it as Maria to discredit her in the eyes of the workers. So much simpler than, say, just killing her. Meanwhile, wouldn’t you just know it, Frederson’s son, Freder, has fallen head over heels in love with her.

The plot is, ultimately, pretty stupid. And the film’s ending actually resolves practically nothing. But it isn’t really the point. It’s impossible to care one way or the other about Maria, Freder, or anyone else – silent film characters are inevitably rather shallow and impossible to identify with. What makes Metropolis worth watching is, well, everything else. For a start, it looks incredible. There are few things I find more charming than old-fashioned visions of the future, and this is one of the best. The city itself, conveyed by a series of model shots and paintings, never looks real, but it is convincingly huge, and strange enough to work. The rooms of huge machines, operated by robot-like workers, are also magnificent (Queen used a lot of imagery from these sequences in their Radio Gaga video). Rotwang has a great mad laboratory, and an even better (female) robot (who obviously inspired the look of C3P0). And there are creepy, horror-film-style catacombs full of distorted angles and skulls. Metropolis is a triumph of bonkers Modernist design.

It’s also directed superbly by Fritz Lang, my favourite silent director. He seems not have been too bothered by the story (written by his then-wife, Thea von Harbou), instead focusing on the visuals. The scene where Rotwang animates his robot is amazing, and obviously inspired every subsequent Frankenstein film. There’s also a great bit where Rotwang stalks Maria through the catacombs, which uses light and darkness beautifully. There’s a brilliantly edited nightmare sequence, where young Freder imagines statues from the local cathedral coming to life and having a dance (this montage sequence is a good example of a technique that was refined and made more subtle as cinema matured). The crowd scenes – especially late in the film where an angry mob is running around smashing things up – are choreographed extremely effectively.

There are some surprisingly risqué costumes for the ladies, especially the evil robot version of Maria, who dances almost naked at one point. The acting is standard silent film acting. If you are worried about something in a silent film, you throw your arms above your head and open your eyes as wide as you can. If you fall in love, you convey that by clutching your heart and staring at the object of your affections. And should you get to kiss your beloved, it’s essential that you both keep your mouths shut. It’s pantomime acting, basically, and it’s probably one of the main things that will put people off silent cinema. I love it, though. The actors are pretty obscure today. The best is Brigitte Helm as Maria, who is hilarious when she’s playing the slutty robot version. Gustav Fröhlich, who plays Freder, is probably best known for having had his mistress stolen by Joseph Goebbels a few years later.

There’s an orchestral soundtrack – despite their name, silent films were never shown without some kind of music. This was written for the film, and is fine. It would have been nice to have had more futuristic sounding music, but you can always turn the sound down and stick on Kraftwerk or something. About a quarter of the film has been lost over the years, and the missing scenes are described in on-screen text. The film conveys speech through intertitles (text that tells you what the actors are saying), just like all silent films do. On this particular DVD, the titles are in German, but they’re subtitled (one subtitle stays on screen for much longer than it should).

The DVD – a double disc special edition – features a fully restored version of the film. The picture quality is excellent for a film of its age. It’s all black and white, though, which is strange – most silent films were tinted various colours, and I was under the impression Metropolis was no exception. There’s a commentary from a film historian, which you can listen to in German or English. The English version is a bit strange, possibly because of poor translation. It’s disappointing, in that it only offers analysis of the film rather than information about the production. Some of it is rather obvious: ‘Freder searches for a woman and finds a machine’ (heck, we’ve all been there); some of it is downright weird: ‘A metallic phallus with female physical attributes; with breasts and, on the abdomen, mounted and exhibited, the genitalia.’

The second disc has a good documentary about the making of the film, with lots of good clips of other German films, interviews with Lang, and a lot about the special effects (which, for their day, were revolutionary). It is perhaps a bit on the pretentious side, though. There’s also a shorter documentary about the restoration of the film, which I found less interesting. There are also good biographies, and a particularly good image gallery, which includes photos from missing scenes and production design sketches. The only fault with the biogs and galleries is the horrible, bright red background on all of them. There’s also ‘Facts & Figures’, but that turns out to be an IMDB-style cast and credits list.

Metropolis really is a great film. It’s perhaps a bit on the long side, at 2 hours, and is obviously not going to appeal to people who like their films nice and modern. I love it, though. It isn’t subtle, but films weren’t in those days. And it’s been enormously influential – everything from Dr Strangelove to Star Wars has borrowed from it visually. It’s supposed to sell for £20, but play.com usually has it for £10. Not just a cinematic masterpiece, but a very watchable one, too.

Summary: A silent classic gets a quality DVD release