The Original Man-Machine (Metropolis (DVD))

Member Name: l-m-n-o-p

Product:	Metropolis (DVD)
Date:	19/07/07 (118 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Seminal, thought-provoking and fantastic special effects for its time

Disadvantages: But it's just so slow! And the second half really loses its way.

Fritz Lang’s Metropolis is probably the oldest movie I’ve ever seen (it was made in 1927). Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I’m not going to use its age either for or against it. It’s just that they don’t make ‘em like this any more, and for good reason.

It tells of a future city - Metropolis - which is split in two, Time Machine style, into the wealthy, intelligent people living above ground, and the workers living deep underground. One day, a man from above gets a visit from a mysterious woman, who inspires him to delve underground and see how his brothers live. On encountering their daily toil, labouring to keep vast machines running for the good of those living above, he is shocked and saddened.

He also discovers that the workers have a kind of underground resistance leader, called Maria. She tells them the story of the Tower of Babel, and how their hard work is important, and generally preaches peace.

Meanwhile, the man’s father has teamed up with a mad scientist who has created a robot. Thinking that this robot will be able to replace the human workers, and therefore save him a lot of money, the father decides to replace Maria with the robot, and spread violence and anger amongst the people, rather than peace. He hopes that this will cause the workers, in their ignorance, to destroy themselves.

It seems it’s up to this pleasant young man from above to save the city’s future!

I’m no expert in silent movies, since Metropolis is the only one I’ve ever seen, so please tell me if I’m wrong – surely they didn’t all used to be this slow? I’m not talking about the story being slow (which is it, incidentally), I mean the images themselves. Everything looks literally in slow motion. Captions a sentence long stay on the screen for 30 seconds. I got bored in places and played the video on fast forward, and it was overall a much more enjoyable experience, whilst also cutting down the film’s 147 minute running time.

I was flabbergasted when I checked out IMDb’s ratings for this film. I knew it would be up there in the higher echelons, which is why I was expecting to love it myself; I was expecting it to be a masterpiece. However, after watching the film, I was also expecting under 18s to hate it. Not a bit of it – the average female under 18 rates this film 8.3. 8.3! Not that I’ve got anything against girls under 18, it’s just that they normally give that kind of rating to the latest Pirates of the Caribbean, not to a deathly slow black and white silent sci-fi film (sorry for stereotyping any girls under 18 reading this).

Just for the record, Metropolis is rated 66th greatest film of all time.

There’s no denying that Metropolis is important as a seminal science fiction story, and that it contains many ideas and predictions of the future which are incredibly relevant today. The “people vs capitalism” theme is done very well, and again, forgive me if I’m wrong, but I would imagine Metropolis was quite revolutionary for having the idea of a humanoid robot in 1926. It also has its heart in the right place with a simple yet important and memorable key idea – “if the brain and the hands are to work together, the heart must act as mediator”.

There’s also no denying that the film as a visual spectacle is quite impressive, and years ahead of its time in terms of special effects. Obviously there’s the whole issue of shaky camera work and poor lighting and that lot, but the film’s older than my gran so you can’t expect glossy production values. There’s a lot of good photography, and images blending into each other nicely, especially in the strange first five minutes.

I loved the first hour of Metropolis. I was gripped by the mysterious setting, the unusually slow pacing of the story had me intrigued, and most of all I was interested by the central ideas behind it.

However, the second half completely lost its way in my opinion. It seemed to change from sci-fi to some kind of weird disaster movie, then to a frankly boring and predictable chase across the rooftops. Not to mention the fact that it went on seemingly for hours, and the ridiculous slowness of it all.

I was so disappointed by Metropolis, as you can probably tell. It wasn’t as sci-fi-ish as I’d expected, and I’m sorry to keep harping on about the slowness, but at least half an hour could have been cut out. It’s probably worth watching because you have to and because it’s important and because it's amazing to see how technology has improved, but it doesn't really work these days as an entertaining movie (which I know isn't the point, but a film should have at least some entertainment value, surely?).

Sorry, Fritz, but your film’s vastly overrated!
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You can buy Metropolis for £9.99 from www.blahdvd.com. Being such an old film, there are many different versions available, some with longer running times than others. Perhaps that's why mine seemed so slow. It seems some DVD versions last 118 minutes, some 139 minutes, whilst IMDb states anything from 80 minutes to 153 minutes to 210 minutes!

Directed by: Fritz Lang

Starring:

Gustav Fröhlich ... Freder
Alfred Abel ... Joh Frederson
Brigitte Helm ... Maria/The Robot
Rudolf Klein-Rogge ... The Inventor

Classification: PG

Running time: 139 minutes

Year: 1927

My rating: 5/10

Summary: Important but dull