This time, I would like to talk about a film that has
fascinated me since my teenage years - Fritz Lang's ‘Metropolis’ (1927)!
Metropolis was a silent film from the German director Fritz
Lang in 1927, and it is considered as one of the greatest sci-fi films in the
history of cinema. The style encompassed German expressionism, which could also
be seen as following a wider trend of Modernism in the early 20th
century.
The film is influential because it is extremely visual and
visionary. Metropolis is an almost textbook example regarding German
Expressionism. With cinematic artists like Lang. F. W. Murnau, G. W. Pabst, and
Robert Wiene, German Expressionism would prove to be inspirations for the
American and European crime films and Film Noirs of the 1940s. The artistic
influences of expressionism were evident in the sound films, and Welles,
Kubrick and Kurosawa were all influenced by this stylistic movement. Fritz Lang
would eventually exile to America ,
and made a great Film Noir known as ‘The Big Heat’ in the 1950s.
The story ‘took place’ - is past tense even appropriate
here? - in the ‘futuristic’ year 2026. It was about Freder, the son of an industrialist Fredersen,
who owned a lot of industrial complexes in the future city Metropolis.
Certainly, the workers were seen nothing more than slaves or cogs in the
complex machines, and there were already discontented brewing among the
workers. When a meeting with a worker known as Maria, followed by an untimely accident
that has wounded a number of the workers as a result, Freder had an awakening
of conscience and decided to help the workers to fight for the worker’s well-being.
However, the situation was complicated by Rotwang, the inventor who also worked
for Fredersen. Overcome by grief of the loss of his true love, Hel, who
ironically married Fredersen and then died soon after, Rotwang decided to make
a female robot as a replacement of Hel. Fredersen forced Rotwang to make the
robot resemble that of Maria (henceforth the ‘false’ Maria), so that it could
mislead the workers to think Maria as a spy for the industrial complex. Rotwang
kidnapped the real Maria, and the false Maria started to stir up the emotions
of the workers to revolt against Metropolis. The false Maria led the workers to
destroy the machines, yet it led to a massive flooding in the worker's part of
the city, and drowning some of the children that the adults have left behind.
Would Freder and the real Maria save the day?
Fritz Lang has stated that he has got his inspirations from
a visit to New York
in the 1920s. While he was definitely in awe of the beauty of the tall
buildings and modernized cityscapes, he seemed to also detect an undercurrent
of danger behind these advanced architecture. What is also interesting to look
is that the world of ‘Metropolis’ was not merely about new things – the
futuristic setting was balanced or juxtaposed by Gothic architecture of the 19th
century, as a reminder that humanity could not detach from their past. This
type of juxtaposition or retrograde culture can also be felt with any dystopian
or cyberpunk films, such as Blade Runner and Akira.
Metropolis was a visionary film exploring the man-machine
interaction, and this vision has clearly influenced many subsequent filmmakers.
Stanley Kubrick was among one of these filmmakers, as he often explored the
theme of man vs. machine in many of his greatest works. Both Lang and Kubrick
were concerned with the inevitable mechanical dehumanization offered by these
man-made systems and technologies. Indeed, the artistic movement of Modernism
was about the drastic changes humanity had to face in the modern world:
emergence of advanced technologies, mass production, and facile connection
through transport systems. The modern world, while apparently promising better
lives for its inhabitants, can lead to a sense of alienation unprecedented for
the past and simpler lives. Kubrick, Antonioni and Malick are among some of the
key filmmakers who have expressed similar concerns in their films.
The modernist cities could be frightening, but it was not
because they had intimidating heights or advanced appearances. They were
frightening because they were too ordered and rational. Just like in Kubrick's
films, Lang’s future is perceived as planned, functional and performative. The
issues of the future are planned out in detail through rational judgments, and
everything, including the humans within the system, are seen as merely nuts and
bolts and are assessed based on their instrumental applications. Lang and
Kubrick wanted us to contemplate about such a possible future - one with a
stunning, yet dangerous, mechanical beauty. While Lang, with his engagement in Expressionism,
used high contrast lighting and unusual angles to bring out the tension between
men and machines, Kubrick used every ordered composition, harsh lighting, sharp
edges and lines, and cold colour tones to heighten the tension and the
fundamental differences between humanity and his creations.
The exploitation and dehumanization of workers; the
treatment of other humans as instruments, were also themes that were explored
in Metropolis. In Sergei M. Eisenstein’s silent classic ‘The Battleship
Potemkin’, he adopted a different type artistic style - Russian montage – to
address the same issue. The sailors on the battleship were treated by the
lowest way possible. Both films culminated in revolts by the workers, and
certainly had deep political meanings. That was why some detractors of
Metropolis criticized the film as a celebration of communism, and I would not
dwell into the political issues here.
Expressionism, much like surrealism, uses dream-like images
to enhance the atmosphere. In Metropolis, Freder had a few hallucinations when
encountering stressful situations, and that gave the whole film a dream-like
feel, often a signature in many expressionistic films. In many silent films, a
dream-like atmosphere often reinforced the visual power of the resulting work.
From the expressionistic work like Wiene’s ‘Caligari’ and Murnau’s ‘Nosferatu’,
even to Buster Keaton’s ‘Sherlock Jr.’, aspects of the dream element were often
found. After all, it should not be too surprising that many pioneers of early
cinema have stressed the dream-like nature of cinema at the beginning of the
era.
It has been 90 years since the emergence of Lang’s nightmarish
vision of ‘Metropolis’. Its imaginative impact still continues to shock and
fascinate the later generations of film enthusiasts.
by Ed Law
8/9/2017
Film Analysis
