Movie 197/1001 ~ Metropolis

Filmed in 1926 by Fritz Lang, Metropolis is a silent science fiction film heavily influenced by German Expressionism. Set in the year 2026 in a metropolis, it is the tale of class structure. It is about the thinkers and planners who live high in the sky and the lowly working class who labour far below the Earth's surface. But the head and the hands need to be mediated by the heart, or so says the movie, and our hero is ready to try and join the two classes together in harmony. The film is over two hours, which is fairly long for a silent film. The DVD version is available with its original orchestral scoring, which is certainly neat. I for one was very impressed to hear the Dies Irae in the gloomy parts, which is the old Latin tune for the Day of the Dead. But I digress. A full quarter of the film is lost forever due to laziness and bad storage. The actual film was three and a half hours long. I don't know what that version was like, but I found this shorter version reasonably compelling. The visuals were well constructed, but it is never going to be a real attention grabber for the average viewer. I found myself actually pleasantly surprised; I found it more interesting than other German Expressionist films that I had seen in the past. That being said, most of you will hate this movie.

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