Metropolis (1927): Fritz Lang’s Vision Of The Future

by Paul Batters

‘There can be no understanding between the hand and the head unless the heart acts as mediator’ Maria (Brigitte Helm)

Humans have sought answers to what lies ahead for millennia. The need to see into the future and plan for it is one reflected in countless cultures, in some cases so inherently that it can shape and become deeply embedded and entrenched in the values and beliefs within that society or culture. Our fascination of visions of the future emerges in film, art and literature. Whole genres, such as science-fiction, are centred on future worlds, making the fantastic real and the impossible believable. These stories, as visions of the future, fascinate as well as entertain us and filmmakers know there exists something deep in the human experience and psyche that has us tapping into the possibilities of the future, seeking answers that explain not only where we are headed but even answers to why we have arrived at where we are. 

Fritz Lang’s masterpiece Metropolis has a reputation which precedes it, and it has been long described as one of cinema’s most influential films. As K. Johnson outlines in his work Science Fiction Film: A Critical Introduction (2011), Metropolis is often ‘telescoped into the traditional, albeit brief canon’ of what are considered early science fiction films. Paul Meehan’s Tech Noir (2008) states that Lang created the ‘first tech-noir city of the future…’. Certainly, it has inspired several auteurs across styles and genres in shaping and capturing visions of the future, appropriating motifs and symbols, as well as investigating similar thematic concerns. Metropolis is certainly an important Modernist film and film historian David Golding has written at length on this as well. This article does not seek to make comment on the wisdom or lack thereof regarding this argument. Instead, it aims to looks at how Metropolis is a vision of the future, or at least uses a vision of the future to examine and comment on the divisions that exist in humanity and how they can be overcome. 

Lang’s vision of the future is one where the city is dominant. He presents the audience with a dystopia that delves into the ancient past as well to create his vision of a possible future. At first, the audience is dazzled by the sheer grandeur and spectacle of the city, in a future that looks incredible and unbelievable. But this grandeur reflected through a dazzling prism is only kept alive through the pulsing of the Heart Machine; represented by the driving camshafts and flywheels. Without this incredible technology, the city would collapse. Of course, the concept of a beating heart keeping the whole of the body alive becomes more than superficial imagery; it becomes Lang’s central thematic concern. 

The world of Metropolis is one of deep class division – of a small, ruling class whose power and privilege exists by maintaining the oppression and exploitation of the working masses. The famous opening scene of oppressed workers miserably walking in step to and from their long, punishing shifts like lifeless automatons is a bleak contrast to the playground where the sons of the ruling class play and enjoy their time with an array of women chosen for their pleasure. The disconnect is clear and the vision of a future where humans are but cogs in the machine will be reflected in later films such as Chaplin’s Modern Times. Yet the impacts of Futurism on Lang are also on display, with the sheer size, dynamism and opulence of the city dwarfing humanity. Like the ziggurats of Ur, the pyramids and temples of Egypt and the grandness of Rome, Metropolis is a city that dominates humanity. The master of Metropolis, Joh Fredersen (Alfred Abel), has reduced the masses to mechanical parts that can be used and discarded without concern; they are subjects to his whims and his designs. All that matters is that the city is sustained. Fredersen oversees his city, in the same way that pharaohs and kings ruled their people; from a distance. Whilst a Marxist interpretation of Metropolis would suggest the obvious, Lang goes further in his vision of the future. Likewise, the city plays a key motif in Modernism – whilst we are amazed and in awe of the sheer size of the city and its many dimensions, we are also appalled and repelled. 

Lang looks to examine the disconnect that exists between those who rule and those who are ruled, and the answer to bridging that chasm. Lang uses character to pursue that quest in the form of Fredersen’s son, Freder (Gustav Frohlich) who begins to discover what the workers and their families are enduring; challenging the status quo and questioning why this is so. His early meeting with Maria (Brigitte Helm) is a harbinger for what will follow, as they connect from that first moment. Freder senses there is something special about her, aided for the audience by Lang’s camera work, as well as foreshadowing that Maria will provide the answer to the question that Lang poses. Later, Freder has a vision of the great machine as the temple of Moloch devouring the people, feeding off their suffering and sustaining itself by consuming its own citizens. Freder’s sense of empathy and consciousness is further aroused after he witnesses a terrible explosion. The irony that Freder is a beneficiary of this oppressive and exploitive system is not lost on him, and that strong empathy becomes particularly heightened after he secretly trades places with an exhausted worker. Combined with his disgust at his father’s indifference to the workers’ suffering, Freder rebels and follows his own heart to a secret meeting of the workers where he again sees Maria. 

Of course, the very sense of ‘brotherhood’ and love that Maria espouses to her flock seems to be lost on not only the rulers of Metropolis but the workers as well. All that matters to the elite is the maintenance of the power they wield and enjoy, regardless of the cost to the masses. Likewise, the workers seem accepting of their position, albeit suffering in that oppressive state with little hope of change or succour. Yet there is an innate desire and hunger for hope and the workers come to listen to her message. Maria’s message provides hope for the workers but even more markedly the freedom she speaks of is for the rulers of the city as well. Instead of talking revolution and the overthrow of the system, Maria’s message is that all the inhabitants of Metropolis are ‘brothers’, only needing a mediator to bring them together. Frederson is also a prisoner of the disconnect. Despite the seeming impossibility of this message, it is enough to cause concern for the rulers of the city. 

This reviewer senses an almost Rousseauian dialectic running parallel to a Marxist interpretation of the film. The stark division between the powerful and those subject to that power, according to Lang, comes into existence when humans begin building cities and ‘civilisation’ begins to grow and flourish. Progress and modernisation certainly benefit some, who flourish and enjoy the fruits of civilisation, and find themselves subjecting their fellow humans to oppression and hard labour, in order to continue enjoying that power. Yet the price paid is a loss of morality along with a loss of the connection to nature and their fellow humans. The powerful irony is apparent in the opening scenes, where the audience first sees Freder in the miracle of the Eternal Gardens, a place of natural beauty which has been artificially constructed far from the cold and impersonal concrete and steel that the masses exist in. The distance from what should be natural is made clear by the dominance of the city. 

Of course, the physical city itself is one of the most important and powerful images in film and one which has shaped visions of the future from 1930s serials like Flash Gordon to Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner (1982). The imposing home of Fredersen is like a ziggurat from the ancient city of Ur and the surrounding skyscrapers and bridges are certainly inspired by the imagery of Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand’s ‘Manhatta’ (1921). As Meehan points out, Lang would also be inspired by his visit to the U.S and viewing the city of New York at night. The images of the city of Metropolis find an emotional response from the audience in awe and terror. However, it also exemplifies the deep detachment and savage impersonality of the city – particularly when the masses who serve the city live underneath it in terrible conditions. These experiences, of course, are not imaginary – they reflect the painful and traumatic reality of the Industrial Revolution of the 18^th to 19^th centuries where millions were uprooted from their agrarian lives to become the new working class in urban nightmares. Lang uses these images to make clear that this disconnect is as much a physical barrier as well as a socio-economic and psychological one. Despite the incredible technological advancements in the city, how can the masses overcome this servitude and slavery and find their liberation? Is this a future where humans are slaves to machines or one where humans use the machines to enslave fellow humans? It is a question ever pertinent to us as we navigate a world of AI, exponential technology, and questions about what this mean for the future.

Lang’s powerful message is that the heart must be the ‘mediator’ to bridge the chasm between both the ruled and ruler. Personified by Maria, she becomes the Messiah-like messenger and vessel for the workers’ liberation through love and peace not violence and revolution. Likewise, she makes clear to the workers that their rich rulers are their ‘brothers’. Freder’s love for Maria and belief in her message sees him declaring that he could be that mediator. Yet despite her tale of the Tower of Babel (again a foreshadowing of the change to come through a powerful Biblical allusion) the workers will not heed the importance of this tale when the time comes. There is a particularly interesting turn on the allusion of Babel, of course – with the fall of the Tower of Babel, leaving humanity divided by language and thus unable to communicate. Alternatively, Metropolis sees humanity divided and unable to communicate via the building of its own massive structures. K. Johnson’s points out that the city of Metropolis is one which ‘relegates humanity to a secondary attraction…’. Visually, the set design, models and optical illusions create a vision of the future that dazzles the audience and achieves that very relegation of humanity to secondary importance. Hence, Lang defines a vision of the future where humans do lose themselves and thus lose their connection to each other. Again, the great city is what matters. But its façade of splendour, greatness and futuristic grandeur hides an unpleasant underworld of teeming masses transformed by industrialisation into cogs of the machine. The imagery of the steam whistle and the giant clock symbolise order and control – both ordered by machines. Michael Wedel’s own reflections on Lang draw on Tom Gunning’s work on Lang’s film; both of which see a recurrent motif in Lang’s films of a ‘destiny machine’. Here, Lang’s cinematic world is determined by symbols such as a clock or hourglass which highlight that control over the characters and their narrative. In one scene, Freder disguises himself as a worker to take on the menial, mind-numbing and exhaustive task of moving hands around a dial of flashing lights and numbers. Freder is eventually driven to near madness, and it becomes an allegory of the mind-numbing enslavement and experiences of the masses in an urban world of mass production. The freedom of the masses to pursue their own dreams, goal and happiness is subservient to the needs of the city – instead their existence and very pulse of that existence is determined by the sheer mundanity of a clock. There is a supreme and non-natural abnormality in such an existence that Lang alludes to. 

Maria’s doppelganger will be the antithesis of love and bring a message of violence and annihilation, as well as overt sexuality, that will lead the city to its near destruction. Desperate to drive his son Freder away from Maria and back to where he belongs, Fredersen goes to Rotwang (Rudolf Klein-Rogge), an inventor whose appearance certainly has inspired the concept of the mad scientist. Rotwang shows his artificial creation – a robot like homunculus that will be given Maria’s likeness and destroy Maria’s influence on the workers. However, Rotwang has other plans that will go much further. His aim is to see the city destroyed and Fredersen along with it. Herein lies the irony; the near downfall and bringer of violence and hate is not a man possessed by evil, but a robot shaped by a man. Indeed, the robot created by Rotwang is not simply a technological achievement commensurate with the age; it is animated by sorcery and the dark arts from a distant past. Rotwang’s strange, old-twisted house is alien to the titanic skyscrapers of Metropolis. The five-pointed star hints at Rotwang’s use of satanic powers and a desire for destruction. The Medieval house of Rotwang, the ancient catacombs and even the ‘coming to life’ sequences of the Seven Deadly Sins in the old cathedral suggests that the answers to the struggles of humanity lie as much in the past as they do in this vision of the future. Additionally, the robot now transformed into the ‘evil’ Maria taps into the darker side of humanity, evoking lust and violence in men. The infamous erotic dance scene in the men’s club taps with leering and panting men certainly seems ridiculous by today’s standards and taps into the age-old sexist notion that female sexuality is dangerous, with men falling victim to these proto-femme fatales. Eventually, the ‘evil’ Maria will attempt far worse (whilst the real Maria is kept prisoner) and encourage violence and further division. 

Tom Gunning’s outstanding book on Lang’s films certainly sees Metropolis as an allegory of the future; one which sees the ‘triumph of the machine’. This is certainly reflected in Freder’s vision of the machines as Moloch, the reduction of the workers into robotic automatons that are slaves to the machines and of course the iconic robot that transforms into the ‘evil’ Maria. However, Gunning provides a powerful insight into Lang’s vision of the future via his use of the story of Babel. One of the oldest tropes of the human story was shaped with the emergence of the city-state in ancient times – the workers are the hands, and the rulers are the brains of the city. The great rulers and builders of these cities believe in their ‘noble cause’ but lose themselves in this cause, and thus also lose connection and empathy with those doing the building. Likewise, those whose labour are used to build the city do not know or understand what the rulers are trying to do; all they know is the pain and suffering of their experience. Writer Dietrich Neumann likewise sees Lang’s city ‘a complex and compelling metaphor…as a being, whose individual but interdependent spaces – the skyscrapers, machine halls, and catacombs – fulfilled a body’s function as its heart, hands, and mind’. The near collapse of the city is due to the terrible truth of the very disconnect which keeps it alive – the exploitation of the masses. Thus, the disconnect – one which is more amplified than ever in Lang’s vision of the future. 

Of course, one of the oft repeated retrospective discussions about films which depict visions of the future is whether they got any of it right. Likewise, defining such films as Metropolis as ‘warnings about the future’ fall into the same category for this reviewer. Whilst this may be interesting at one level, too great a focus on this will mean we can miss the point of the film. As a vision of the future, Metropolis is also fascinating as a revelation of what perceptions of the future were at that time that may still ring true today. The Germany of the 1920s was a nation in a state of flux. It was trying to get off its knees after the defeat of WW 1 and dealing with its impacts, cradling a new-born democracy whilst the forces of the extremes of the political spectrum wanted to see it killed and seeking an identity in these new conditions. It was also a time when Lang and other German (and European directors) were at the forefront of cinema, creating new ways of storytelling on film. As Gunning states, one of the big discussions in Weimar Germany and in Europe as well was the nature of technology, its impact on humans and the connection to political power. Yet it was a fascinating time as well, with the flourishing of culture and new ideas. The huge growth in the American city in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, exemplified by cities like New York (far more modern than their European counterpart) is obvious in the glass and steel of the buildings in Metropolis. Likewise, New York also had teeming masses working in large factories and living in slums whilst the rich and powerful enjoyed the fruits of their success. What Lang would comment on was the alienation and disconnect that humans suffered in these great cities; a key concern in Modernism and one to be found in Metropolis. Richard Murphy in Modernism and The Cinema(2007) points out that these ideas are significantly present in Weimar cinema and German Expressionism, reflecting instability and uncertainty that existed in the inter-war period. (Incidentally, it was also a key motif and theme to be found in film noir, where Lang would also make his mark). It was in these conditions that Lang examined his concerns about humanity itself, not whether we’ll be traveling by planes around skyscrapers or whether the masses will be living in a subterranean hell. Ultimately, Lang also investigates our past to create his vision of the future. As this article has discussed, our perceptions of the future are linked to visions of the past and the depths and parameters of the human experience that link that past to the future. For Lang, despite the overtones of a Marxist dialectic that sees history as conflict, there is the hope for the bridging of distance within humanity through the power of the heart.  

This article is written for Futurethon Blog event run by Gil at RealWeegieMidget Reviews and Barry at Cinema Catharsis. Please make sure to visit the link and read some other wonderful articles on films that depict visions of the future. A huge thank you to both for the opportunity to take part!

Paul Batters teaches secondary school History in the Illawarra region and also lectures at the University Of Wollongong. In a previous life, he was involved in community radio and independent publications. Looking to a career in writing, Paul also has a passion for film history.