Space Oddities: Metropolis

                                     

                                       

                                                                             (fig.1)

This review will be looking at Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" (1927). The Germany expressionist film marks the beginning of the science-fiction genre in film. As well as that though "Metropolis" also has sub-genre within it too such as; horror, romance and disaster. The film is also meant to be social commentary of Germany at the time and elements of that can still be found in society today.

The film shows a few themes that are still relevant in society today those are; the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, religion as an escape from difficult times and the portrayal of woman. The most obvious one of the three listed is the class divide in the film, where the working class aren't just separated by economic means but also they have their own city that is under the metropolis.

(fig. 2)

Linking to the the theme of using religion as a means to escape hard times, there is a scene in the film where all the workers gather in an underground cave that also looked like a church that had huge crosses in the background. Malinowski (1954) studied how in stressful times religion provides psychological stability, which seems to be what the workers are doing by gathering to listen to Maria preach. She talks about a mediator, which gives the workers hope that the mediator will appear and change the class divide.

                                                                                (fig.3)

Also, the portrayal of woman in the film or more specifically Maria. At the beginning of the film Maria is portrayed as a saint to all the workers as she gives them hope and then later on the worker can't distinguish the real Maria from the machine one, which is understandable since they look identical. However, it's the fact that once the workers realise they left their children they blamed Maria, which is also understandable but they do not take any responsibility themselves. Obviously, the evil version of Maria was at fault but it seemed that the workers didn't think for themselves or take any responsibility. This can be linked to the idea that "women are takers of shit" (Ansley 1972), which is how the scene felt when all the workers were chasing Maria to take their frustration out on her.

As well as the social commentary, the film has amazing special effects and set design for the time. Only 7 years apart from Des Cabinet Das Dr Caligari (1920) and the progression in set design and special effects is very clear. The film has a few iconic scenes that demonstrate this well, that being; the flood scene, the transformation scene, and the scene where the worker causes an explosion and the machine temporarily turns into a monster. These are prominent scene that are memorable to most viewers, "The models of the city's towering skyscrapers are also surprisingly convincing for a 1920s film [...] special effects, Lang's visuals are all consistently inventive" (Jones 2005). These scenes contain well detailed miniatures, multiple exposures for the transformation and the models used to create a real life city feel. 

Bibliography:   

Malinowski (1954) - https://www.slideshare.net/lil-slide-share/functionalist-theories-of-religion
Ansley (1972) - https://www.slideshare.net/guest0e466c/sociologists
Jones (2005) - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0017136/reviews?ref_=tt_urv

Illustration: 

Figure 1 - http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/Metropolis
Figure 2 - https://laurenwinter.co/blog/urenwinter.co/2012/01/metropolis.html
Figure 3 - https://www.thinglink.com/scene/446806896448372737