Metropolis (1927)

 "The mediator between brain and hands must be the heart..."

I've been resisting watching the fully restored print of this film for some time. Not because I wasn't keen to see it, but because, well, when you're choosing which film to watch, the one with the three hour run time might, in the moment, seem off-puttingly long. But I've seen it now, and my mind is reeling. The film is, in some ways, not one might expect from a science fiction classic, but its aesthetics and its themes are very much of the Weimar Republic, after hyperinflation but before the Wall Street Crash.

One thing must be addressed, though: the writer, Thea von Harbou, would later co-operate with the Nazis, whereas Fritz Lang would divorce her, leave Germany, taking his magnificent monocle with him. I don't think this can be said to taint the film at all, quite frankly. Von Harbou's Nazi ties can be seen as quite passive, she had an Indian husband... and no one in 1927 could have known what was to come, Hitler being seen as a bit of a Farage figure. But... yeah, let's be a bit more wary of those Farageists, shall we?

The look of the film is incredible. One could make the obvious observation that this is Fritz Lang doing German Expressionist cinema, but this 1927 vision of the future is fascinating. An age of Modernism, a future Metropolis that looks VERY Le Corbusier. And the plot revolves entirely around the extremities of social class. Realism is nowhere to be seen. Acting is deliberately expressive, and characters are vehicles for the film's ideas rather than three dimensional people- said as observation, not criticism. It's just that sort of film.

Hence the shuffling misery of the underclass being quite obviously choreographed, and the exaggerated leisure pursuits of the wealthy young men. The work, which we see Freder voluntarily undertake for a shift, reminding me of the myth of Sisyphus. The long, lingering visual shots which are what makes this fairly simple film, in which relatively little happens, so very long. Yet it doesn't drag: the visuals are the point.

There is religious imagery here aplenty- the Tower of Babel, apocalyptic stuff from the Book of Revelation, but this is really there to serve what is very much a political rather than religious subtext: the immense gap between rich and poor, the intense inequality. As Freder says to his father early on, there is a risk of revolution, and this in a Germany where Bavaria had relatively recently erupted into Communist revolt. Yet, in the frightening violence of the mob, we also see the potential horrors of populism, of Fascism.

The film is a triumph of visual cinema, but also a fascinating political artifact of its time, eschewing realism for a type of satire that almost reminds me of Voltaire's Candide or Zadig. Not one for the casual viewer, but a true cinematic masterpiece.