Metropolis (1927)

Originally posted to Facebook on 12/12/2017

We skipped ahead with this film, seeing 1927's Metropolis a week after seeing our first film from 1925, because it happened to be showing on the big screen at the Alamo. Unlike the only previous silent film we'd seen in a theater (1928's Speedy), there was no live band, only a pre-recorded score.

Like last week's Battleship Potemkin, this film had been on my radar to see for half-a-lifetime -- and in this case it appears that it was actually a lucky thing that I held off, because, due to successive discoveries of old prints, only in the last decade has it been available in anything near its originally released length of two and a half hours.

I should say at the outset that it is immediately obvious why this is considered a classic. All four of the previous Lang / Harbou films we've seen have been innovative and imaginative in some fashion, but this one most strongly combines ambition and focus.

The plot pits those who dwell above ground against a working class living below ground. It seems as though some aspects of this might have been inspired by Wells' Time Machine, though the analogy is not exact. The protagonist, played by Gustav Fröhlich, is the city leader's son, and during the movie he gradually comes to understand the foundation of his and his father's position. Without giving away too much, he encounters a saintly spiritual leader of the underground workers, played by Brigitte Helm, an insane scientist played by Rudolf Klein-Rogge, and an evil robot that Klein-Rogge creates, which is given Helm's appearance.

I think I've used the phrase feverish to describe a number of silent films -- and I think that is indeed one of the few advantages the best silent films have over their sound counterparts -- the focused emotional intensity that can sometimes be invoked by music and images uninterrupted by dialog. In Metropolis that is played out in a literal fever dream that Fröhlich has midway through the film, which mixes a montage of actual plot events with fantastical images, including statues of the seven deadly sins coming to life. After this sequence, I whispered to Alli, "Now the crazy part begins." She laughed (or pretended to), but it is a testament to the film that there were indeed impressive and iconic set pieces yet to come.

One could nitpick individual scenes and choices, but there are only two things that I think are worth singling out. First, the tentative and muddled politics. The main thematic driver of the film is the separation between the working and managerial classes, which would, one would think, tilt it towards a Marxist viewpoint. But, if so, it lacks the courage of its convictions, and is as unlikely to please Marxists as capitalists, because, while it singles out class struggle as the city's key flaw, it suggests no need for any great structural changes -- but instead that there be -- somehow -- a bond of affection between the two classes. I would have preferred either less overt politics or politics I oppose rather than this kind of weak tea. The second flaw, is, I think, in the male lead. Fröhlich is not actively bad, but is a little muted and not quite charismatic enough to carry the film, and suffers by comparison to Helm and Klein-Rogge. We have of course seen Klein-Rogge's charisma in several films now, and Helm -- while she occasionally overplays the counterpoint between her dual roles -- is at least always interesting.

Next week we return to 1925, our second film from that year being The Big Parade, the WWI drama starring John Gilbert. The link, as always is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT