Metropolis (Fritz Lang)

1
Metropolis (Fritz Lang)

• A foundational text and image for many
  contemporary imaginations of the city
• Represents an urban dystopia stemming from a
  crisis in capitalist labour and class relations
• Set in 2026, in the city-corporation of
  Metropolis, with a dual society sllit between
  planners/thinkers (who live high above the earth
  in luxury), and workers who toll underground to
  sustain the privileged
• Fable illustrates class struggle and
  emancipation, female empowerment, power of
  technology (M-Machine, Heart Machine)
• Without the heart there can be no understanding
  between the hands and the mind
• Incredible and mind-boggingly expensive special
  effects (200 m in todays money)
• Pioneered the Art Deco style, skyscrapers,
  monorails, airships, CCTV!

2

• "I saw the buildings like a vertical curtain,
  opalescent, and very light. Filling the back of
  the stage, hanging from a sinister sky, in order
  to dazzle, to diffuse, to hypnotize (Fritz Lang)

3
Things to think about

• Society the film represents (economic inequality,
  relations of production, cultural features of the
  family and econom)
• Economic relations (who controlls production?
  capitalism
• Treatment of nature
• Political struggles