About Metropolis (1927)
The story behind the film
Metropolis is the most ambitious production of Germany's silent era. Director Fritz Lang and writer Thea von Harbou, who were married at the time, built the story from von Harbou's novel of the same name. Producer Erich Pommer made it at the UFA studios in Babelsberg near Berlin, where filming ran for about 17 months across 1925 and 1926. The budget ballooned to more than five million Reichsmarks, making it one of the most expensive films made up to that time.
The story is set in a vast future city split in two: a gleaming upper world of skyscrapers and pleasure gardens for the rich, and an underground city where workers run the machines that keep it all going. Freder, the son of the city's master, Joh Fredersen, falls for Maria, a young woman who preaches patience and hope to the workers. Fredersen and the inventor Rotwang build a robot in Maria's image to turn the workers against her — with catastrophic results.
Cast & crew
- Directed by Fritz Lang; written by Thea von Harbou with Lang
- Brigitte Helm as Maria and as the robot double (the Maschinenmensch)
- Gustav Fröhlich as Freder
- Alfred Abel as Joh Fredersen
- Rudolf Klein-Rogge as Rotwang, the inventor
- Effects by Eugen Schüfftan; art direction by Otto Hunte, Erich Kettelhut and Karl Vollbrecht
Why it's worth watching
Almost every science-fiction city you have ever seen on screen owes something to Metropolis. The towering skyscrapers linked by bridges, the aircraft weaving between buildings, the robot brought to life in a laboratory crackling with electrical rings — these images were new in 1927 and have been borrowed ever since. Effects pioneer Eugen Schüfftan used mirrors to place live actors into miniature sets (the "Schüfftan process"), and the result still looks impressive.
Critics at the time complained the story was naive, and its message — summed up in the final title card, "The Mediator Between the Head and the Hands Must Be the Heart" — is certainly simple. But as a piece of visual design, Metropolis is in a class of its own, and Brigitte Helm's double performance as the gentle Maria and her wild robot copy is remarkable.
Fun facts
- The robot costume was built by sculptor Walter Schulze-Mittendorff using a full-body cast of Brigitte Helm.
- The film was cut heavily after its Berlin premiere, and for decades about a quarter of it was thought lost. A battered 16mm print of something close to the original cut turned up in Buenos Aires in 2008, and a restoration premiered in 2010.
- In 2001 Metropolis became the first film inscribed on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register.
- In 1984 producer Giorgio Moroder released a shortened, tinted version with a rock and pop soundtrack.
Public-domain status
Metropolis was published in 1927; its US copyright expired on January 1, 2023, and the film is now in the public domain in the United States. Newer restorations may include separately protected music or translated title cards — see "Rights & source" below for the copy we broadcast.