Metropolis (1927 film)

Metropolis is a 1927 German expressionist film set in a futuristic city sharply divided between the working class and the city planners, in which the son of the city's mastermind falls in love with a working class prophet who predicts the coming of a savior to mediate their differences. It is regarded as a pioneering work of the science-fiction genre in movies, being among the first movies of the genre.
 * Directed by Fritz Lang. Written by Thea von Harbou and Fritz Lang.

There can be no understanding between the hands and the brain unless the heart acts as mediator.

Maria

 * There can be no understanding between the hand and the head unless the heart acts as mediator.
 * "We shall build a tower that will reach to the stars!" Having conceived Babel, yet unable to build it themselves, they had thousands to build it for them. But those who toiled knew nothing of the dreams of those who planned. And the minds that planned the Tower of Babel cared nothing for the workers who built it. The hymns of praise of the few became the curses of the many - BABEL! BABEL! BABEL! - Between the mind that plans and the hands that build there must be a Mediator, and this must be the heart.

Other

 * Man at Nightclub: For her, all seven deadly sins!
 * The Machine Man: DEATH TO THE MACHINES!

Dialogue

 * Freder: Your magnificent city, Father - and you the brain of this city - and all of us in the city's light...And where are the people, Father, whose hands built your city--?
 * Joh Fredersen: Where they belong...
 * Freder: In the depths...? What if one day, those in the depths rise up against you?

About Metropolis (1927 film)

 * Berlin boasted the biggest film industry in Europe, producing in Fritz Lang's Metropolis the science-fiction masterpiece of the twenties and in the same director's M the definitive film noir.
 * Niall Ferguson, The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West (2006), p.  235


 * The main thesis was Mrs. Von Harbou's, but I am at least 50 percent responsible because I did it. I was not so politically minded in those days as I am now. You cannot make a social-conscious picture in which you say that the intermediary between the hand and the brain is the heart. I mean, that's a fairy tale – definitely. But I was very interested in machines. Anyway, I didn't like the picture – thought it was silly and stupid – then, when I saw the astronauts: what else are they but part of a machine? It's very hard to talk about pictures—should I say now that I like Metropolis because something I have seen in my imagination comes true, when I detested it after it was finished?
 * Fritz Lang, interview with Peter Bogdanovich, in Who The Devil Made It: Conversations with Legendary Film Directors, published in 1998

Cast

 * Gustav Fröhlich - Freder
 * Brigitte Helm - Maria and her robot double
 * Alfred Abel - Joh Fredersen
 * Rudolf Klein-Rogge - Rotwang
 * Heinrich George - Grot
 * Fritz Rasp - The Thin Man
 * Theodor Loos - Josaphat
 * Erwin Biswanger - Georgy (or 11811)
 * Heinrich Gotho - Master of Ceremonies in Pleasure Gardens