Metropolis (1927) movie review

Metropolis (1927)

The Mediator between the hands and head must be the heart.

36,000 extras, 200,000 costumes, 1,100 shaved heads, 500-600 70 story skyscrapers (miniature of course), costing 5,000,000 Reichsmark and taking just over a year to shoot, Metropolis was the most expensive film made by Ufa yet it only made 75,000 Reichsmark at the box office.  Soon after its release the film got butchered and its runtime was reduced from a reported 153min to only 90min.  The remainder of the film was considered lost forever until a discovery of a 16mm (as opposed to the normal 35mm) version of the film was made in 2008 in Buenos Aires.  We now have a near complete version of the movie coming in at 150min, just 3min short of its original runtime.

Currently (May 2016), I only own five silent movies (Metropolis, Hitchcock’s The Lodger, Wings and Battleship Potemkin), two of which were given to me but I would most likely have purchased them anyway.  I will review Wings at a later time however both it and Metropolis were done in 1927, one was American and the other German and both, in a way, ahead of their time.

If you have seen the 1982 classic Blade Runner starting Harrison Ford you will clearly see that it got inspiration of the futuristic city from Metropolis.

Then there is the futuristic city in the Luc Besson movie The Fifth Element, notice the similarities?

And before you ask, yes, the miniature cars and trains within the miniature city move in the 1927 movie.  It’s those things that really make this movie stand out even more and it’s no wonder that even modern movies looked to it for inspiration.

Fritz Lang (well known for various classics such as the five hour Die Nibelungen, M and his Hollywood hits Scarlet Street and The Big Heat), who fled Germany just as the Nazi’s were coming to power, directed the film.  As talking movies were not yet a reality, the film used German Intertitles (a screen which gives the audience some explanation as to what is happening or what is being said) which is translated into English via subtitles.  Whilst there is a soundtrack (newly composed from the original score) there is no sound effects so it’s probably not as easy to watch for the average Joe.  That aside it is quite a good movie that tells the story of conflict between two classes of people, forbidden love and the two lead characters desire to find a way to bring these two classes together via a mediator.  It brings in various ideas from the Bible such as Tower of Babylon, Babylon the Great and how a certain evil individual in the film (no spoilers here but certain shapes/images clearly depict evil, hence the quotes from the Book of Revelation in the Bible) deceives the people to no longer wait for this mediator and begin taking matters into their own hands through the destruction of what has been made.  

It’s a very well thought out movie and when you take into account that no words are literally spoken it is a very complex story.  Also considering when it was made (keep thinking 1927 not 1967), it is an astounding film from both a movie and technical point of view.  Is it worth seeing?  I would say yes cause it’s what you would call a masterpiece in film making.  For the person who isn’t really into older movies or interested in its history then maybe catch a segment of the movie on youtube.  Sure it won’t be as good in the looks or sound department, but it will give you an idea.  

As a side note, looking at the image above its not hard to see a similarity with C3PO from Star Wars.  So that’s just another way in which this film inspired upcoming films.

The DVD used for the review is the Eureka Masters of Cinema edition DVD.  You can get the Bluray edition from the same maker at Amazon in the UK for a good price.  Australia also has a two disc DVD release of the film which you can get from JB Hifi for under $15.  The DVD/Bluray from Eureka and the Australian DVD release by Madman essentially have the same features (good on ya Madman!).  Its also important to note that the new found footage was badly damaged as can be seen below but the rest of the film is very good, so don’t get too surprised when watching it.

This is bit of a longer review but as I have stated the movie is quite amazing for its time and so much work was done to make it.  In regard to rating the movie, the technical aspects must also be taken into account and for Image quality we need to remember here that this is a 1927 movie so we cannot expect 2012 clarity, so when I give an image quality review its taking into consideration how it is transferred to DVD/Bluray and the attempts to restore it.  So as a movie it gains 4 ferrets cause it is a very interesting movie to watch and as previously stated, way ahead of its time.  The image quality is tough cause I really doubt it could get better unless they found a full print of the film on 35mm in better condition, however even taking into account the 16mm footage which is quite damaged, the restoration and transfer is in fact really good so it also gets 4 ferrets.  The DVD itself gets a 5 ferrets cause of the wealth of extras included.

So overall its certainly worth seeing particularly if you like the history of movies, though keep in mind that this is not Lord of the Rings but a silent classic that partly formed much of what sci-fi films would come to be.  This film stood out for me especially from a technical point of view.

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