Year: 1927
Director: Fritz Lang
Country: Germany
Language: German
In the film, the city of Metropolis is home to a Utopian society where its wealthy residents live a carefree life. The futuristic city is sharply divided between the working class and the city planners, 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.
Anyone who knows the history of science-fiction films knows the story of Metropolis; much of the footage in the original version was cut and then lost for several decades. However, after 70+ years all the footage has been found and fully restored. Masters of Cinema has a stunning edition of the film. Visually exhilarating, its style and its bleak look of the world that director Fritz Lang created is entrancing. From it's large vast bright buildings, stylized sets, dark shadows and lights and dramatic camera angles the film feels like an eerie, beautiful nightmare
Metropolis employed large vast sets, and new groundbreaking special effects to create two worlds: the great city of Metropolis, with its beautiful artistic design of the expressways and skyscrapers in the sky, and the subterranean workers' city which included over 25,000 extras.Its themes and designs have been duplicated over and over, you can see some of its influence in Lucas' Star Wars. It's obviously a political film in nature; Marxist themes captivate the film. Strangely it was also a favourite film of Adolf Hitler, though I should point out that Lang absolutely hated the Nazi regime.
In conclusion, Metropolis is a wondrous, thought-provoking film. It is a timeless work of art which remains in the minds of anybody who is even remotely interested in film. To not have seen this film is to not have lived. Though the great H.G Wells called this "quite the silliest film," time has proved that he was wrong. Praise it! 5/5
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