Turning Man Into Machine
In this photo from the set of Fritz Lang’s
Metropolis, colorized by Steve Foster, Brigitte Helm, who plays the role of Maria in the film, is being made up as the Machinemensch. To create the character, the sculptor Walter Schulze-Mittendorff created a whole body cast and constructed the costume around it. The costume was made of “plastic wood” which was pliable enough to look metallic but allow for some free movement. It wasn’t a comfortable costume though, and Helm did sustain some cuts and bruises; although it did allow some movement, it was still rigid. As Helm recalled in an interview: “Once I even fainted: during the transformation scene, Maria, as the android, is clamped in a kind of wooden armament, and because the shot took so long, I didn't get enough air."
Source: (Colorized by Steve Foster).
This was just one of the early special effects in the film, one of the first feature length science fiction movies. It was made in Germany in 1927. Eugen Schüfftan created miniatures of the city, used a camera on a swing, and utilized a method named after him, the Schüfftan process, which used mirrors to make it seem that actors are in miniature sets; it was used in Alfred Hitchcock’s film
Blackmail (1929), two years later. Filming
Metropolis took 17 months to complete and cost more than five million Reichsmarks.
The Problems With Industrialism
The film, which was based on a novel by Thea von Harbou, Lang’s then wife, was also inspired in part by Lang’s first vision of New York, as well as the culture of the Weimar Republic, industrialism and mass production. Metropolis is set in the future in an urban dystopia, a million-acre city called Metropolis. The society is divided between the industrialists, businessmen, and top employees who are in the 50-1,000 story skyscrapers, and the workers, who are underground, operating the machines which power the city. The city’s master, Joh Fredersen, has a son, Freder, who spends his time at sports and in a pleasure garden. His leisurely life is disrupted by Maria. Maria has taken worker’s children on a field trip to see the lives of the other, wealthy half. Freder, taken by her, decides to find her in the lower levels; while there, he witnesses a machine explosion that injures and kills many workers. This triggers a hallucination, in which the machine is a temple of Moloch, feeding on the workers. Freder reports the explosion to his father, who is angry because his assistant, Josaphat, did not tell him of the explosion. Eventually, Fredersen fires Josaphat.
Change Inspired By Love
Brigitte Helm, before her transformation. Source: (IMDb).
Freder, meanwhile, is angry with his father for his father’s indifference over the treatment of the workers, so he teams up with Josaphat, and trades places with a worker named Georgy and remains down below so that he can be with Maria. Down in the catacombs, Maria begins to prophesy the arrival of a mediator who will bring the workers and the ruling class together. Fredersen has been spying on this meeting with the inventor Rotwang, who had invented a robot to ‘resurrect’ the dead love of his life, Hel. Fredersen then orders Rotwang to give the robot Maria’s likeness, undermining the rebellion by destroying her reputation. Rotwang has other plans in mind though, as he plots to use the robot to kill Freder and take over Metropolis. The silent film ended with the final inter-title to incapsulate its message: "The Mediator Between the Head and the Hands Must Be the Heart.”re
The Initial Reception
Metropolis was released to mixed reviews. Many praised it for its visual beauty; the art direction was influenced by opera, Bauhaus, Cubism, Art Deco, and Futurism as well as Gothic architecture, which is visible in the catacombs, the cathedral and Rotwang’s house. Critics also praised its special effects, but they criticized the story line, with Claude Mordaunt Hall of
The New York Times calling it a "technical marvel with feet of clay.” H.G. Wells panned the plotline, calling the film “silly” and others saying it was “trite.” They also criticized the message of the film, which was allegedly Communist, calling the politics “ludicrously simplistic.” Oliver Claxton wrote in
The New Yorker that the plot as “soulless as the city of its tale,” and that the acting was "uninspired with the exception of Brigitte Helm." Interestingly, the film’s message of social justice impressed Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.
Changing Perception Of A Classic
With a running time of 153 minutes, the film was also criticized for its length, and after its German premier, it was cut substantially. Since the 1970s, attempts to restore the film have resulted in a film that has been 95% restored. It is now regarded as one of the most influential films ever made, with critics like Roger Ebert noting it as one of the “great achievements of the silent era.” In 2001, it became the first film to be inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register.
The photo at the top of this story was colorized by Steve Foster; you can see more of his work at his Flickr page.