Metropolis

[Rusty Shackleford]

:cursing:Just finished the film and it seems to have some very dubious tones.
i walked into this not knowing what to expect. here is the theme of the film
There can be no understanding between the hand and the brain unless the heart acts as mediator.
my translation: "There can be no peace between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie unless the state acts as mediator."

let me explain what is dubious
the whole story is in a society where class antagonisms are fully matured and there is an absolute distinction between the working class and the capitalist class. there is a lot of pressure building up. tensions are obvious. the character Maria speaks (to the workers) of mediating between the two groups to bring about peace and to end the conflict. The head honcho of this society, John, sends a fake Maria to incite rebellion to legitimize force against the workers. At first, what the robot was saying sounded decent(i mean really, talking about actually taking action and overthrowing the rulers) but then leads to a sort of luddite style rampage that fucks the workers over. it is a seemingly "communistic"(the word is never dropped) rebellion which leads to despair and leads both the workers and the owners to come together through Joseph(John's son).

Joseph is the son of John, the head honcho of Metropolis. Joseph goes down to the workers city and works with his brothers. He then becomes the symbolic mediator between the workers and the owners. Also during all of this, Joseph manages to save the workers' children from dying in the flood that the workers cause in their luddite style rampage. Obviously because Joseph is the son of John, the has a disposition towards the rulers but attempts to help the workers though he himself is not a worker.

Joseph = The State
John = The bourgeoisie
the Workers = The proletariat

most of you are intelligent to figure out what im getting at. if you think im wrong then lets discuss it.

[Sasha]

i think your reading too hard and too much between the lines.

anyway, everseen the anime "remake" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolis_%28anime%29), it has an strong emphatis on class strugle and rebelion.
its very nice.

[Kléber]

The OP is right. That is exactly the point of the head/heart/hands metaphor. The revolt in the movie is more or less a direct allegory to the Spartacist Uprising of 1919. Although in Metropolis, the working class isn't defeated, it takes over and is then too stupid to figure out how to run things and asks the bourgeoisie to come back.. lol. In that regard, it's closer to what happened in Russia :(

But yeah, in case you didn't know, Metropolis was.. DUN DUN DUN... Hitler's favorite movie! Fascism is, after all, a sort of corporate social-contract ideology where the different social classes are viewed as necessary parts of a national whole, who must cease bickering and come together under the guidance of a fascist party.

Note that the director, Fritz Lang, despite his anti-Communism and Hitler's love for his film, wanted nothing to do with the Nazis and fled the country after they took power.

The anime version is interesting, although it paints the revolutionaries in a bad light as well. They're robot-smashing Luddites, and their revolt is secretly co-opted by one of the evil fascist dudes. Was the second, robot uprising supposed to be fascism? The version I watched had horrible subtitles ("ziggurat" was translated as "zergulate," something that distracted my attention pondering about its meaning for the whole movie) so maybe I need to watch it with better subs and I'll understand it..

[RED DAVE]

Note that the director, Fritz Lang, despite his anti-Communism and Hitler's love for his film, wanted nothing to do with the Nazis and fled the country after they took power.But his wife, and the author of the novel on which the film was based, became a nazi.

There is a terrific book, [u]From Caligari to Hitler[/i] about the German film industry during the 1920s and 30s. It discusses Metropolis extensively. It's a free download at the link below.

http://www.archive.org/details/fromcaligaritohi013829mbp

RED DAVE

[RED DAVE]

Note that the director, Fritz Lang, despite his anti-Communism and Hitler's love for his film, wanted nothing to do with the Nazis and fled the country after they took power.But his wife, Thea von Harbou, the author of the novel on which the film was based, became a nazi.

There is a terrific book, From Caligari to Hitler about the German film industry during the 1920s and 30s. It discusses Metropolis extensively. It's a free download at the link below.

http://www.archive.org/details/fromcaligaritohi013829mbp

RED DAVE

[x359594]

...in case you didn't know, Metropolis was.. DUN DUN DUN... Hitler's favorite movie!...

I suspect that this may be apocryphal. Die Nibelungen (1924) also directed by Lang was said to be Hitler's favorite movie too.

Lang's last movie before he fled Germany Das Testament Des Dr. Mabuse (1933) was an allegory of Nazism, banned by Goebbels. A more explicit anti-Nazi movie Lang was developing, Die Mörder sind unter uns, was never produced.

[Revy]

I also watched the film Metropolis recently. I was going to post a thread on it but wasn't sure how to formulate my thoughts.

I thought a lot of the film showed the ruthlessness of the capitalists. I think it was when you near the end that you see the lack of any kind of revolutionary perspective. peace is made between the workers and Frederson (the ruler of Metropolis). well, what happens next? Do the workers go back to their squalor or do the workers gain equality? Either way, one side is going to have to agree with one another's point of view. unless a social democratic compromise is put forth.


Although in Metropolis, the working class isn't defeated, it takes over and is then too stupid to figure out how to run things and asks the bourgeoisie to come back.. lol.But the revolt isn't a genuine revolution. It's a plot created by Frederson (the ruler of Metropolis) in order to cause the workers to flood their own city. It's incited by a robotic imposter of Maria. The real Maria can be considered the workers' leader. But then we learn that all Maria wanted all along was peace. That she was a pacifist. So it's not surprising the ending is when the worker guy and Frederson shake hands like everything's fine now.

[Rusty Shackleford]

i dont really think i was looking between the lines.

the call for a mediator (which ends up being an extension of the ruling class via john) between the workers and the ruling class is glaringly obvious in its almost fascistic attempt to manage peace. had i known it was hitler's favorite(or one of his favorite) films i would have dropped the f bomb in the first post. during the whole movie the workers are used as tools. the peace is even decided by a representative of the workers who they actually tried to kill that very same day.


I thought a lot of the film showed the ruthlessness of the capitalists.

it does just that. and amazingly after all of the bad light that was shown on the rulers they end up with the same power they had before, the workers even asked for it!

im also playing with the idea that this may be representative of the mindset of the german working class(not all of it of course) before 1933. Maybe this shows one of the reasons why the NSDAP won.

i will admit the cinematography was pretty good though.

[Kléber]

But the revolt isn't a genuine revolution. It's a plot created by Frederson (the ruler of Metropolis) in order to cause the workers to flood their own city.
Indeed. In fascist discourse a real revolution is impossible because the feuding classes constitute a corporate "body" that can't function without each other. Maybe Federson represents the international Jewish conspiracy in this regard.


It's incited by a robotic imposter of Maria. The real Maria can be considered the workers' leader. But then we learn that all Maria wanted all along was peace. That she was a pacifist.
Robotic Maria = Rosa Luxemburg after she moved on from the "stinking corpse" of social-democracy? :P

It's a damn shame that the "racy" scenes where the robot spy goes to the red light district were shelved during the Weimar years and presumed destroyed/lost :(


it does just that. and amazingly after all of the bad light that was shown on the rulers they end up with the same power they had before, the workers even asked for it!
Yes, the movie wasn't that convincing in that regard. The oppression of the workers seems too systemic to be the work of a few bad apples. If the movie were made today, they would go into gory detail with torture and executions by the "opposite extreme" of workers' power and red terror.

It is true though that the fascist movements in Germany and Italy were only possible because the enemy had, indeed, won over a portion of the workers who "asked for" an end to the social crisis by any means, even reaction.


im also playing with the idea that this may be representative of the mindset of the german working class(not all of it of course) before 1933. Maybe this shows one of the reasons why the NSDAP won.
The movie was made before the tumult following 1929, when the street battles between the Socialist and Communist paramilitaries (Iron Front (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Front) and Red Front (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotfrontk%C3%A4mpferbund), both of whom equated each other to fascism) really demoralized the working class and paved the way for the Nazis' rise to power. The revisionist Second International and Third International can be equally blamed for refusing to cooperate with each other.

Shameless Trotsky plug:
The Destruction of the German Left (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/germany/index.htm)
Fascism: What It Is and How to Fight It (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1944/1944-fas.htm)

[Dimentio]

Hitler's favourite movie was King Kong. If Hitler liked Metropolis, I'm sure it would have been because of the amazing special effects and not because the content. Hitler was not a person who judged a film after its ideological content, but rather after how "cool" it was. Neither was Hitler conciously leading his movement to please the German capitalists but rather to do exactly what he claimed he wanted to do.

The guy was not completely sane. In some aspects, he was more or less a child.

[Das war einmal]

Its true that Metropolis had a corporatist/fascist theme. Thats indeed because the directors' wife was a nazi supporter and she also wrote a part of the plot.

Nevertheless I like the movie, it was shown last week on Arte, the german art tv station, with live symphonic orchestra in Berlin. It has a really good atmosphere.

[x359594]

...It's a damn shame that the "racy" scenes where the robot spy goes to the red light district were shelved during the Weimar years and presumed destroyed/lost :(...

"A complete version of Fritz Lang’s silent film classic Metropolis was discovered in Argentina in June. Long believed lost in its complete form, the 1927 masterpiece has until now only been available in heavily truncated versions.

"Discovered in the archives of Buenos Aires’ Museo del Cine, the rare find was shown to researchers at the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation in Germany, which owns the rights to Metropolis, who then declared it authentic. Though badly scratched in its current state, there are plans under way to restore the work and make it available to the public. When this happens it will be the first time the work has been shown in its original version, as Lang intended, since 1927."


Reported in September 2008

[Dimentio]

Its true that Metropolis had a corporatist/fascist theme. Thats indeed because the directors' wife was a nazi supporter and she also wrote a part of the plot.

Nevertheless I like the movie, it was shown last week on Arte, the german art tv station, with live symphonic orchestra in Berlin. It has a really good atmosphere.

Thea von Harbou actually wrote the book which Fritz Lang later turned into the film.

[Kléber]

"A complete version of Fritz Lang’s silent film classic Metropolis was discovered in Argentina in June. Long believed lost in its complete form, the 1927 masterpiece has until now only been available in heavily truncated versions.

Reported in September 2008

Fantastic!

[ComradeOm]

I'm not sure which version of the film I have ('acquired') but it does seem to be largely complete and with a run time of almost 2 hrs. It does include the scenes where Robot Maria really enjoys her time in the upper city dancing clubs. I believe that the latest version (complete save for 8 min or so) will be released later this year

Frankly whatever the political message, and I would agree that this is more than somewhat fascist*, it remains a great move that has withstood the test of time to an amazing degree. I first saw Metropolis recently only a few days after Avatar and was far more impressed with the former; even in its disjointed state the basic story/plot/characters of the former are far superior. Definitely a great watch

*Alternatively it could perhaps be considered social-democratic

[Incendiarism]

I didn't think it was that bad of a movie.

[Rusty Shackleford]

it wasnt a bad movie. just the theme was shit. it is a dystopian movie for a reason i guess

[x359594]

I'm not sure which version of the film I have ('acquired') but it does seem to be largely complete and with a run time of almost 2 hrs. It does include the scenes where Robot Maria really enjoys her time in the upper city dancing clubs. I believe that the latest version (complete save for 8 min or so) will be released later this year...

The nearly 2 hour version was the 2002 restoration, but since then the complete version was discovered in 2008 and was recently screened in Berlin; there is a DVD (and blu-ray) of the complete Metropolis scheduled for release, so I would avoid this minus 8 minute version you mentioned.

[Girl A]

I've only seen the anime version... and that was ages ago. I enjoyed it.

[x359594]

it wasnt a bad movie. just the theme was shit. it is a dystopian movie for a reason i guess

In 1965 Lang expressed his own reservations about the film: “I have often said that I don’t like Metropolis and that is because I cannot accept the leitmotiv of the message of the film. It is absurd to say that the heart is the mediator between the hands and the head, that is to say, of course, between employee and employer. The problem is social, not moral.”

[Rusty Shackleford]

In 1965 Lang expressed his own reservations about the film: “I have often said that I don’t like Metropolis and that is because I cannot accept the leitmotiv of the message of the film. It is absurd to say that the heart is the mediator between the hands and the head, that is to say, of course, between employee and employer. The problem is social, not moral.”
INTERESTING!
thank you very much for posting that.