Seek the Original: Metropolis

 

Never settle for an adaptation. Seek the Original!

This has been on my list for a long time, but when the movie disappeared from Netflix years ago, I forgot about it. Now the film is in the public domain, so that reminded me I should experience it.

I was NOT expecting a story of this kind, either in the book or the film.

 

Metropolis

by Thea von Harbou

Not a casual read, Metropolis is a very German story full of appositives and flowery prose. The dialogue is Shakespearean, nay Biblical in its exuberance, and the style makes the events feel epic in scope and profound in significance.

When Freder, son of the great founder of the grandest city in the world, catches a glimpse of the underclass, he must know more. This boy has lived a sheltered life above ground, in the glimmering lights and luxuries of Metropolis. Now, for the first time, he ventures underground and sees the people who toil at the machines that make this great city function. His father is not moved to compassion, but Freder is determined to do something to help the multitude.

He changes places with one of the underground operators to experience the life he was born above. What he finds is an underclass of laborers who do all the hard work of the city so the upper classes can live in luxury. Laboring at the machines has become a religious experience for the underclass, so much so they worship the machines they labor upon—reverence at Mass transferred to reverence for the automations that require their effort. It’s surreal and spectacular to read about people praying to the machines that drain their bodies and their minds.

This arrangement may have continued forever if not for one man seeking revenge against the founder of Metropolis. Years ago, the founder stole the love of his life from him, and he’s been hatching a plot of vengeance by destroying not just the person but the city he founded.

He will do so by introducing a new idea to the underground laborers. A dangerous idea. He installs a prophet who makes the people ask why they work for starvation wages while the upper classes live above ground and enjoy a life of luxury.

Destroying a whole city over a stolen lover. It’s so outrageous it’s brilliant. Biblical and Shakespearean and grandiose to behold, it lays bare the fragility of the class divide.

The style is certainly not for everyone, but I enjoyed the experience. Its social commentary is just as potent today as it was a century ago, but it does have one flaw: it bends toward religious redemption rather than social commentary.

The religious imagery is laid on too thick for my tastes, but the book is very much about how the labor of the masses has become their religion, absent anything else to live for. The machines they must labor upon have become their gods—laboring at a machine has become the act of worship, and what happens when a pious population stops worshiping their gods?

The gods get angry.

Everything comes together in an epic riot—the underclasses rising up against the machines they are forced to labor upon, taking down the upper class living off their hidden labor. Man destroying his gods, destroying himself in the process, and what afterward? The conclusion is appropriately Biblical: mankind created false gods in the form of machines, so the only redemption is to destroy the false gods and return to the one true God. It’s a very Catholic conclusion that is a bit of a letdown, as in the author had the chance to make some serious social commentary, but she turned it into a sermon instead.

The sin of Metropolis is not that the rich are exploiting the poor, keeping them in poverty in order to live in leisure and happiness, rather that mankind has created new gods and turned away from Christ and the holy Mother. The author was so close to telling a timeless story of class warfare and the cycle of civilization. She chose to frame it all as a crisis of faith.

I enjoyed the journey, even if I think the story could have reached a more meaningful end.  

Compare that to...

Metropolis (1927)

Directed by Fritz Lang

The film follows the book almost in lockstep. In terms of adaptation, it’s faithful, and it should be, as the author herself wrote the screenplay.

The grandeur of the city. The smoke-filled hell the workers must live in. The privileged youth who descends into the underground to experience the life he was born above. The people whose labor creates the life of luxury he has enjoyed. The movie leaves out most of the religious imagery and focuses on the mechanical clone of the heroin inciting the people to revolt against the upper classes who live in luxury while the masses toil on machines below ground.

Though the movie implies the inventor of the machine-man has created this invention to destroy the city and thus the man who stole his lover from him, the book makes this so much clearer. The prophet he installs within the ranks of the workers becomes the instrument to create rebellion, but without the final confrontation between the city’s founder and his former rival in love, in which he declares his vengeance is at hand, it doesn’t have nearly as much weight. Without knowing why this is happening, the city founder’s decision to let the mob destroy Metropolis’s power source isn’t clear.

Still, in so many ways I prefer the movie version because it leaves out most of the religious symbolism and keeps the story a simple revolt of the lower classes against the higher. The movie ends with a secular coming together of the lower classes with the higher classes, having elected a mediator. It’s a nice touch, though I miss the Shakespearean twist that all this happen because of a stolen lover. It’s in the movie, but barely.

I enjoyed the experience of the filmmaking. I watched the 2022 Cobra version, and often the score was far too exuberant compared to what was happening on screen, but in the film’s second half I hardly noticed. The visuals, the action, the sets, the matte paintings all tell the story so well. This must have been mind-blowing in 1927. The transformation scene with the inventor giving his robot the appearance of this young woman is particularly striking, even by today’s standards.

It could have been half as long, as this is a silent film and so much of the runtime is devoted to exaggerated acting, but I got into its style long before the halfway point. I believe this was made during a Red Scare, so presenting class warfare as a need for “both sides” to meet and compromise must have been a poignant message in the 1920s.

It is no crisis of faith. This is class warfare, and the solution is for the owner to step out of his high tower and talk to the people who labor for his life of luxury. It’s a good ending, so much better than the book, but much like the book it is so close to socialist commentary and it stops just short. Workers stop at the Cathedral and compromise with the slaveowner that is the founder of Metropolis. They don’t continue rioting and throw off the chains that oppress them, asking why this guy owns everything while they toil for his luxury. Let’s compromise.

Come on, just go all in and overthrow the old system! No need for a mediator between owner and slave—just declare no one should own the land so why do we need money? Everyone should work for his own benefit, repurpose the factories to make clothes and food for everyone, and let’s end this nightmare of an underclass toiling so the upper class can live without having to work.

That’s not how the movie or the book ends. The book ends with mankind returning to God as the solution for peace between the social classes. The movie ends with worker and owner learning to come together. Both are meaningful in the message they are too cowardly to present.

It’s worth watching, even today, how a century-old movie can still be relevant.