Socialist Action /September 2002
Return of the Worker Robots
By GAETANA CALDWELL-SMITH
 To celebrate the 75th anniversary
of Fritz Lang's classic film "Metropolis," Kino International
is presenting a digitally restored print worldwide. Look for its appearance
in theaters across the United States.
When the film was made in 1927 Germany, many idealists thought it preposterous
that, in the future, men would be slaves to machines. After all, they said,
machines were built in the first place to free man from onerous labor conditions.
Today, as the eight-hour day quickly fades into history, we know differently.
The film's sets are of towering scale, showing elevated freeways and
airplanes flying between skyscrapers. Fritz Lang envisioned slave labor
conditions, where workers and their families live underground in buildings
that resemble those that were constructed in inner cities in the1960s for
low-income and welfare families.
Men-thousands of them-work 10-hour shifts without a break at gigantic,
smoke-spewing machinery. One scene features hordes of skull-capped men
dressed in black pajama-like outfits who, with lowered heads, lock-step
into cage-like elevators, calling to mind recent TV news clips of the rescued
miners being lifted out of the collapsed Pennsylvania mine.
The Masters of Metropolis and their sons and fashionably dressed daughters
reside in skyscrapers and cavort around fountains in the sun-filled, rooftop
gardens, or play sports in the club stadium.
The ruler of Metropolis, Joh Masterman, played by Alfred Abel, runs his
city from his computerized penthouse office in the New Babel tower. His
pale, pampered son, Freder (Gustave Frohlich), falls in love with working-class
Maria (Brigette Helm). Now, Freder wants go below to see how "his brothers,"
i.e., the working class, lives.
An accident causes some workers' deaths. When Masterman responds callowly
to this tragedy, Freder joins the workers on the job and experiences their
dehumanizing lot. Joseph, the foreman, discovers plans for a secret workers'
meeting in the Catacombs, led by Maria, and tells Masterman.
At the secret meeting, Maria, in a Christian revival-like setting, relates
the story of the Tower of Babel as a symbol for Masterman and his Metropolis.
The scene comes stunningly to life on screen as a reported 11,000 shaven-headed
male actors struggle with ropes, pulling large concrete blocks for the tower.
Maria's concluding message is: "The heart must be mediated with
the head and the hands." An early reviewer of the film said that Maria
aped a speech by German industrialist Gustave Stresemann, "... only
if our people in this age of machinery and cities with millions of inhabitants
keep up their spirits shall we experience recovery."
One of the highlights of "Metropolis" is the close-up of the
robot built by Masterman's mad scientist friend, Rotwang (Klein-Rogge),
to one day replace the workers. In Masterman's tower, Rotwang unveils his
robot as a writhing, dancing Egyptian goddess before Masterman and a crowd
of crazed, leering, tuxedoed capitalists.
Masterman and Rotwang conspire to fool the workers by making a robot
that resembles Maria to incite the workers to commit violence against each
other so they can be replaced by robots. Instead, the workers destroy the
machines.
The foreman restores order, saying, "Who told you to destroy the
machinery and destroy yourselves?" The people turn on robot Maria;
Freder goes after Rotwang. Real Maria fulfills her message by bringing together
Freder, the heart (mediator); Father, the brain (exploiter); and the foreman,
the hand (work-slave). Thus a multi-class coalition is formed and all are
"saved."
Scarcely six years after the film's 1927 debut in Berlin, Lang's dream
of a beneficent worker-capitalist alliance was proved illusionary when the
Nazis came to power and threw every working-class leader they could locate
into concentration camps. Despite the film's muddled social perspective,
however, much of its vision and scope has allowed "Metropolis"
to survive.
Literary lights from Europe and the U.S. attended its 1927 premiere.
Their reviews were often less than kind. One said that "Metropolis"
is a heady mixture of vision, lewdness, and "unintended humour."
H.G. Wells called it the "silliest film" he'd ever seen.
The Red Flag, the German Communist Party's paper, said that the film
contained something for everyone: "Metropolis for the bourgeoisie,
for the workers the destruction of the machinery, for the Social Democrats
the coalition, for the Christian Democrats the golden heart, and messianic
nonsense." The Social Democratic Party, on the other hand, wanted to
make Fritz Lang an honorary member.
Today's reviews are kinder. There is no question that Lang's "Metropolis"
prepared the way for films like "Blade Runner," "Minority
Report," and other contemporary futuristic works.
Socialist Action /September 2002 |