Guide Rating -

A highly operatic film, "Metropolis" creates a world of its own that is rich in allegory and metaphor. Lang seemingly thought of the movie in musical terms, and it is broken down into sections titled "Prelude," "Intermezzo," and "Furioso." The DVD soundtrack features a recent recording of the orchestral score that was composed for the film's original theatrical release, and the music nicely complements the images with leitmotifs for characters, places, and the like.

The events in "Metropolis" take place within an urban area that is divided into an upper city, which is above the earth's surface, and a lower city, which is beneath the surface. The upper city, where the elite live and work, consists mostly of elegantly designed skyscrapers. The lower city contains gigantic machinery, which is operated by a group of coverall-clad men called the Workers. The Workers and their families live underground in institutional-looking buildings.

The master of the combined upper and lower cities is a stern middle-aged man named Joh Fredersen. Fredersen is a widower whose style of running things is rather like that of a dictatorial industrialist. But Fredersen dotes on his young adult son Freder, a goodhearted soul who wears knickerbockers and tucks the bottom of his necktie inside his trousers.

Disgruntled by their inhumane and dangerous working conditions, the Workers are on the verge of staging an uprising. They attend a meeting in the 2000-year-old catacombs where a saintly teenage girl named Maria gives an impassioned speech imploring them to await the coming of the Mediator. Soon Maria meets young Freder, and he tells her he is the Mediator whose coming she has been prophesying.

Meanwhile, the mad scientist Rotwang seeks revenge against Fredersen for stealing a woman named Hel away from him years earlier. Rotwang captures Maria and creates a robot who looks like the girl. He then uses the false Maria to incite the Workers to attack some of the machines. The result is a massive flood that threatens to drown the Workers' children, and it's up to Freder and the real Maria to save them.

"Metropolis" is visually stunning, and there are several images I find particularly memorable. One is when Freder witnesses an explosion in a piece of equipment called the M-machine, and his mind's eye transforms the huge machine into the Middle Eastern god Moloch. A second is when the angelic Maria stands in a candle-lit crypt with several tall, rough crosses behind her. A third is the false Maria's lascivious dance, during which the screen is filled at one point with eyes.

"Metropolis" is generally considered to be the first full-length science-fiction film ever made, but I'm not sure that description properly sets expectations for a 21st-century viewer seeing it for the first time. It seems to me Lang wasn't so much interested in science and technology as he was in myth and psychology. The style of "Metropolis" is not realistic, but theatrical and expressionistic.

The version of "Metropolis" on the Kino DVD is the one put together under the auspices of the Murnau Foundation and first shown in February, 2001. Although this is the most nearly complete version available at this time, it is still missing the approximately 25 percent of the footage in the film's original 1927 Berlin release that is considered to be irretrievably lost. However, the Murnau Foundation version contains additional text cards summarizing the missing footage, thus providing a more coherent story than has been available for decades.

What I like best about "Metropolis" is the way it draws on ideas from Jung, Freud, Marx, the Bible, and Norse mythology and wraps them all in visually dazzling imagery. I give this spectacular film my highest possible recommendation, not because of its great historical importance, but because I find it spellbinding.

Special Features of the DVD: