How Fritz Lang’s Metropolis Created the Blueprint for Modern Science Fiction (1927)

A vast, mis­er­able pro­le­tari­at squan­ders its days in mean­ing­less toil. Soci­ety is under the con­trol of ultra-wealthy busi­ness mag­nates. In order to paci­fy the under­class, the rul­ing class pins its hopes on a tech­no­log­i­cal solu­tion: arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. Wel­come to the year 2026, as envi­sioned in Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis. When the film pre­miered, not long after 1926 had come to an end, that date would have seemed arbi­trar­i­ly futur­is­tic. Now, of course, it’s the present, though our world may nowhere look quite as styl­ish as the Art Deco dystopia craft­ed at great expense and an unprece­dent­ed scale of pro­duc­tion by Lang and com­pa­ny. Yet when we watch Metrop­o­lis today, the ele­ments that now seem pre­scient stand out more than the fan­tas­ti­cal ones.

The new short doc­u­men­tary from DW above exam­ines the mak­ing and lega­cy of Metrop­o­lis, pay­ing spe­cial atten­tion to its con­sid­er­able influ­ence on much of the sci­ence-fic­tion and dystopi­an cin­e­ma since. 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars, Blade Run­ner, Ter­mi­na­tor 2, Madon­na’s “Express Your­self” video: these are just a few of the pro­duc­tions that take no great pains to hide — and in some cas­es, even empha­size — their debt to Lang’s vision.

Ver­tig­i­nous, inten­sive­ly illu­mi­nat­ed, infra­struc­ture-webbed sky­scraper canyons and labor­ers at once manip­u­lat­ing and being manip­u­lat­ed by over­sized clock­work are only the most obvi­ous images that have come down through decades of pop­u­lar cul­ture. For the ori­gin of the wild-haired “mad sci­en­tist” sur­round­ed by tubes and coils, look no fur­ther than Metrop­o­lis’ Rot­wang.

Much could also be writ­ten — and indeed, much already has been writ­ten — about the lega­cy of Rot­wang’s inven­tion, the robot woman who takes on the like­ness of a work­ing-class hero­ine. Beyond the ground­break­ing nature of its design, Metrop­o­lis has also retained atten­tion after near­ly a cen­tu­ry thanks to the folk­loric, even myth­i­cal res­o­nances of its sto­ry. It may be tech­ni­cal­ly implau­si­ble, at least from our point of view, to imag­ine large-scale automa­tion coex­ist­ing with large-scale employ­ment, how­ev­er dire the jobs, but age-old nar­ra­tive under­cur­rents allow even mod­ern audi­ences to sus­pend dis­be­lief (a phe­nom­e­non that has­n’t gone unno­ticed by the mak­ers of more recent sci-fi and fan­ta­sy block­busters). We may not live in quite the 2026  that Metrop­o­lis puts onscreen, but in some sense, we do inhab­it the world it made.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 1927 Film Metrop­o­lis Cre­at­ed a Dystopi­an Vision of What the World Would Look Like in 2026 — and It Hits Close to Home

Fritz Lang First Depict­ed Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence on Film in Metrop­o­lis (1927), and It Fright­ened Peo­ple Even Then

Fritz Lang Invents the Video Phone in Metrop­o­lis (1927)

Read the Orig­i­nal 32-Page Pro­gram for Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis (1927)

How Movies Cre­at­ed Their Spe­cial Effects Before CGI: Metrop­o­lis, 2001: A Space Odyssey & More

H. G. Wells Pans Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis in a 1927 Movie Review: It’s “the Sil­li­est Film”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.