Story Line:
Joh Fredersen is the leader of Metropolis, a sunny, towering city full of energy and commerce. Freder is his son who revels in the libertine freedom that he has as a son of privilege. One day, while cavorting in the Eternal Gardens with a dozen scantily clad women, Freder sees a school teacher bring a group of dirty, poor children into the garden. The staff and the women are shocked and annoyed, but Freder is captivated by the teacher's words that "we are all brothers" and, of course, her beauty.
Freder sets out to find the school teacher and investigate the world of the workers. The workers live deep underground operating the machines that keep Metropolis operating. The workers are not like the Morlocks of Wells' The Time Machine, they do not terrorize the upper dwellers, but they are rarely seen on the surface. He is searching the underground for her when he witnesses a terrible accident where dozens of workers are scalded with steam. Freder comes to see the machine as a god demanding sacrifice. He rushes to see his father to tell him of the horror, but his father is only upset that his own people didn't tell him first.
We are introduced to Rotwang, an inventor who was a suitor of Joh Fredersen's now dead wife, Hel. He has created a Machine Man whom he says is Hel still living. But before we can work that out, we find the school teacher, named Maria, leading a religious service with the workers. She tells them that a mediator will come to set them free peacefully. Rotwang and Joh Fredersen decide to make the Machine Man look like Maria, and trick the workers into attacking Metropolis so they can be put down with brutal force.
Unknown to Joh Fredersen, Rotwang is still bitter about Hel and has set Machine Maria to not only destroy the workers, but Metropolis too. Machine Maria not only convinces the workers to destroy the machines that power Metropolis but also those that keep underground water from flooding the worker's living areas. At the same time, she uses her body as a dancer to keep the people of Metropolis too distracted to know what is going on. The workers storm the machines to the strains of La Marseillaise.
The result is the destruction of the worker's homes and the imperiling of their children. When the workers realize the folly of their acts, they turn on Machine Maria and burn her at the stake as a witch.
There is a silly chase at the end (the acting has been very good up until this part), where Freder saves the real Maria, then brings both the workers and the city dwellers together to fix their city.
Metropolis as Christian Allegory:
The most obvious example of Christian symbolism is the Whore of Babylon story from Revelation, with the Machine Maria playing the part explicitly while she is distracting the city dwellers. But there are others, too.
The teacher is named Maria, a variant of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Maria is the one who finds the mediator between head and hands like Mary brings Jesus, who is said to be the mediator between God and man, into the world. In Mary's religious chapel in the depths, the symbolism is strongly Christian, with crosses and fish. One of her prayers is that "The mediator will come" just like prayers in the Bible that the messiah will come. The movie opens and closes with the quote: "The mediator between head and hands must be the heart." Freder is placed as that heart, that mediator, that savior figure who beings healing.
Even pagan gods mentioned in the Bible are alluded to. The word "Moloch" flashes up in the scene where Freder sees the machine as a god demanding sacrifice. The Catholic Encyclopedia notes that Moloch is named in the Old Testament of the Bible as one of the pagan religions stamped out early on: "The chief feature of Moloch's worship among the Jews seems to have been the sacrifice of children, and the usual expression for describing that sacrifice was 'to pass through the fire,' a rite carried out after the victims had been put to death."
When Joh Fredersen's right hand man is fired because of his incompetence, he is sent into the depths with the workers like a person being cast out of God's sight and being damned to Hell. Freder acts the part of the Jesus the savior by offering a job and allowing him to stay. The depths where the workers live and work look like Hell with smoke, steam, and heat.
Metropolis as Foreshadowing of the Holocaust:
Although Mein Kampf was published the year before the movie was released, but it would still be several years before the Nazis came to power in Germany. Nevertheless, Metropolis is an eerie foreshadowing of the work and death camps to come. Just like prisoners in a concentration camp, the workers do not have names, only numbers. They have been dehumanized to the point where they not only look and act like a part of the machines they operate, but they are numbered like parts in a catalog. When his son tells him the plight of the workers, Joh Fredersen comments that "the workers are where they belong, in the depths" -- sounding much like the Nazis saying Jews and other undesirables belonged in ghettos and camps. During the metaphor of the machine as Moloch requiring human sacrifice, there are dozens of men marching into the gaping, flaming maw of the god like so many concentration camp victims marching to the crematorium. Finally, during the story of the Tower of Babel that Maria tells the workers, there is a depiction of thousands of nearly naked workers who were shaved bald that looked just like concentration camp workers from the Nazi era.
Joh Fredersen is the leader of Metropolis, a sunny, towering city full of energy and commerce. Freder is his son who revels in the libertine freedom that he has as a son of privilege. One day, while cavorting in the Eternal Gardens with a dozen scantily clad women, Freder sees a school teacher bring a group of dirty, poor children into the garden. The staff and the women are shocked and annoyed, but Freder is captivated by the teacher's words that "we are all brothers" and, of course, her beauty.
Freder sets out to find the school teacher and investigate the world of the workers. The workers live deep underground operating the machines that keep Metropolis operating. The workers are not like the Morlocks of Wells' The Time Machine, they do not terrorize the upper dwellers, but they are rarely seen on the surface. He is searching the underground for her when he witnesses a terrible accident where dozens of workers are scalded with steam. Freder comes to see the machine as a god demanding sacrifice. He rushes to see his father to tell him of the horror, but his father is only upset that his own people didn't tell him first.
We are introduced to Rotwang, an inventor who was a suitor of Joh Fredersen's now dead wife, Hel. He has created a Machine Man whom he says is Hel still living. But before we can work that out, we find the school teacher, named Maria, leading a religious service with the workers. She tells them that a mediator will come to set them free peacefully. Rotwang and Joh Fredersen decide to make the Machine Man look like Maria, and trick the workers into attacking Metropolis so they can be put down with brutal force.
Unknown to Joh Fredersen, Rotwang is still bitter about Hel and has set Machine Maria to not only destroy the workers, but Metropolis too. Machine Maria not only convinces the workers to destroy the machines that power Metropolis but also those that keep underground water from flooding the worker's living areas. At the same time, she uses her body as a dancer to keep the people of Metropolis too distracted to know what is going on. The workers storm the machines to the strains of La Marseillaise.
The result is the destruction of the worker's homes and the imperiling of their children. When the workers realize the folly of their acts, they turn on Machine Maria and burn her at the stake as a witch.
There is a silly chase at the end (the acting has been very good up until this part), where Freder saves the real Maria, then brings both the workers and the city dwellers together to fix their city.
Metropolis as Christian Allegory:
The most obvious example of Christian symbolism is the Whore of Babylon story from Revelation, with the Machine Maria playing the part explicitly while she is distracting the city dwellers. But there are others, too.
The teacher is named Maria, a variant of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Maria is the one who finds the mediator between head and hands like Mary brings Jesus, who is said to be the mediator between God and man, into the world. In Mary's religious chapel in the depths, the symbolism is strongly Christian, with crosses and fish. One of her prayers is that "The mediator will come" just like prayers in the Bible that the messiah will come. The movie opens and closes with the quote: "The mediator between head and hands must be the heart." Freder is placed as that heart, that mediator, that savior figure who beings healing.
Even pagan gods mentioned in the Bible are alluded to. The word "Moloch" flashes up in the scene where Freder sees the machine as a god demanding sacrifice. The Catholic Encyclopedia notes that Moloch is named in the Old Testament of the Bible as one of the pagan religions stamped out early on: "The chief feature of Moloch's worship among the Jews seems to have been the sacrifice of children, and the usual expression for describing that sacrifice was 'to pass through the fire,' a rite carried out after the victims had been put to death."
When Joh Fredersen's right hand man is fired because of his incompetence, he is sent into the depths with the workers like a person being cast out of God's sight and being damned to Hell. Freder acts the part of the Jesus the savior by offering a job and allowing him to stay. The depths where the workers live and work look like Hell with smoke, steam, and heat.
Metropolis as Foreshadowing of the Holocaust:
Although Mein Kampf was published the year before the movie was released, but it would still be several years before the Nazis came to power in Germany. Nevertheless, Metropolis is an eerie foreshadowing of the work and death camps to come. Just like prisoners in a concentration camp, the workers do not have names, only numbers. They have been dehumanized to the point where they not only look and act like a part of the machines they operate, but they are numbered like parts in a catalog. When his son tells him the plight of the workers, Joh Fredersen comments that "the workers are where they belong, in the depths" -- sounding much like the Nazis saying Jews and other undesirables belonged in ghettos and camps. During the metaphor of the machine as Moloch requiring human sacrifice, there are dozens of men marching into the gaping, flaming maw of the god like so many concentration camp victims marching to the crematorium. Finally, during the story of the Tower of Babel that Maria tells the workers, there is a depiction of thousands of nearly naked workers who were shaved bald that looked just like concentration camp workers from the Nazi era.
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