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76-429: First popularized in the 1927 film Metropolis , this technique involved positioning a plate of glass at a 45-degree angle between the camera and the miniatures, outlining the area where actors would be inserted, and transferring this outline to a mirror. The process is similar to " Pepper's ghost ", a 19th century stage technique. Despite its use in numerous films, including works by Alfred Hitchcock and Peter Jackson ,

152-557: A German nationalist businessman, cancelled UFA's debt to Paramount and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer after taking charge of the company in April 1927, and chose to halt distribution in German cinemas of Metropolis in its original form. Hugenberg had the film cut down to a length of 3,241 metres (about 118 minutes), broadly along the lines of Pollock's edit, removing the film's perceived "inappropriate" communist subtext and religious imagery. Hugenberg's cut of

228-550: A gimmick in Frasier . The BBC's drama Threads uses them to give location, date and information on distant events beyond Sheffield . Law & Order and its related spinoffs used them to give not only the location, but also the date of the upcoming scene. Guy Maddin is a modern filmmaker known for recreating the style of older films, and uses intertitles appropriately. Some locally produced shows, such as quiz bowl game shows , use animated variations of intertitles to introduce

304-407: A novel of the same title written by Harbou for the sole purpose of being made into a film. The novel in turn drew inspiration from H. G. Wells , Mary Shelley and Villiers de l'Isle-Adam 's works and other German dramas. The novel featured strongly in the film's marketing campaign, and was serialized in the journal Illustriertes Blatt in the run-up to its release. Harbou and Lang collaborated on

380-437: A robot he has built to " resurrect " Hel. The maps show a network of catacombs beneath Metropolis, and the two men go to investigate. They eavesdrop on a gathering of workers, including Freder. Maria addresses them, prophesying the arrival of a mediator who can bring the working and ruling classes together. Freder believes he can fill the role and declares his love for Maria. Fredersen orders Rotwang to give Maria's likeness to

456-415: A costume that would both appear metallic and allow a small amount of free movement. Helm sustained cuts and bruises while in character as the robot, as the costume was rigid and uncomfortable. Gottfried Huppertz composed the film's score for a large orchestra. He drew inspiration from Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss , and combined a classical orchestral style with mild modernist touches to portray

532-403: A group of workers' children to witness the lifestyle of their rich "brothers". Maria and the children are ushered away, but Freder becomes fascinated by her. Against the strict rules of the city, he enters the lower levels in disguise to find her. In the machine halls, he witnesses the explosion of a huge machine that kills and injures numerous workers. Freder has a hallucination that the machine

608-462: A half times the original budget. Producer Erich Pommer had been fired during production. The effects expert Eugen Schüfftan created pioneering visual effects for Metropolis . Among the effects used are miniatures of the city, a camera on a swing, and most notably, the Schüfftan process , in which mirrors are used to create the illusion that actors are occupying miniature sets. This new technique

684-410: A historical drama's epilogue to explain what happened to the depicted characters and events after the conclusion of the story proper. The development of the soundtrack slowly eliminated their utility as a narrative device (they were common for providing narration, but not dialogue, well into the 1930s), but they are occasionally still used as an artistic device. For instance, intertitles were used as

760-573: A kind of wooden armament, and because the shot took so long, I didn't get enough air." Despite the hardships, Thea von Harbou recounted how the film set was paradise for the hundreds of poor, malnourished children used as extras. In 1927 in Metropolis Magazine , von Harbou describes their warm and clean rooms, time for play, and ample toys and hot meals four times a day. "No film ever had more enthusiastic and willing collaborators than these little children," she recalled, "always willing to dash into

836-482: A list of "39 Essential Foreign Films for a Young Filmmaker." Inter-title In films , an intertitle , also known as a title card , is a piece of filmed, printed text edited into the midst of (hence, inter- ) the photographed action at various points. Intertitles used to convey character dialogue are referred to as "dialogue intertitles", and those used to provide related descriptive/narrative material are referred to as "expository intertitles". In modern usage,

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912-721: A luxurious backdrop, suspended in the dark sky to dazzle, distract and hypnotize". He added "The sight of Neuyork [sic] alone should be enough to turn this beacon of beauty into the center of a film..." The appearance of the city in Metropolis is strongly informed by the Art Deco movement; however, it also incorporates elements from other traditions. Ingeborg Hoesterey described the architecture featured in Metropolis as eclectic, writing how its locales represent both "functionalist modernism [and] art deco" whilst also featuring "the scientist's archaic little house with its high-powered laboratory,

988-626: A member of the Party in 1933. She and Lang divorced the following year. Lang later moved to the United States to escape the Nazis, while Harbou stayed in Germany and continued to write state-approved films. According to Roger Ebert , " Metropolis is one of the great achievements of the silent era, a work so audacious in its vision and so angry in its message that it is, if anything, more powerful today than when it

1064-518: A new reconstruction of Metropolis was shown at the Berlin Film Festival . In 2008, a damaged print of Lang's original cut of the film was found in a museum in Argentina. According to the explanation in the restored film, "the material was heavily damaged and, because it had been printed on 16mm film stock, does not have the full-aperture silent picture ratio" and "in order to maintain the scale of

1140-428: A specially made mirror to create the illusion of actors interacting with huge, realistic-looking sets. Schüfftan placed a plate of glass at a 45-degree angle between the camera and the miniature buildings. He used the camera's viewfinder to trace an outline of the area into which the actors would later be inserted onto the glass. This outline was transferred onto a mirror and all the reflective surface that fell outside

1216-407: A trance, enthusiastic and enraptured at the same time—I can't forget the incredible strain that they put us under. The work wasn't easy, and the authenticity in the portrayal ended up testing our nerves now and then. For instance, it wasn't fun at all when Grot drags me by the hair, to have me burned at the stake. Once I even fainted: during the transformation scene, Maria, as the android, is clamped in

1292-662: A weighted average, assigned the film a score of 98 out of 100 based on 14 critics, Indicating "universal acclaim". It also ranked 12th in Empire magazine's "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema" in 2010. The 2002 version was awarded the New York Film Critics Circle Awards "Special Award" for the restoration. In 2012, in correspondence with the Sight & Sound Poll, the British Film Institute called Metropolis

1368-495: Is a 1927 German expressionist science-fiction silent film directed by Fritz Lang and written by Thea von Harbou in collaboration with Lang from von Harbou's 1925 novel of the same name (which was intentionally written as a treatment ). It stars Gustav Fröhlich , Alfred Abel , Rudolf Klein-Rogge , and Brigitte Helm . Erich Pommer produced it in the Babelsberg Studio for Universum Film A.G. (UFA). Metropolis

1444-442: Is a dark dream of the city of 2026, where the idle rich live in penthouses and play in rooftop pleasure gardens while the faceless workers toil in the machine caverns far, far below." The film has an approval rating of 97% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 126 reviews, with an average rating of 9.1/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "A visually awe-inspiring science fiction classic from the silent era." In Metacritic, which uses

1520-460: Is a temple of Moloch and the workers are being fed to it. When the hallucination ends, and he sees the dead workers being carried away on stretchers, he hurries to tell his father about the accident. Grot, foreman of the Heart Machine, brings Fredersen strange maps found on the dead workers. Fredersen fires his assistant Josaphat for not being the first to bring him details about the explosion or

1596-399: Is open to interpretation. The 2010 re-release and reconstruction, which incorporated the original title cards written by Thea von Harbou, do not specify a year. Before the reconstruction, Lotte Eisner and Paul M. Jensen placed the events happening around the year 2000. Giorgio Moroder's re-scored version included a title card placing the film in 2026, while Paramount's original US release said

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1672-448: Is regarded as a pioneering science-fiction film, being among the first feature-length ones of that genre. Filming took place over 17 months in 1925–26 at a cost of more than five million Reichsmarks , or the equivalent of about €21 million. Made in Germany during the Weimar period , Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and follows the attempts of Freder, the wealthy son of

1748-458: The greatest and most influential films ever made , ranking 67th in Sight and Sound ' s 2022 critics' poll , and receiving general critical acclaim. In 2001, the film was inscribed on UNESCO 's Memory of the World Register , the first film thus distinguished. On 1 January 2023, the film's American reserved copyright expired, thereby entering the film into the public domain . In

1824-556: The 35th-greatest film of all time. In the 2022 version of the poll, Metropolis fell slightly to 67th place. Lane Roth in Film Quarterly called it a "seminal film" because of its concerns with "profound impact technological progress has on man's social and spiritual progress" and concluded that "ascendancy of artifact over nature is depicted not as liberating man, but as subjugating and corrupting him". Martin Scorsese included it on

1900-659: The English remained aloof; the French were stirred by a film which seemed to them a blend of [composer] Wagner and [armaments manufacturer] Krupp , and on the whole an alarming sign of Germany's vitality." Lang later expressed dissatisfaction with the film. In an interview with Peter Bogdanovich in Who the Devil Made It: Conversations with Legendary Film Directors , published in 1998, he expressed his reservations: The main thesis

1976-459: The Gambler . Lang also cast his frequent collaborator Rudolph Klein-Rogge in the role of Rotwang. This was Klein-Rogge's fourth film with Lang, after Destiny , Dr. Mabuse the Gambler , and Die Nibelungen . Shooting of the film was a draining experience for the actors involved due to the demands that Lang placed on them. For the scene where the workers' city was flooded, Helm and 500 children from

2052-554: The Rings: The Return of the King (2003), directed by Peter Jackson. The Schüfftan process has largely been replaced with matte shots, which allow the two portions of the image to be filmed at different times and give opportunities for more changes in post production. The Schüfftan process's use of mirrors is very similar to the 19th century stage technique known as Pepper's ghost . Metropolis (1927 film) Metropolis

2128-525: The Schüfftan process has largely been replaced by matte shots and bluescreen effects. The process was refined and popularized by the German cinematographer Eugen Schüfftan while he was working on the film Metropolis (1927), although there is evidence that other film-makers were using similar techniques earlier than this. The film's director , Fritz Lang , wanted to insert the actors into shots of miniatures of skyscrapers and other buildings, so Schüfftan used

2204-680: The VCS Radio Symphony, which accompanied the restored version of the film at Brenden Theatres in Vacaville, California. The score was also produced in a salon orchestration, which was performed for the first time in the United States in August 2007 by the Bijou Orchestra under the direction of Leo Najar as part of a German Expressionist film festival in Bay City, Michigan. The same forces also performed

2280-480: The astronauts: what else are they but part of a machine? It's very hard to talk about pictures—should I say now that I like Metropolis because something I have seen in my imagination comes true, when I detested it after it was finished? In his profile of Lang, which introduced the interview, Bogdanovich suggested that Lang's distaste for his film also stemmed from the Nazi Party's fascination with it. Von Harbou became

2356-570: The catacombs [and] the Gothic cathedral". The film's use of art deco architecture was highly influential, and has been reported to have contributed to the style's subsequent popularity in Europe and America. The New Babel Tower, for instance, has been inspired by Upper Silesian Tower in Poznań fairgrounds, which was recognized in Germany as a masterpiece of architecture. Lang's visit to several Hollywood studios in

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2432-445: The children with help from Freder and Josaphat. Grot berates the celebrating workers for abandoning their children in the flooded city. The workers become hysterical and condemn the false Maria, burning her at the stake. A horrified Freder watches until the fire reveals her to be a robot. Rotwang, insanely believing Maria to be a reincarnated Hel, chases her to the roof of the cathedral, pursued by Freder. The two men fight as Fredersen and

2508-410: The chilly water [...] like perfect actors". UFA invited several trade journal representatives and several film critics to see the film's shooting as parts of its promotion campaign. Shooting lasted 17 months, with 310 shooting days and 60 shooting nights, and was finally completed on 30 October 1926. By the time shooting finished, the film's budget leapt to 5.3 million Reichsmarks, or over three and

2584-573: The city master, and Maria, a saintly figure to the workers, to overcome the vast gulf separating the classes in their city and bring the workers together with Joh Fredersen, the city master. The film's message is encompassed in the final inter-title : "The Mediator Between the Head and the Hands Must Be the Heart". Metropolis met a mixed reception upon release. Critics found it visually beautiful and powerful –

2660-532: The climactic scene where the false Maria is burnt at the stake (which resulted in Helm's dress catching fire), and his ordering extras to throw themselves towards powerful jets of water when filming the flooding of the workers' city. Helm recalled her experiences of shooting the film in a contemporary interview, saying that "the night shots lasted three weeks, and even if they did lead to the greatest dramatic moments—even if we did follow Fritz Lang's directions as though in

2736-652: The culture of the Weimar Republic in Germany. Lang explores the themes of industrialization and mass production in his film; two developments that played a large role in the war. Other post-World War I themes that Lang includes in Metropolis include the Weimar view of American modernity, fascism , and communism . Metropolis 's screenplay was written by Thea von Harbou, a popular writer in Weimar Germany, jointly with Lang, her then-husband. The film's plot originated from

2812-447: The enacted or documented events. The British Film Catalogue credits the 1898 film Our New General Servant by Robert W. Paul as the first British film to use intertitles. Film scholar Kamilla Elliott identifies another early use of intertitles in the 1901 British film Scrooge, or, Marley's Ghost . The first Academy Awards presentation in 1929 included an award for "Best Writing – Title Cards" that went to Joseph W. Farnham for

2888-614: The existing film. Intertitles may be printed neatly on a piece of paper, a card, or a piece of cardboard and filmed, or they may be formed from adhesive strips and affixed to glass. In the early 1980s, digital recording technology improved to the point where intertitles could be created in born-digital format and recorded directly onto the film. Several specialty accessories from this period such as Sony's HVT-2100 Titler and cameras such as Matsushita's Quasar VK-743 and Zenith VC-1800 could be used to generate intertitles for home movies. Early 1980s video game consoles and applications catering to

2964-499: The film a remarkable achievement that surpassed even its high expectations, praising its visual splendour and ambitious production values. A month after their first review, Variety founder Sime Silverman reviewed the film in New York and considered the film to have mass appeal but called it "a weird story, visionary all of the time, without any degree of unusual imagination and offtimes monotonous". Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels

3040-490: The film once, at its original premiere. Sections of the score were recorded and released by the record label Vox. The full score was not recorded until 2001, for the film's first comprehensive restoration, with Berndt Heller conducting the Rundfunksinfonieorchester Saarbrücken . It was released internationally on various DVD editions beginning in 2003. In 2007, Huppertz's score was also played live by

3116-613: The film ran for 3,170 metres, or approximately 116 minutes—although a contemporary review in Variety of a showing in New York gave the running time as 107 minutes, and another source lists it at 105 minutes. This version of Metropolis premiered in the United States in March 1927, and was released, in a slightly different and longer version (128 minutes) in the United Kingdom around the same time with different title cards. Alfred Hugenberg ,

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3192-490: The film takes place in 3000. A note in one edition of Harbou's novel says that the story does not take place at any particular place or time, in the past or the future. Meanwhile, the 1963 Ace Books edition, which is a reprint of the 1927 English edition, specifies the setting as "The World of 2026 A.D.". On 22 May 1925, Metropolis began principal photography with an initial budget of 1.5 million ℛ︁ℳ︁. Lang cast two unknowns with little film experience in

3268-470: The film was released in German cinemas in August 1927. Later, after demands for more cuts by Nazi censors , UFA distributed a still shorter version of the film (2,530 metres, 91 minutes) in 1936, and an English version of this cut was archived in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) film library in the 1930s. It was this version which was the basis of all versions of Metropolis until the later restorations. In 1986 it

3344-481: The film's art direction by Otto Hunte , Erich Kettelhut , and Karl Vollbrecht draws influence from opera, Bauhaus , Cubist , and Futurist design, along with touches of the Gothic in the scenes in the catacombs , the cathedral and Rotwang's house – and lauded its complex special effects, but accused its story of being naive. H. G. Wells described the film as "silly", and The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction calls

3420-443: The film's massive industrial city of workers. Nestled within the original score were quotations of Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle 's " La Marseillaise " and the traditional " Dies Irae ", the latter of which was matched to the film's apocalyptic imagery. Huppertz's music played a prominent role during the film's production; the composer often played piano on Lang's set to inform the actors' performances. Huppertz's score only accompanied

3496-471: The films Fair Co-Ed ; Laugh, Clown, Laugh ; and Telling the World . The award was never given again, as intertitles went out of common use due to the growing popularity of the " talkies ". In modern use, intertitles are used to supply an epigraph , such as a poem , or to distinguish various " acts " of a film or multimedia production by use as a title card. However, they are most commonly used as part of

3572-417: The future, wealthy industrialists and business magnates and their top employees reign over the city of Metropolis from colossal skyscrapers, while underground-dwelling workers toil to operate the great machines that power it. Joh Fredersen is the city's master. His son, Freder, idles away his time at sports and in a pleasure garden, but is interrupted by the arrival of a young woman named Maria, who has brought

3648-462: The lead roles. Gustav Fröhlich (Freder) had worked in vaudeville and was originally employed as an extra on Metropolis before Thea von Harbou recommended him to Lang. Brigitte Helm (Maria) had been given a screen test by Lang after he met her on the set of Die Nibelungen , but would make her feature film debut with Metropolis . In the role of Joh Fredersen, Lang cast Alfred Abel, a noted stage and screen actor whom he had worked with on Dr. Mabuse

3724-501: The maps. After seeing his father's cold indifference towards the harsh conditions faced by the workers, Freder secretly rebels by deciding to help them. He enlists Josaphat's assistance and returns to the machine halls, assuming the identity of an ill worker. Fredersen takes the maps to the city's greatest inventor, Rotwang , to learn their meaning. Rotwang had been in love with a woman named Hel, who left him to marry Fredersen and later died giving birth to Freder. Rotwang shows Fredersen

3800-429: The next round. Intertitles have also had a long history in the area of amateur film . The efforts of home movie aficionados to intertitle their works post-production led to the development of a number of innovative approaches to the challenge. Frequently lacking access to high-quality film dubbing and splicing equipment, amateur film makers must plan ahead when making a film to allow space for filming an intertitle over

3876-628: The original film that it was "symbolism run such riot that people who saw it couldn't tell what the picture was about. ... I have given it my meaning." Lang's response to the re-editing of the film was to say "I love films, so I shall never go to America. Their experts have slashed my best film, Metropolis , so cruelly that I dare not see it while I am in England." The Hel storyline would be partially restored in Giorgio Moroder 's 1984 version, and subsequent versions completely restored it. In Pollock's cut,

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3952-402: The outline was removed, leaving transparent glass. When the mirror was placed in the same position as the original plate of glass, the reflective part blocked a portion of the miniature building behind it and also reflected the stage behind the camera. The actors were placed several meters away from the mirror so that when they were reflected in the mirror, they would appear at the right size. In

4028-460: The plot as "laid on with a terrible Teutonic heaviness, and an unnecessary amount of philosophizing in the beginning" that made the film "as soulless as the city of its tale". He also called the acting "uninspired with the exception of Brigitte Helm". Nevertheless, Claxton wrote that "the setting, the use of people and their movement, and various bits of action stand out as extraordinary and make it nearly an obligatory picture." Other critics considered

4104-436: The poorest districts of Berlin had to work for 14 days in a pool of water that Lang intentionally kept at a low temperature. Lang would frequently demand numerous re-takes, and took two days to shoot a simple scene where Freder collapses at Maria's feet; by the time Lang was satisfied with the footage he had shot, actor Gustav Fröhlich found he could barely stand. Other anecdotes involve Lang's insistence on using real fire for

4180-414: The premiere was met with muted applause interspersed with boos and hisses. At the time of its German premiere, Metropolis had a length of 4,189 metres, which is approximately 153 minutes at 24 frames per second (fps). UFA's distribution deal with Paramount and MGM "entitled [them] to make any change [to films produced by UFA] they found appropriate to ensure profitability". Considering that Metropolis

4256-457: The restored footage, the missing portion of the frame appears black" while "black frames indicate points at which footage is still lost". After a long restoration process that required additional materials provided by a print from New Zealand, the film was 95% restored and shown on large screens in Berlin and Frankfurt simultaneously on 12 February 2010. Metropolis is now widely regarded as one of

4332-408: The robot so that it can discredit her among the workers but is unaware that Rotwang's true plan is to usurp him as ruler by sparking a revolution. Rotwang kidnaps Maria, fashions the robot in her image, and presents her to Fredersen. Freder finds the two embracing and, believing his father to have betrayed him, falls into a prolonged delirium. Intercut with his hallucinations, the false Maria preaches to

4408-485: The same 1924 trip also influenced the film in another way: Lang and producer Erich Pommer realized that to compete with the vertical integration of Hollywood, their next film would have to be bigger, broader, and better made than anything they had made before. Despite UFA's growing debt, Lang announced that Metropolis would be "the costliest and most ambitious picture ever." The film drew heavily on biblical sources for several of its key set-pieces. During her first talk to

4484-412: The same film, Schüfftan used a variation of this process so that the miniature set (or drawing) was shown on the reflective part of the mirror and the actors were filmed through the transparent part. Over the following years, the Schüfftan process was used by many other film-makers, including Alfred Hitchcock , in his films Blackmail (1929) and The 39 Steps (1935), and as recently as The Lord of

4560-451: The screenplay derived from the novel, and several plot points and thematic elements—including most of the references to magic and occultism present in the novel—were dropped. The screenplay itself went through many rewrites, and at one point featured an ending where Freder flew to the stars; this plot element later became the basis for Lang's Woman in the Moon . The time setting of Metropolis

4636-484: The skyscrapers in New York in October 1924". He had visited New York City for the first time and remarked "I looked into the streets—the glaring lights and the tall buildings—and there I conceived Metropolis ," although in actuality Lang and Harbou had been at work on the idea for over a year. Describing his first impressions of the city, Lang said that "the buildings seemed to be a vertical sail, scintillating and very light,

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4712-471: The story "trite" and its politics "ludicrously simplistic". Its alleged communist message was also criticized. The film's long running time also came in for criticism. It was cut substantially after its German premiere. Many attempts have been made since the 1970s to restore the film. In 1984, Italian music producer Giorgio Moroder released a truncated version with a soundtrack by rock artists including Freddie Mercury , Loverboy , and Adam Ant . In 2001,

4788-466: The terms refer to similar text and logo material inserted at or near the start or end of films and television shows. In the silent film era , intertitles were mostly called " subtitles ", but also "leaders", " captions ", "titles", and "headings", prior to being named intertitles, and often had Art Deco motifs. They were a mainstay of silent films once the films became of sufficient length and detail to necessitate dialogue or narration to make sense of

4864-654: The work at the Traverse City Film Festival in Traverse City, Michigan in August 2009. For the film's 2010 "complete" restoration premiere, Huppertz's score was performed live and subsequently re-recorded by the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra , conducted by Frank Strobel . This version was released internationally on various DVD and Blu-ray editions beginning in 2010. Various artists have created other scores for Metropolis : Metropolis

4940-479: The workers that they must rise up against the surface world, resulting in chaos and dissent. Freder recovers and returns to the catacombs, accompanied by Josaphat. Finding the false Maria urging the workers to destroy the machines, he accuses her of not being the real Maria. The workers ignore him and carry out her wishes, smashing the machines and triggering a great flood that threatens to drown their children. The real Maria, having escaped from Rotwang's house, rescues

5016-424: The workers watch from the street, and Rotwang falls to his death. Freder fulfills his destiny to unite the city and the underworld by linking the hands of Fredersen and Grot to bring them together. Metropolis features a range of elaborate special effects and set designs, ranging from a huge gothic cathedral to a futuristic cityscape. In an interview, Fritz Lang reported that "the film was born from my first sight of

5092-621: The workers, Maria uses the story of the Tower of Babel to highlight the discord between the intellectuals and the workers. Additionally, a delusional Freder imagines the false-Maria as the Whore of Babylon , riding on the back of a many-headed dragon. The name of the Yoshiwara club alludes to the famous red-light district of Tokyo. Much of the plot line of Metropolis stems from the First World War and

5168-429: Was Mrs. Von Harbou's, but I am at least 50 percent responsible because I did it. I was not so politically minded in those days as I am now. You cannot make a social-conscious picture in which you say that the intermediary between the hand and the brain is the heart. I mean, that's a fairy tale—definitely. But I was very interested in machines. Anyway, I didn't like the picture—thought it was silly and stupid—then, when I saw

5244-491: Was buying the machines' output if not the workers, and found parts of the story derivative of Shelley's Frankenstein , Karel Čapek 's R.U.R. , and his own The Sleeper Awakes . Wells called Metropolis "quite the silliest film", but the New York Herald Tribune called it "a weird and fascinating picture". In The New Yorker Oliver Claxton called Metropolis "unconvincing and overlong", faulting much of

5320-716: Was distributed by Parufamet , a company formed in December 1925 by the American film studios Paramount Pictures and Metro Goldwyn Mayer to loan US$ 4 million to UFA. The film had its world premiere at the UFA-Palast am Zoo in Berlin on 10 January 1927, where the audience, including a critic from the Berliner Morgenpost , reacted to several of the film's most spectacular scenes with "spontaneous applause". However, others have suggested

5396-588: Was impressed with the film's message of social justice. In a 1928 speech, he said, "the political bourgeoisie is about to leave the stage of history. In its place advance the oppressed producers of the head and hand, the forces of Labor, to begin their historical mission". Shortly after the Nazis came to power, Goebbels told Lang that, on the basis of their seeing Metropolis together years before, Hitler had said that he wanted Lang to make Nazi films. German cultural critic Siegfried Kracauer later wrote of Metropolis , "The Americans relished its technical excellence;

5472-479: Was made." Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide 's entry on the film reads, "Heavy going at times but startling set design and special effects command attention throughout." Colin Greenland reviewed Metropolis for Imagine magazine, and stated that "It's a measure of the sheer power of Lang's vision that it survives this heavy-handed cosmetic modernizing quite intact. Inspired by his first sight of Manhattan, Metropolis

5548-451: Was positively overwhelming and that there were some exceptional performances. Critic Mordaunt Hall of The New York Times called it a "technical marvel with feet of clay". A review by H. G. Wells dated 17 April 1927 accused it of "foolishness, cliché, platitude, and muddlement about mechanical progress and progress in general". He faulted Metropolis for its premise that automation created drudgery rather than relieving it, wondered who

5624-418: Was recopied and returned to Germany to be the basis of the 1987 Munich Archive restoration . Despite the film's later reputation, some contemporary critics panned it. Variety 's first review of the film in Berlin considered the scenario to be weak and felt that the artistic work had been wasted on the manufactured story although did acknowledge that nothing had been filmed like it before and its effect

5700-527: Was seen again just two years later in Alfred Hitchcock 's film Blackmail (1929). The Maschinenmensch – the robot built by Rotwang to resurrect his lost love Hel – was created by sculptor Walter Schulze-Mittendorff. A whole-body plaster cast was taken of actress Brigitte Helm, and the costume was then constructed around it. A chance discovery of a sample of "plastic wood" (a pliable substance designed as wood-filler) allowed Schulze-Mittendorff to build

5776-453: Was too long and unwieldy, Parufamet commissioned American playwright Channing Pollock to write a simpler version of the film that could be assembled using the existing material. Pollock shortened the film dramatically, altered its inter-titles and removed all references to the character of Hel, because the name sounded too similar to the English word Hell , thereby removing Rotwang's original motivation for creating his robot. Pollock said about

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