Critical Analysis Of Metropolis

“There can be no understanding between the hand and the brain unless the heart acts as mediator.” Mediation and reconciliation serves as the central narrational and visual theme of Fritz Lang’s 1927 masterpiece Metropolis. As a commentary on the changing modern world, the film juxtaposes the image of the city against an idyllic conception of the medieval world. Lang’s manipulation of mise-en-scène creates a complex understanding of the future––one that blurs the line between the past, present, and future. Metropolis is set in the distant future, yet narratively and thematically addresses the state of the present world through medieval Christian themes and doctrines. In its attempt to come to terms with the social landscape of post-World War

The workers who slave away at the machines and give rise to the metropolis are forced to bury themselves beneath the city in their underworld, while the rich live above and engage in frivolous pleasures at the expense of these workers. Although Metropolis uses the medieval as the point of reference for this innate desire for social harmony and equality, the film also stems from this tradition of the Gothic, whose narrative consists of a clash between opposing elements. According to Gilda William’s “How Deep is Your Goth?,” elements always present in the Gothic consists of “two things that should have remained apart––for example: madness and science, the living and the dead technology and the human body; the pagan and the Christian; innocence and corruption are brought together, with terrifying consequences.” The overarching narrative revolves around the character of Freder the son of the city manager, played by Gustav Fröhlich, as he discovers the bitter reality of Metropolis’s working class and attempts to become the mediator and bring peace to the city. Maria’s evil doppelganger, played by Brigitte Helm, acts out Metropolis’s and contemporary German society’s aversion to modernity as the problematic amalgamation of human and machine, who brings about the apocalyptic chaos and destruction of the city. She is the representation of the modern understanding of the Gothic, similar to Frankenstein’s monster. Lang structures Metropolis around a series of binaries such as human and machine, present and past, and upper and lower class that must all be reconciled in one form or