“Metropolis,” September 18

Wednesday, September 18, 6 p.m.

The Last Picture House, 325 East Second Street, Davenport IA

Currently boasting a 97-percent "freshness" rating on aggregate Rotten Tomatoes, where the film's critical consensus calls it "a visually awe-inspiring science-fiction classic from the silent era," Fritz Lang's legendary 1927 opus Metropolis serves as the third presentation in the German American Heritage Center's German Expressionist Film Series, this masterpiece also lauded by Roger Ebert as "a work so audacious in its vision and so angry in its message that it is, if anything, more powerful today than when it was made."

Filmed in Germany during the Weimar period, Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia, and follows the attempts of Freder, the wealthy son of 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 city master Joh Fredersen. The film's message is encompassed in the final inter-title: "The Mediator Between the Head and the Hands Must Be the Heart." Directed by Lang and adapted, by Thea von Harbou, from her 1925 novel of the same name, Metropolis stars Gustav Fröhlich, Alfred Abel, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, and Brigitte Helm. Erich Pommer produced the future classic in the Babelsberg Studio for Universum Film A.G., and Metropolis is commonly regarded as a pioneering science-fiction film, being among the first feature-length ones of that genre. Filming took place over 17 months in between 1925 and '26 at a cost of more than five million Reichsmarks.

At first, Metropolis met a mixed reception from audiences and reviewers. Most critics found it visually beautiful and powerful, with the film's art direction by Otto Hunte, Erich Kettelhut, and Karl Vollbrecht drawing 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. They also lauded Metropolis' complex special effects, but accused its story of being naive. H. G. Wells famously described the film as "silly," while The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction calls the story "trite" and its politics "ludicrously simplistic."

Yet Metropolis is now widely regarded as one of 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, Lang's film was inscribed on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register, the first film thus distinguished. In Film Quarterly, Lane Roth 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, meanwhile, included Metropolis on his list of "39 Essential Foreign Films for a Young Filmmaker," while film historian Cristobal Catalan suggested that "Metropolis is a passionate call, and equally a passionate caution, for social change."

Metropolis will be presented at The Last Picture House at 6 p.m. on September 18, and $15 admission includes a medium popcorn. For more information on the screening and the German American Heritage Center's German Expressionist Film Series, call (563)322-9944 and visit GAHC.org.