Reader discussion: Metropolis

Public reader discussion about Metropolis in the WeRead Catalog by Thea von Harbou.

The 1927 film "Metropolis" is truly peculiar, and I'm not entirely certain how to interpret it.

By heatherkey1989

At first it really felt like the movie was backing the workers getting organized for a revolution, with that whole communist vibe. But then the ending kind of goes nowhere—Metropolis doesn’t seem to change much at all. It almost looks like the workers just accept that the upper class is still in charge. I also got the weird sense like two different people made the film with totally different ideas. There’s this big clash between the start and the ending, like one part wants revolution and the rest ends up saying the rich will stay running the city.

Was wondering if any of you comrades had taken the time to watch Metropolis (1927 silent film) and had any thoughts on it

By Reed_Shadow

This movie looks gorgeous, but the ending feels pretty shady to me, and the message seems pretty naive—almost like it’s trying to be reformist. You could even argue it has reactionary vibes. Like, the workers go through this whole revolution, but then they end up basically following the woman who talks about peace with the city leaders. So it’s kinda pushing class harmony even though everything in the city is unequal. And they only actually get the revolution through the really destructive parts because they’re being influenced by that “evil mad scientist.” By the end it seems pretty clear that the revolt was pointless and nothing really changes in Metropolis. Overall, it makes struggle look negative, and it doesn’t really give the working class much credit for organizing or thinking on their own. Also, did you know it was one of Mussolini’s favorite movies?

[Theme: Sci-Fi] #3. Metropolis (1927)

By turtleDistant

Robots go way back, like way before anyone even had the tech for it—there are stories/refs to mechanical stuff in ancient places like China, Greece, and Persia. But they were basically hands-on contraptions, not something that could really do things on its own. So when people talk about machines acting independently, that feels like it only really shows up in the 20th century, and even now it’s still kinda limited. Because of that, Maschinenmensch feels like this perfect early sci-fi “look into the future” moment, even though it’s also got that old myth-ish vibe too. As for Metropolis (1927), I’m not totally sure how to read its influence, but it’s hard to ignore. It feels like it helped set the tone for a lot of later sci-fi—stuff like the whole robot/android identity angle in Blade Runner, and even the more “iconic robot” vibe that later shows up in Star Wars. Visually it’s got that Art Deco style, and it’s probably part of why Art Deco stayed so popular. Also, it’s kind of wild that it’s both the oldest and one of the newest films on the list—because it got cut up and was basically missing for years. Then a 16mm copy from the original got found in Argentina in 2008, and after restoration it finally premiered in 2010. And then there’s the messy part: Lang later wasn’t too happy about the film, maybe because of its message and who ended up liking it. Meanwhile Goebbels was super into it, and the writer/ Lang’s wife (Thea von Harbou) later became a pretty early Nazi supporter. That whole situation makes me feel like the film’s history is almost as complicated as its themes.

Recommendations for books (B1/B2) - social science fiction/psychology?

By late_otter

I can totally read translated stuff, but I’d really like to find some German authors instead. I don’t read a ton yet, but I’m starting to get into it, and the ones I’ve liked most are Brave New World and Flowers for Algernon. Does anyone have suggestions for similar social science fiction / psychological books by German writers? Thanks!

Any lovers of the classic Film Metropolis?

By spoonBear1980

Really loved this movie. I saw it in high school like 30 years ago, then watched it again a couple years ago with my husband—he’d never seen it before. He basically fell for it right away.

What did you think of Metropolis aside from it's cinematic achievement?

By ivoryHoney

I’m curious what you thought about the story itself. I honestly loved it for the first couple hours, like genuinely amazing, but I felt like the ending didn’t really land. It almost seemed like it was unintentionally turning the workers into villains or something, and then it just sort of abruptly ends with that handshake. I know it was supposed to be foreshadowed and symbolic and all that, but I still didn’t feel satisfied. What did you think?

Interesting utopias

By basilcomet77

I saw George R. R. Martin say something along the lines of “if you write a utopia, you’ll probably end up with a pretty boring story,” and I get why he’d think that. But is it really that cut-and-dried? I can’t help wondering if there are actually good, interesting books that set things in paradise-like places or mostly happy settings—without turning into total snoozefests.

Metropolis (1927), dir. Fritz Lang

By orangeFinch

This is one of my favorites for sure!

Metropolis, by Thea von Harbou; 1926. Cover by Kurt Degen, 1928.

By electricDragon14

I’ve got a pretty newer edition that seems to rework the same cover art: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51wX49vUigL.jpg Anyway, the movie is obviously a classic. I don’t think a ton of people know about the novel, but it feels like a decent companion to the film and it’s probably worth checking out.

What is the proper pronunciation of Harbou?

By MoonQuill2006

Hey from the US! I’m running into a problem for a school project about the German author/screenwriter Thea von Harbou (she wrote *Metropolis* in 1925). I’m trying to figure out how to pronounce “Harbou,” but I’m not sure which one is right. I keep seeing a few options: 1) Har-Boo (like something spooky would say) 2) Har-Bow (like a present bow) 3) Har-Bau (like “Bauhaus”) Maybe it’s a regional dialect thing, but I really can’t tell. If anyone knows the correct way, I’d really appreciate it. Danke!

Metropolis Pt. 2 book first impressions

By Crimson_Saddle3913

I’m about five chapters in, and I usually like listening more than reading, but I’m actually having fun with this one. Peter Orullian really did a good job turning the album’s story into a book, and it’s keeping my attention the whole way through, paragraph after paragraph, just like the album did. That’s what I think—what about you? 🫵

Metropolis (1927, Fritz Lang) / Blade Runner (1982, Ridley Scott)

By Orchid89

I watched Metropolis on TV a while back and it kinda hit me that it’s not just one of the earliest films to show an artificial humanoid—it might also be some of the earliest cyberpunk stuff on film too, at least. And I thought it was funny how the Schüfftan process got its name from Eugen Schüfftan, since he used it a lot in Metropolis. Then later a modified version of it was used for the “glowing eyes” in Blade Runner, which is a neat connection.

Fritz Lang was a Nazi. Metropolis is fascist propaganda, and Christian leftists should not celebrate it.

By stone-lunar

A lot of Christian leftists seem to really like Fritz Lang’s 1927 Metropolis because of the spiritual stuff and the class stuff. At first glance, sure, it looks like a revolt story, with some ordinary guy standing up to the people in power and shaking the whole city. But like a lot of Lang’s films, there’s a lot more under that. If you look at it more closely, it feels pretty openly fascist to me and basically pushes against socialist ideas. The script was written by Lang’s wife at the time, Thea von Harbou, from her own novel. She was a Nazi, and from 1932 on she was in the party all the way through WWII. Her fingerprints on the movie’s politics are hard to ignore, and her writing makes it pretty clear she thought fascism was the way to bring Germany back to order and greatness. In one 1933 essay she even called National Socialism the political shape of the German will to live, create, and rule. Lang himself joined the Nazi Party in 1934, and there was even a point where the Nazi flag was flying over the house he shared with von Harbou. He later ran out of Germany, and like a lot of Nazi collaborators, he tried to remake himself as some kind of secret anti-Nazi who was supposedly undermining them from inside while taking their money. Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir kind of fit that same thing too, but that’s another issue. Film scholar Tom Gunning says in The Films of Fritz Lang that Metropolis is, in its style, its story, and its politics, deeply tied up with a fascist way of thinking. He points to the way the workers are shown like empty machines, just this faceless crowd of drones. The movie also really leans into the idea of the “strong leader,” through Freder, who is supposed to bring the split city together and restore order. Gunning says the whole messianic charismatic-leader thing is one of the big fascist propaganda tropes. What’s even worse is how the workers’ uprising is shown as wild, destructive, and basically pointless. Peter Bradshaw said in The Guardian that the film treats the rebellion as a danger to the existing order, and that order is treated as something good, needed, and in the end victorious. Metropolis basically paints the working class as violent savages who can’t govern themselves. It loosely follows the Tower of Babel story, but then it weirdly ends with Freder’s father, basically the Babylonian king stand-in, still in charge! And this is after he’s used a robot to brainwash people and grab total power, said more than once that he doesn’t care if the poor live or die, and just tried to carry out mass murder against them. Then the film ends with “The mediator between the head and the hands must be the heart.” In Lang and von Harbou’s world, the workers are just the “hands” and apparently too dumb to think, so we need some superior strong leader with “tough love” to keep the masses in line. Honestly, Metropolis should be talked about in the same breath as Triumph of the Will and Birth of a Nation. Yeah, they’re technically impressive and important for film history, but like those movies, the politics here are disgusting, and that’s obvious if you watch it with even a little critical distance. And just because a work takes shots at capitalism doesn’t automatically make it leftist. Metropolis wasn’t even the first thing to compare capitalism to Molech. In recent years there’s also been a lot of fascist infiltration into left spaces, and the fact that so many leftists miss the blatantly fascist message here feels like a good example of how culturally illiterate the modern left can be, and why that’s dangerous. If you don’t have a solid grip on history and culture, it’s easy for decent people on the left to get pulled in by far-right manipulators and smooth talkers. Stay woke. Amen.

Time and Again- too descriptive?

By figOwl559687

I just finished Time and Again by Jack Finney, and honestly I didn’t really get into it. Other than the first part (like the first 30 pages or so) and the ending (last 30), it felt pretty boring and I wasn’t very engaged. Maybe it would’ve landed better if I lived in NYC, but a lot of it just went on about what people were wearing and what the city looked like back in the 1800s.

Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927) FULL FILM

By StoneWrites2004

Every time I see this movie’s title, I end up humming Kraftwerk’s “Metropolis.” I do really like the film, though—just not as much as Lang’s “Woman in the Moon.”

Books dealing with Metropolis at night and loneliness

By SilentReef

This is kind of a weird question, but I’ve always been drawn to big cities, the whole rundown/decadent vibe, and that gloomy, kind of lonely feeling you get when you’re walking around the outskirts of industrial areas. Does anyone know of a book that can give off that mood? Could be a novel, an essay, or even a diary-type thing. Thanks!