37. Metropolis

I first saw this about 15 years ago when Channel 4 showed the colour-tinted Giorgio Moroder rock opera version, running at 80 minutes. I loved it of course, and didn't even mind the music despite the multiple Razzie nominations. Then a couple of weeks ago I went to the cinema to see the newly rediscovered and lovingly restored almost complete version: pure black and white with an authentic score and a whopping 150 minute running time. Some of the difference in time is technical (the Moroder version was run at a slightly faster speed and used subtitles instead of intertitles) but also there are a lot of previously lost scenes added. In fact, there are now only a couple of scenes missing from the film shown at the 1927 Berlin premiere and they mark these in this version with title cards explaining what should be happening.

In a word, it's awesome and a completely different experience to the first time I saw it. In fact, apart from the iconic scenes everybody knows, it's as if they're two different films. If you've seen Metropolis before and you enjoyed it you owe it to yourself to catch this re-release.

The Metropolis of the title is a sprawling futuristic city with a stark division between the rich thinkers who live in luxury in their ivory towers and the practically enslaved working class who live underground and make the city's machines tick. Both halves are magnificently depicted. Above we have the incredible soaring tower blocks, opulent night-spots and fantastical transport systems - all modelled on the New York of the 20's, itself a futuristic landscape for European eyes. Down below are the machines: enormous, complex and industrial with little or no automation and requiring hordes of oppressed workers to run. The whole thing, of course, is an allegory of Communism but this wasn't the film's strong point for me. In fact, the central thesis of the film — that "between the head and the hands lies the heart" — is a bit heavy-handed (not to mention nauseating) and really didn't need to be repeated throughout the film; there is such a thing as subtext, y'know. That said, this was 1927 and audiences hadn't yet been subjected to thousands of films on this subject so maybe I'm just jaded.

While the politics might not be especially inspired, the film more than makes up for it in sexy robots. Mad scientist Rotwang — who has more than a shade of Strangelove about him — creates the man-machine to replace his dead love and it takes on the appearance of Maria, the leader of an underground movement for better working conditions. With Maria out of the way, the evil doppelgänger actually encourages the workers to rise up so that the city boss has an excuse to kill them off and replace them with an army of robots. It's not quite that simple, though, as Rotwang plans to double-cross him and his son has grown a conscience and rebels (mostly because he's trying to pull Maria).

Brigitte Helm is probably the best thing about the film. It's an incredible performance: virginal and strong as Maria; deranged and sexy as hell as the robot. I can't have been the only person in the audience who preferred the evil version, though, erotically writhing around with those maniacal eyes. It is actually surprisingly risqué, not that I was complaining. Evil Maria does like to touch herself and even in metal form she's built for sex appeal. And that dance, phew! I've read that Fritz Lang (the director) was a bit of a tyrant and that the shoot was hell for many of the cast, especially Helm, but it clearly got the best out of her.

The film is chock full of iconic scenes: the transformation scene, obviously; Freder at the clock (but lord knows what mechanism he's actually working there); the children fleeing the rising flood waters; Rotwang chasing Maria through the pitch-black tunnels; and of course those amazing Futurama cityscapes. It's exciting and intelligent and massively influential to not only science fiction film makers. Perhaps in another 15 years they'll have discovered the last missing pieces in some cave in Afghanistan and I'll go and see it again.