Ray Bradbury once called Fritz Lang's seminal science fiction classic Metropolis a silly film. With all the truncated films versions circulating around the world for the past eight decades combined with the simplistic panacea to class conflict ("The Mediator between the Head and Hands must be the Heart") that bludgeons its way through the narrative, it is hard not to agree with Bradbury. That is until a revelatory restoration of the Lang film was conducted by The Murnau Foundation in 2002. At 125 minutes, the restoration was the most complete version available since the original 1927 original, which logged in at 153 minutes. The 2002 restoration lends the film a greater depth -- a 1927 version of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The film reveals itself like a midnight delirium. Set in 2026, Metropolis, the futuristic city, is a barometer for class warfare (Lang's Metropolis is based on his initial impressions of New York City upon sailing into New York Harbor), with the effete rich enjoying creature comforts high in the sky while the beaten down workers toil in an underground dystopia of purposeless machines and skull-filled catacombs. Freder (Gustav Frohlich), the son of the city's cool industrialist ruler, Jon Fredersen (Alfred Abel), cavorts in fairyland abandon in the upper reaches of the city -- "Far away from Them. High in the Heaven. The Sun. The Light."

But when the lovely and angelic Maria (Brigitte Helm) interrupts Freder in the midst of chasing a carefree flapper around a fountain, she looks him in the eye and, her arms around a bunch of bedraggled children, says, "Look, these are your brothers." Freder is smitten. She exits, but Freder rushes after her, following her down to the lower depths, where he sees how the other half lives. Taking pity on the hard-pressed worker drones, he tries his hand at toiling away at the machines, decides Maria has a point, and begs his father to help the workers. Fredersen, meanwhile, strikes a deal with the mad scientist Rotwang (the great Rudolf Klein-Rogge of Dr. Mabuse fame), who kidnaps Maria and clones her into a slinky strumpet of a robot, who moves among the underground workers and stirs the workers into an uprising against Fredersen's Metropolis. Freder is caught in the middle as the simmering resentment rises up from the depths and the city explodes.

In the previous versions of Metropolis, the ridiculous love-at-first-sight match-up between Freder and Maria (the pure-hearted mother figure of the depths) was the hook of the story. It is still the central plot point, but it is now mellowed with the additional footage revealing a post-death rivalry of Jon Fredersen and the mad scientist Rotwang for Fredersen's deceased wife, Hel, expanding both characters' motivations and moving their roles more front and center in the unfolding drama of the film.

But what turns the film into a mad nightmare is Lang's pre-Riefenstahl, pre-Speer architecture, a massive production design that overpowers the actors on such a scale that they are transformed into moving masses of architecture themselves. It is not hard to imagine why Hitler wanted Lang to run the German film industry (upon receiving the offer from Goebbels, Lang took the midnight train and fled the country).

The film's influence can be felt in practically every science fiction film made since -- if you have any doubts, check out the City of Zion in The Matrix Reloaded or the Los Angeles of Blade Runner. Metropolis has become part of the great mass film unconscious.

Eureka's UK DVD includes the restored 2001 cut, plus commentary trak from historian Enno Patalas, a 44-minute making-of documentary, and a nine-minute vignette about the restoration.



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