Who is the Audience for This Movie?

Fans of silent films.

What I Liked About This Movie

For those of you out there that do not consider movies art I would highly recommend you watch Metropolis and afterward viewing it see if that opinion still rings true. If you were to judge the movie on visuals alone the architecture, set design, special effects and lighting are all staggeringly creative.

Metropolis contains highly industrialized architecture reminiscent of a society with a 1930’s mentality for design that still uses steam powered machinery. The visual style in no way looks reminiscent of the future of our technology but as a visual motif it fits the gloomy outlook of the future portrayed in the movie. Set design is for the most part is very art deco looking with a very cold lifeless vibe to it.

As for the special effects I was blown away by what Fritz Lang managed to pull off since Metropolis was shot in the mid 1920’s. After watching the movie I immediately watched its special features to find out how the effects were achieved and the filming techniques used were very inventive. Lighting plays quite a large key in the atmosphere setting throughout the movie with many of the single character shots being shot in a sort of softened fish eye lens style forcing your eyes squarely on the characters body/facial movements which is very important in silent films.

Do I really need to say more? I had heard many good things about Metropolis and it managed to exceed my expectations.

What Didn’t Work For Me

It’s too bad that this version of Metropolis was missing a lot of the movies original footage due to the fact that the original print had not yet been found; some of the missing scenes could be quite good too. For this reason I purposely did no talk about the story structure in my “likes” section of the review. At many points it looked like the people who pieced together the movie tried their best to make the movie as cohesive as possible but it is obvious they did not have enough to work with to succeed at creating a fulfilling experience.

Should You Watch This Movie?

Metropolis still has a significant impact when viewed by someone my age (21 as of this writing) I would easily call it a near classic. Recently all of the missing footage has been found so after I view the original cut that is forthcoming I will be re-reviewing Metropolis to see if problems I had with it are still apparent.

My Rating (Out of 13)