Metropolis

Man, oh man oh man!!! I mean Ger"man". The art of perfection has always evaded me, so when I see a practioner of this high art succeed they always command my complete respect as do the makers of this 1927 German silent sci-fi flick.

Metropolis tells the story of a future metropolis where the ruler class reside in fantastic architectural masterpieces above the earth enjoying the fruits of labor of the worker class who live in subterranean caves under the ground and who report daily to ten hours of intense manual labor for their rulers. The story is not much of a crowd puller, but the technical perfection of this Fritz Lang classic which was shot 80 years ago is beyond words. The special effects in the movie are so convincing, you wonder how they could have made it possible such a long time ago with equipments that lacked any sophistication to do it.

As a student of architecture few years back, we had used a lot of graphics from metropolis as a background for our posters, pamphlets etc without knowing about the source where it came from. The architectural eye of the movie makers, constructing a future city is a point to be applauded. After watching the Metropolis, the making of the film(bonus materials) is worth a watch to know how the German film makers made the impossible possible within their limited technical resources. There is definitely a lot of science behind this science-fiction film.