"Having conceived Babel, yet unable to build it themselves, they had thousands to build it for them. But those who toiled knew nothing of the dreams of those who planned. And the minds that planned the Tower of Babel cared nothing for the workers who built it. The hymns of praise of the few became the curses of the many."
Silent German Sci-Fi film from 1927, directed by Fritz Lang. Considered one of the forerunners of the genre and one of the most expensive films ever made.It tells the story of a society divided in two, the workers on the underground and the wealthy on the exterior, how Freder, the son of the supreme ruler of the city, falls in love with a worker named Maria and the class confrontation between them fueled by Rotwang, a Mad Scientist rival of Freder's father Fredersen.Aside from its progressive storytelling, it is also known for being heavily fragmented, the results of both heavy Bowdlerization in its trip to foreign markets, and of poor preservation techniques back in the '30s (plus a little thing called World War II).Up to 25% of the original footage was considered lost before turning up in a museum in Argentina in 2007, albeit in inferior picture quality. The rediscovered footage was cleaned up as well as possible and integrated into the existing restored footage. The rediscovered version also confirmed the exact running order of shots, which in previous versions could only be guessed at. This new version runs only about five minutes short of the original 1927 German cut, as opposed to nearly an entire hour shorter in some versions. Unfortunately, two scenes still remained too badly damaged to restore, and were replaced by title cards. It made its big US debut at the Turner Classic Movies festival in 2009 and on television on Turner Classic Movies in November 2010. This nearly complete version was released on DVD and Blu-ray in late 2010.This Troperiffic film is either the Trope Codifier or possible Ur Example for approximately 76.5% of science fiction tropes. Not to be confused with the anime film of the same name, which is Suggested By but not adapted from it.Also notable is the 1984 color-tinted restoration by composer Giorgio Moroder, which was only available on VHS and LaserDisc due to its controversial80'spop soundtrack. Until now, anyway. Moroder's version is now available on Netflix instant streaming (alongside the full restored cut), and a DVD/BD release is soon to follow. In the UK, a 2-hour cut of Metropolis is available for streaming on LoveFilm.com.
Mechanique, a DC comics robots villainess, IS supposed to be the (time traveling) creation of Rotwang (and is obviously based on Robot!Maria.)
The robot, before the transformation into Maria, looks quite a bit like C-3PO. Also, the transformation sequence itself was elaborated and refined in Frankenstein.
Aerith and Bob: The names of the characters are not exactly typical, everyday names. While names such as Georgy (the slavic version of George), Fredersen (a Scandinavian or Low German name) and Rotwang (a German or Yiddish surname) might be still justifiable, names like 'Joh', 'Hel' and maybe even Josaphat (an outdated Hebraic name) are much less so.
Explosive Overclocking: The Heart Machine after the robot Maria and the workers overload it.
Flying Car (possibly, as far as its usual sci-fi portrayal goes; the planes dashing between buildings may not look like cars, but seem to fill the same role, and similar shots remain popular today)
Mad Scientist with Einstein Hair (strangely enough, this was prior to most of Einstein's fame, but then again, who wants to have a trope called "Rotwang Hair?"
Consequently, many find that Metropolis Is Unoriginal: This movie's tropes, characters, visual style, and special effects have been mimicked to the point of exhaustion. Ironically, on its release people criticized the plot for borrowing heavily from Victorian melodramas and other sci-fi stories; H. G. Wells in particular felt he'd been plagiarized. So some of it may be even older than people think.
Alternative Calendar: The workers' day has 20 hours (and their work takes ten), the rich people's the usual 24.
Ambiguously Gay: Freder. It could be the fact that he seems to have the strangest affinity for hugging and caressing every human being he comes across, gender be damned.
Artificial Limbs: Rotwang's right hand, because for some reason creating a robotic body requires a human hand as an ingredient.
As The Good Book Says: Maria reinterprets the story of the Tower of Babel as a failure of labor relations. A preacher quotes Revelation Chapter 16 in a missing scene, which is later reprised in flashback during Freder's fever dream.
Background Halo: Maria gets this quite a bit, especially as she is preaching to the workers in the catacombs.
Bad Export for You: Up until 2003, nearly every version of this movie released in America was based on the heavily edited Channing Pollock version. And then there was the version made in The Eighties... an... interesting experiment.
Character Tics: Robot-Maria's jerking her shoulders, whiplashing her neck and squinting her left eye a bit. Rotwang has a habit of raising his left eyebrow whilst thinking, and Freder grabs hold of anybody who happens to be nearby when he rants.
The Constant: Rotwang's house is beyond ancient, and sticks out like a sore thumb wedged in amongst the skyscrapers. It also has a secret door leading to The Catacombs.
Cool Car: The Rumpler Tropfen-Auto. Probably a greater percentage of the total production run of them were destroyed for Metropolis than Dodge Chargers were for The Dukes of Hazzard.
Crucified Hero Shot: With the Paternoster Machine turned into a metaphorical clock that is going backwards, all the while threatening to overload and explode.
Death by Childbirth: Freder's mother died giving birth to him, which is another reason Rotwang eventually decides on revenge against the Fredersens.
Disneyfication: Fritz Lang admitted after making the movie that saying "The mediator between the head and hands must be the heart!" is too simplistic of a way to deal with labor-management relations.
The musical took this statement and ran with it, choosing to go with a complete Downer Ending where the mutual hate between both classes combines to doom the entire city but a small handful of survivors, mostly Maria's students.
Ditzy Genius: Maria again. She is an amazing orator with the political will and ambition to push for equality among the upper and lower classes... and when sufficiently frightened she has a tendency to run with arms flailing away from safety, bouncing into walls along the way.
Driven to Suicide: After he is fired, Josaphat puts a gun to his head, since he is likely to be sent down below with the workers and have all his money taken. Luckily, Freder stops him and offers him a job.
Elves VS Dwarves: Rich, hedonistic millionaires against poor, dirty underground workers. Basically.
Evil Plan: Initially shown to be Joh Fredersen, though it turns out that Rotwang was the real Chessmaster behind the near-destruction of Metropolis.
In the novel, it's strongly implied that Fredersen was in control the whole time, including over Rotwang's plan, and was just waiting for Rotwang to monologue about it so he'd have an excuse to finally kill him, which is why he was waiting outside the window. This mirrors his plan for the workers.
Explosive Instrumentation: Apparently, if the machines(especially the heart machine) are left unwatched for just a few minutes, they blow themselves up with lots of sparks and arc lightning thrown out. The workers don't really have to do anything to successfully turn out all the power in the city.
Eye Tropes: In Yoshiwara, during Maria's dance, there's a montage of eyes watching her.
Fanservice: Sure, the scene of robotic Maria dancing provocatively while topless except for large pasties shows just how different she is from the real girl; but it is also definitely Fanservice, and there is even a flashback to it later it the film for no real reason.
The Grim Reaper: He has a statue along with the 7 deadly sins in the cathedral. When Freder falls sick, he has a dream of it coming alive, and advancing on him with it's scythe.
Heroic Sacrifice: Georgy steps in front of a knife meant for Freder.
I Have You Now, My Pretty: Every scene between Rotwang and Maria. Especially the one before the transformation sequence.
Keep Circulating the Tapes: Every version was different for decades. And the only full version surviving was apparently acquired by a collector before the first cuts were made, then wound up in an archive.
Fredersen: I must know! Where is my son?! Thin Man: Tomorrow, thousands in this city will be asking the same question, in fury and desperation: "Joh Fredersen, where is my son?"
Leitmotif: Gottfried Huppertz's original score, as reconstructed and recorded in 2003 (and again in 2009), features these significantly. Freder, his father, Rotwang, Maria, Robot Maria, the machines of Metropolis, the nightclub-goers in Yoshiwara, and the uprising workers all have their own recurring themes.
Lost Forever: The rest of the film until it turned up in Argentina.
Love Makes You Evil: Rotwang wants to destroy the city because Freder's mother chose the city's ruler over him. And then died giving birth to said ruler's son.
Love Makes You Crazy: The Club of the Sons members start killing themselves and each other over the Maria Machine.
Mad Scientist: Rotwang. Again, one of the first, and the best.
Magic from Technology: Robot Maria's transformation. Of course, Rotwang's whole theme has all the trappings of a wizard as well as a scientist...
Magic Versus Science: This is Rotwang's whole theme. Inside a giant future Mega City is a little thatched cottage inside of which is a pentagrammed Mad Scientist Laboratory inside of which is a man dressed in robes with a robot hand. Robot Maria's transformation makes him practically a necromancer. In fact the whole film is both a pioneer of sci fi despite being very heavy on biblical imagery.
Male Gaze: Dramatically demonstrated with the montage of eyes watching Robot Maria during her striptease.
Milking the Giant Cow: Rotwang only loves one thing more than Hel, and that is wild gesticulation. Robot-Maria shares his liking for it, too.
Missing Episode: Missing a third of the entire movie for many years. Even with the rediscovered version, there are still two missing scenes; one of which is heavily plot-relevant. To make matters even worse, there have been rumors that there are even more missing scenes that were cut from the film before it's German premiere to help shorten the time of the film. It may be very likely that Lang didn't destroy these scenes and there may be even more unseen footage for this film.
Mobile Maze: Rotwang's house. The doors can be completely sealed at a whim, which his uses against Freder and Maria at different points.
Morality Chain: In the novel, Hel for both Joh Frederson and Rotwang. She not only kept both men from killing each other (though you could hardly blame them, what with their love triangle and all), she also made sure both men didn't let power go to their heads.
Joh: Let the dead rest in peace, Rotwang. She's as dead for me as she is for you. Rotwang: She isn't dead for me, Joh Fredersen! For me, she lives! [gesticulates wildly]
No OSHA Compliance: Something of a plot point: The "M-Machine" that Freder stumbles upon during his trek through the underground city overheats and explodes, injuring or killing everyone stationed at it. The dead and wounded are casually hauled off and a new set comes in to take their place. Witnessing this scene is what makes Freder sympathetic to the workers' plight.
Case of Truth in Television and Justified Trope: Safety-oriented machine design, safe operation rules and reimbursements for incidents are relatively modern concepts. Work conditions depicted in the movie were not so different from the work in early 20th-century factories.
Oedipus Rex: Freder fighting his father and Rotwang with Rotwang's confusion of Maria with Hel together make a Freudian theme. Freder just thinking he's seen Maria with his father causes him instant mental collapse.
Omnicidal Maniac: Rotwang wants to kill the Fredersens and destroy the city.
Overclocking Attack: To destroy the Heart machine. Grot tries to stave off Robot-Maria with a big wrench.
Reality Subtext: Maybe. Fritz Lang's wife, Thea von Harbou, was originally married to actor Rudolf Klein-Rogge, but she had an affair with Lang and ultimately divorced Rogge. In the movie and in the original book, the woman Hel was married to Rotwang (played by Rogge) but eventually had an affair and married Joh Fredersen. As Harbou wrote the original screenplay and story, it's possible she wrote it as a parallel to her own life situation, so a lot gets made of this coincidence. But on the other hand, Lang and Rogge remained good friends and worked together until Lang left Germany, while Rogge also continued to work with Harbou on several other movies.
Red Right Hand: Rotwang. As he says: "Isn't it worth the loss of a hand to have created the workers of the future?"
Reluctant Mad Scientist: In some versions of the edit, Rotwang really just wants his lover back.
Replacement Goldfish: Rotwang originally wanted the robot to replace Hel, before Joh ordered him to make it into a duplicate of Maria.
The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: Well, the workers don't really want to kill their masters, just blow up the machines. But they don't think it through very well...
Say My Name: A rare silent example occurs after Maria's kidnapping, where Freder runs through the city "shouting" Maria's name via intertitle cards.
Schizo Tech owing mainly to Zeerust. Notable in the use of ticker-tape machines and 1920's era automobiles everywhere.
Specifically, consultation of the ticker tape causes Fredersen to immediately contact the Foreman on a flatscreen video phone/surveillance monitor.
Seven Deadly Sins: Fake Maria is seen as the epitome of this. Statues of the seven deadly sins are shown and even animated during a dream sequence, while she sits on top of a statue of a seven-headed dragon.
Shaming The Mob: Foreman Grot finally manages to calm down the rioting workers and make them realize what they'd done in flooding their own city by saying "Where are your children?!"
Shout Out: Oscar Wilde's quote "The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it" on a Yoshiwara flyer.
Lang's wife Thea von Harbou, who co-wrote the Metropolis script and had written the original novel, joined the Nazi Party in the early 1930s. The couple divorced not long after that. While Lang emigrated to America soon after the Nazi takeover, von Harbou remained in Germany and made movies for the Nazis until the end of World War II also brought an end to her career.
Standard Snippet: The "Dies Irae" theme figures heavily in the original soundtrack by Gottfried Huppertz, as does a tweaked version of the Marseillaise.
Technicolor Science: In a black and white film no less. Rotwang's lab when he is transforming his mechanical girl has milky white liquids, transparent liquids, and dark colored liquids all boiling and bubbling away in strangely shaped glass containers.
Thousand Yard Stare: Josaphat's BSOD after being fired by Fredersen. He's so shocked and unable to focus that he can't find the doorknob on his way out.
Throw It In: In the scene where Joh Frederson admits that he needs Rotwang's help after his experts were stumped, Rotwang simply smirks, as though to say "Well, there's no denying I am a genius." The truth is, Rudolph Klein-Rogge (Rotwang) simply forgot his next line, but stayed in character enough to make his smirk look intentional, and Alfred Abel (Frederson) just proceeded to his next line.
Title Drop: Rotwang talking to Joh Fredersen calls the city "your metropolis". No Name Given?
In a restored scene, the Thin Man can be seen◊ reading a copy of the Metropolis Courier.
Torches and Pitchforks: Or rather wrenches and lanterns. For the workers and upper classes respectively (although the latter did not initially intend anything destructive. But once they collide with the workers...).
The Tower: "Gigantic, unimaginably huge, looms-over-everything" variety.
Tower of Babel: referenced, with significant alterations. Maria's retelling alters the facts and changes the moral. The hubris is inverted ("And on the pedestal these words appear: 'Great is the world and its Maker, and great is Man!'") and retribution comes from paying too much attention to the idea and ignoring the workers. There is no confusion of tongues, but another clever inversion ("The praises of one became the curses of another. Although they spoke the same language, they could not understand one another's words"). The New Tower of Babel at the heart of the city is absolutely untouched by the destruction and the divided classes are reunited.
Two Guys and a Girl: The backstory of Rotwang, Hel, and Joh. It didn't end well.
Joh: Surely a mind like yours must be able to forget... Rotwang: (shaking a fist in Fredersen's face)I only ever forgot one thing in my life: that Hel was a woman and you a man!
Unfortunate Name: Oh, poor Rotwang. A child with a name like that was doomed to become evil. While it doesn't sound too awkward for a German surname the pronounciation of it is very important. For the record its "Rot-vang" as in "Red Cheek" (make of that what you will) not "Rot-wang" as in "Decomposingmalegenitialia".
Urban Segregation: Again, almost a Trope Codifier, with the rich living in gardens and clubs high above the city, and the workers living in a poorly built underground city.
Villainous Breakdown: Rotwang, after Joh Fredersen ambushes and beats the crap out of him.
In an audio commentary it is suggested that this is intentionally done by the city's leaders, so they have better control over the lower classes. In reality, machines are supposed to make life easier and be able to function without humans.
What Could Have Been: Moroder made the rock opera version after outbidding David Bowie, among others, for the rights. God knows what he... scratch that, probably even God doesn't know what Bowie would have done with Metropolis.
Rule of Symbolism, for the most part. You have crucifixion imagery, giant clock face, personified Whore of Babylon, retelling of the Tower of Babel story, animated gargoyles personifying Death and the Seven Deadly Sins, a hidden church in catacombs, an inverted pentagram, talk about "brothers and sisters", the machine as Moloch...
What Happened to the Mouse?: Georgy (11811), the worker Freder takes the place of at the dial machine, after he goes into Yoshiwara. His story was expanded on in the footage that was later cut and, until recently, Lost Forever. When the workers start rioting, they rush at Freder, but Georgy protects him and is stabbed to death.
Much of the lost footage also pertains to the Thin Man, who follows Freder, Georgy, and Josaphat at Joh Fredersen's behest.
While Rome Burns: The happy crowd from the Yoshiwara club while the city is being blacked out by the workers' revolution.
Moroder's version is now available on Netflix instant streaming (alongside the full restored cut), and a DVD/BD release is soon to follow. 
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