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Metropolis (Fritz Lang). A foundational ‘text’ and image for many contemporary imaginations of the city Represents an urban dystopia stemming from a crisis in capitalist labour and class relations
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Metropolis (Fritz Lang) • A foundational ‘text’ and image for many contemporary imaginations of the city • Represents an urban dystopia stemming from a crisis in capitalist labour and class relations • Set in 2026, in the city-corporation of Metropolis, with a dual society sllit between planners/thinkers (who live high above the earth in luxury), and workers who toll underground to sustain the privileged • Fable illustrates class struggle and emancipation, female empowerment, power of technology (M-Machine, Heart Machine) ‘Without the heart there can be no understanding between the hands and the mind’ • Incredible and mind-boggingly expensive special effects ($200 m in today’s money) • Pioneered the Art Deco style, skyscrapers, monorails, airships, CCTV!
"I saw the buildings like a vertical curtain, opalescent, and very light. Filling the back of the stage, hanging from a sinister sky, in order to dazzle, to diffuse, to hypnotize” (Fritz Lang)
Things to think about … • Society the film represents (economic inequality, relations of production, cultural features of the family and econom) • Economic relations (who controlls production? capitalism • Treatment of nature • Political struggles