Sequence Analysis of Fritz Lang's Metropolis

Résumé ou Introduction

Urban modernity, Berlin’s “Golden Twenties”, the cinematographic city -no other movie evokes these clichés more vividly than Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Since its publication in 1926/27 it has ever again been praised but also brought a lot of criticism among the audience and reviewers.Metropolisstands out from the fantastic film of the silent film era and introduced a new genre in Germany, science-fiction. It compounds motifs of expressionism, “Neue[r] Sachlichkeit”, and pulp fiction. Moreover, there are elements of film noir, which connects elements of expressionism and French poetic realism. These elements became obvious in the Father-Son conflict, the existence of a double, the architecture, and the camera-and lighting effects (bright/ dark contrasts/ low-key lighting, iris shatter). Lang manipulated the lighting in Metropolis to reflect harsh contrasts between humanity and technology. Lang’s mammoth piece still has a huge impact on contemporary film as we can see inStar Wars(1977),Blade Runner(1982), and The Fifth Element(1997).
In this following paper I’m going to analyse a ten-minute sequence that starts in the eternal garden and ends after the explosion in the underworld of the workers. I will focus my analysis on editing, i.e. camera shots, and lighting since both parts play a very- if not the most- important role for the narrative ofMetropolis.Moreover, the camera shots used and some invented inMetropolisgave way for the following and contemporary films.
In this piece of work the original version ofMetropolis-which has been restored by the Friedrich-Wilhelm Murnau foundation- and was seen in the premiere on 10 January 1927, serves as a primary source.