The Heart Machine

"Let's all watch as the world goes to the devil."
Metropolis (1927)

Points for Reflection

Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927)

1. Why might Fritz Lang’s tripartite subdivision of the film (Prelude, Intermezzo, Furioso) invoke musical language?  Is there something inherently musical about the film’s structure, scenes, or characters—independent of the original musical score composed by Gottfried Huppertz?
2. Would the mechanisms shown in the film’s opening accord with systems familiar to the viewing audience of the early twentieth century, or do they appear unrealistic?
3. At what points does the film employ painted backgrounds instead of actual sets or intricate, built models?
4. Do the elite folk address factory workers by their name or their number (both are knit onto their cap)?
5. How closely does the musical score of this film map onto its action?
6. How do the factory workers move from place to place, and why?
7. Do the Eternal Garden and Club of the Sons service the desires of both sexes equally?
8. How does Maria’s appearance compare with that of the women in the garden?
9. Does Erfinder C. A. Rotwang gender the robotic Hel?
10. What appears to be Maria’s agenda in bringing the workers’ children to the top of the city?
11. What appears to be the primary energy source underpinning the factory visited by the young Master Freder?
12. What does Freder see, in his mind’s eyes, when he looks up at the machine following the explosion he witnesses?   
13. Does it appear that Joh Fredersen, Freder’s father, has a domestic life separate from his professional one?
14. Why might the filmmakers assign the male protagonist, Freder Fredersen, a surname similar to his first name?
15. How extensive is Joh Fredersen’s power?
16. How does Joh Fredersen respond to the idea, voiced by his son, that those in the depths might one day rise up against him?
17. What does Grot, the foreman, show Joh Fredersen when he visits him at the top of New Babel?
18. How much of what Fredersen says to Josaphat, in his son’s presence, is a choreographed performance?
19. Is Freder’s ignorance of the city’s underpinnings (prior to the film’s opening credible?
20. Can you determine the nature of the Yoshiwara club visited by Georgy?
21. How have the filmmakers designed the building housing Rotwang, the inventor, to distinguish it from the rest of the city?
22. What created, long ago, a lasting tension between Erfinder Rotwang and Joh Fredersen?
23. What features has Rotwang given the robotic replacement for Hel, prior to its adopting the guise of a human?
24. Grot, the foreman, cannot tell Joh what the plans found on dead factory workers actually depict.  Who later explains their function to Joh?
25. How long are the shifts at the factory?
26. Do the workers move in the catacombs the same way they move in the factory?
27. What religious iconography surrounds Maria as she speaks to the tired workers?
28. How similar is the set design of the Tower of Babel (a legend recounted by Maria) to the design of Fredersen's New Babel?
29. How does Maria’s telling of the Babel legend compare to that recounted in Genesis 11:1-9?
30. What sort of mediator does Maria seek to unite brain (Joh Fredersen and his ilk) with the hands (factory workers)?  What characteristics must this individual presumably have?
31. Describe the emotional tenor of the moment shared by Maria and Freder in the catacombs.
32. Which of the two older men realizes that Freder has descended into the catacombs? 
33. Right after hearing Federsen’s directive that Rotwang give the machine man a particular human’s likeness, Rotwang reveals (to the audience), that he will actually do what? 
34. Is the gender-based assault that begins in the catacombs and extends above ground—taking place across two separated scenes—so stylized that it discourages emotional involvement?
35. How closely does the illustration used by the preaching monk in his doomsday sermon map onto the femme fatale who later appears in an elite nightclub?
36. When the Narrow Man finds Georgy, does he refer to him by name or number?
37. does Der Schmale (the Narrow Man), who works for Joh Fredersen, appear superhuman?
38. Does Rotwang’s lab resemble any other mad scientists’ labs you’ve seen in film?
39. What lands Freder in a sick bed?
40. What book does Joh grasp when we first see him out of bed following his illness?
41. Are Freder’s visions mere hallucinations?
42. Do the Machine Man’s movements before the city’s male elite, the “Upper Ten Thousand,” seem more fluid than robotic?
43. As the Machine Man rises on a platform upheld by black men, they transform into the Seven Deadly Sins.  Who is witness to this transformation?
44. How does the robot’s dancing affect its audience?
45. Does Freder Fredersen believe that the Maria he encountered above ground is the same as she he met in the catacombs?
46. Why does Joh Fredersen allow those in the depths to revolt?
47. Rotwang says that the Machine Man does his will, not that of that Joh Fredersen. To what action does the machine man call the workers?
48. What non-verbal devices does the Machine Man use to rouse the workers to action?
49. How does Maria gain her freedom?
50. Does the revolution involve many women?
51. Do the numbers of children appear to match the numbers of adult workers?
52. What has the central machine, on which the entire factory district relies, been named?
53. How integrated is the energy system powering the subterranean, ground-level, and skyscraper-high levels of Metropolis?
54. What combination of factors preserve the kids’ lives?
55. What does the Machine Man tells its followers once the lights go out?
56. What imperils Maria’s life towards the film’s close? 
57. Does the film finally interrogate or uphold that classist prejudice which would consider workers as mindless drudges?
58. What does Rotwang call Maria in the film’s closing moments, and how does this complicate his treatment of her?
59. As our heroes struggle to survive in an air shaft, what dramatic camera action does Lang employ to capture their desperation?
60. Does the film incorporate blood loss to concretize the inevitable product of violence?
61. Is the closing scene intended to be socially realistic, or artistically symbolic?
62. In what scenes does Lang employ superimposition, the layering of multiple images viewed simultaneously?
    

Metropolis (1927)
Maria

Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.edu