Metropolis the Archetypal Science Fiction Film

Fritz Lang's science fiction epic Metropolis (1927) with its Manhattan skyline inspired utopian cityscape, iconic characters and epic score is a film better known for its imagery and for what it represents than as a film in its own right.

Looking back on the film from a point in time further forward than the film's own 'futuristic' setting, everything about it can seem dated and cliché ridden. Every twist, turn, conceit and character familiar to the point of distaste. (See the mad scientist, ranting in his lair. Watch the hero, battling his daddy issues which pursuing his noble goal. Marvel at the score and the scale of the world created. Gasp at the angelic heroine and the evil doppelganger.) But look a little closer and it becomes clear that this is not merely a classic genre piece, but in fact the archetypal genre piece. Metropolis was the first truly epic science fiction film. Even viewed today in its incomplete state the film runs for almost two hours.

This is the film that made science fiction cinema intellectually respectable, wherein the themes and patterns that make up the genre, as we know it today were established. In Metropolis' re-imagining of the Manhattan skyline in the creation of its own, there lies the forerunner of the modern sci-fi cityscape where a familiar city forms the foundations using the retention of contemporary landmarks melded with sections which are completely re-written. Here the city remains a poetic image, not yet evolved into a character in its own right, but nonetheless capturing and embodying the notion of the city as an eternal ideal, of modernity, aspiration and transcendence, ultimately outliving its creators, familiar yet not, close yet forever out of reach. Like all utopian narratives the metropolis of the title takes on the doubly fictional persona, serving both as setting and story. A place where past, present and future become conjoined within a commoditisation of the space/place itself. Even at the most superficial level this adds a layer of intertextual reference and cultural meaning which enables the viewer to respond and relate to the film's world.