Metropolis (1927)

Today, I watched Metropolis, a black and white, German, silent film that was filmed in 1927. The movie was in, a present day's opinion, a wreck, but in 1927, it was probably a cinematic masterpiece. I did not dive into this film thinking that it was going to be like "Transformer" just because Metropolis was said to be a futuristic, science fiction movie that was set in the year 2026, but I did show expectations from other black and white films I've seen. Metropolis had to deal with the fact that there was no sound, so expressionism was the form of molding that could keep it together.

The story surrounded the protagonist, Feder, who was living in the lap of luxury in his father's metropolis. During his daily flirting session (or so that's what it looked like) he feasts his eyes on a girl, Maria, who was from the work city. She came to the metropolis to show all the workers' children what the rich people do (bringing them to a place full of half-naked women was not the best destination, though). Dead set on meeting his new target again, Feder travels to the work city to find his new fling. There, he sees a work station explode (or get covered in skin-boiling steam). Appalled by this, he brings it up to his father. Now, this is where the film sort of lost me. His father quickly fires someone, which somehow pisses off Feder. Feder travels back to the work city, switches identity with a worker, which is spotted by some snakey fellow named the "Thin Man." He finds the girl, Maria, who he's been crushing on, who tells a random story of Babylon and claims a prophecy that calls for a mediator who will connect brain and hand through heart. Maria and Feder connect very closely after this meeting and they both decided that Feder is the mediator. Then this creepy mad scientist named Rotwang decides that making a machine man and showing it to Feder's father, while telling him he made it because he was obsessed with his dead wife is a great idea. Feder's father, oddly comfortable (well, as comfortable as a creeped out man could be) decides that Rotwang should use the machine man to clone Maria. Then I get lost yet again, because Feder goes into a 10 day coma after seeing his father with robo-Maria. Riots break out, men kill each other, Feder's work city buddy gets shanked and the work city starts flooding. Back track. Maria was kidnapped by Rotwang in order for the cloning to be done, she eventually escaped. Anyways, Feder's dad and Rotwang fight, then Feder fights Rotwang. Rotwang dies. Feder brings his father to the leader of the work city, the shake hands and everything is good with the world. Oh, and robo-Maria is burned at the stake.

I know this review is fairly lengthy, but I just wanted to cover all bases. I did some connection between Metropolis in other movies. Any specific ones are crude and hard to point out. The closest one I could think of, and this is odd, but The Dark Knight Rises flood scene and the flood scene in Metropolis seem kind of crudely similar. Insane robots could be linked to I,Robot, Transformers and Surrogates. Other than that, if I was Ebert and Robert, one of my thumbs would be up for playing with what technology they had at the time and one thumb would be down, just because it was so lengthy and time consuming, I actually fell asleep at times.