"Were someone to carry out a survey today into the most well known title from Germany's filmmaking history, Metropolis would certainly win hands down." "Yet, had critics at the time been asked to bet on which German film would be remembered some 70, 80 years after its launch, none would have put so much as a penny on it." "THE CASE "metropolis"" "It would appear that it is the very contradictory and inconsistent nature of this film, that made it such a flop in the 1920s, is the reason for its consistent up-to-dateness." "How did it happen?" "How did German cinema come to Metropolis?" "The emergence of German cinema following World War One was marked by another film." "The writers intended the film to be a kind of reckoning with the autocracy of Wilhelminian Germany." "The collapse of which allowed German cinema to blossom for the first time." "The collapse of traditional social values released energies, which now flowed into the new art." "Before the war, the path towards the aesthetic formation of German cinema was being laid by expressionism in literature and the arts." "By the painters of The Bridge in Dresden, by the Blue Rider in Munich." "By George Grosz in Berlin." "Expressionism in art and literature was followed by Expressionism in the theatre." "It was followed by expressionist architecture, initially just designs." "Followed by:" "cinema." "Metropolis was the last expressionist film, Caligari, the first one." "Caligari is, above all, the work of painters Hermann Warm," "Walter Reimann and Walter Röhrig, writers Carl Mayer and Hans Janowitz and actors Werner Kraus and Conrad Veidt." "The architect, Hans Poelzig, built the ghetto of Der Golem." "Architects, painters, theatre people and writers were all strongly drawn to the medium of film." "Film seemed to offer the opportunity to counteract the division between progressive elitist and reactionary mass entertainment." "Theatre director Karlheinz Martin, set designer Robert Neppach and the actor Ernst Deutsch made a movie from Georg Kaiser's play" ""From Morning until Midnight", which by the way was" ""the first German black and white film", all others had been coloured." "The painter Walter Ruttmann calls his abstract or "absolute" film" ""Lichtspiel Opus 1 , 2, 3 and 4"." "The creation of these films at a time other than this would have been impossible." "The mark's devaluation enabled the German industry to sell its films cheaply abroad, it also made the German market uninteresting for imports." "Four, five, six hundred films were now being produced in Germany every year, an unprecedented chance for all manner of trash and art." "The first ones to achieve international standing are films by Ernst Lubitsch." "He too came from the theatre, from Max Reinhardt." "He swapped the theatre for the cinema." "Another student of Reinhardt's, who had enjoyed a friendly relationship with the expressionists before the war:" "Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau." "Next to Caligari, his Nosferatu plays a major role in establishing prestige for Germany's cinema in its arch enemy's capital, Paris." "Then Paris raves about another German film, Der müde Tod" " The Weary Death." "The film by a Viennese born:" "Fritz Lang." "The painter Lang, during a leave from the front, started writing screenplays." "He got his first screen credit for the first time with Hilde Warren and Death." "During a sick leave, Lang also appeared on stage as an actor:" "Then, Erich Pommer saw me and we talked about filming." "Pommer liked what I had in mind." "Afterwards, he engaged me as a dramatic advisor." "I went to Berlin where l first worked as a dramatic advisor." "For Erich Pommer's production company Decla." "Seven films, for which he had written the screenplay, were premiered in 1919." "I didn't really like the way my films were staged." "Then I wrote a film named "Halbblut" in which DECLA was very interested in." "So I said, ok, I'll sell it to you under the condition that I'll direct it." "During the inflation years, Lang makes film after film after film." "At this time they had a poster in Berlin:" ""Berlin, your dancer is the death."" "Der müde Tod - artistic prestige for Lang came with his eighth film." "Death itself is featured as an architect, narrator and director." "He has built a wall with neither door nor windows." "The young woman," "Lil Dagover, whose lover has been taken away by death, sees in her dreams a gap opening in the wall." "Only in death does she find her way back to her lover." "After the fairy tale a detective novel." "Dr. Mabuse, the gambler, a picture of the era... and inferno." "People of the era." "Dr. Mabuse is the archetype of this era." "He is a gambler." "He plays cards, he plays Roulette, and he plays with people." "He plays with her destiny." "Mabuse too is a producer, and is himself a part of his production." "Mabuse has no face, he is an array of masks." "The actor playing him, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, was married to Thea von Harbou, screenwriter at Decla." "It was there she and Lang met." "They became a couple." "Shortly after the start of Dr. Mabuse the director and the writer married." "She is involved in all his films from 1920 to '33." "Lang's supporters always held Harbou responsible for the trash and clichés in his films." "Lang always defended her." "They were in agreement: for them, the newspaper novel was as valuable as fairytales and legends." "Just think about the brutality, barbarity and crime, accumulated in the most charming of German fairytales," "Lang wrote... and in German legend." "Lang filmed Die Nibelungen." "First film:" "Siegfried." "For her, writes Thea von Harbou, this was not the Song of Loyalty, but a tale of deceit and betrayal, murder and revenge, blame and penance in pitiless chains." "Second film:" "Kriemhild's Revenge." "Fritz Lang during the making of the film." "The Burgundians are coming, to celebrate Midsummer's Night in Etzel's banqueting-hall." "A Burgundian comes with a grave message." "For Lang, this presented both another architectural dream and nightmare." "The strict system of rule at the Burgundian court in the first part is answered in the second with the earthy shapes of the castle of the Huns," "when at the end, Etzel's castle is smoke and flames, one does not expect to ruin, the flames and the smoke are themselves moving architecture." "As the film premieres, the post-war period is at an end." "The mark has regained its stability, the laws of the marketplace are back in effect. ln the arts, New Objectivity is replacing Expressionism." "The heyday of inflation driven cinema is over." "So, too, the self-sufficiency of German filmmaking." "The Universum Film AG, in short Ufa, has developed into Germany's most powerful film company." "But now Hollywood is making huge efforts to get a foothold in the German market." "For a loan of 1 7 million marks, Ufa agrees to reserve half of all its cinema performances for films produced by Paramount and Metro Goldwyn and to grant these two companies the US rights of its own films." "The Par-Ufa-Met agreement, which would also decide the fate of the next Lang-von Harbou film." "The screenplay is written during a holiday in June 1924." "Ufa publicly announces the project in July." "Filming is scheduled to start in the Autumn." "But first Lang and Pommer sail to America on the steamer named Deutschland." "Also on board:" "the architect, Erich Mendelsohn." "Mendelsohn speaking about Lang:" "Apart from his monocle and other" "Viennese paraphernalia, he's a thoughtful, active and firmly daring person." "Harbour entrance, Mendelsohn writes, turns, spatial cataract, spatial battle, endless lush of victory." "Mendelsohn calls his journey a voyage of discovery for optics and mind." "The city fills with energy during the day, at night it bubbles with life, in a web of vehicle lights, in the bright calling of the billboards, in the vertical heights of the skyscrapers." "A photo by Lang." "He would later claim that it was New York's skyscrapers that provided him with the inspiration for Metropolis." "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 hypnotise..." "From New York Lang and Pommer travel to Hollywood, visiting studios, studying special effects, purchasing cameras." "Thea von Harbou, at the same time, is writing a novel and a screenplay." "The novel is serialised in a magazine from August 26 onwards, before being released as a book." "Announced on several occasions, delayed again and again, filming eventually begins on the 22nd of May 1925." "Filming takes place on the premises and in the studios belonging to Ufa in Neu-Babelsberg and the Zeppelinhalle at Staaken near Berlin." "Filming continues until the end of October 26, 310 shooting days and 60 nights." "Instead of the planned budget of one and a half million marks, the films final cost is reported to have been six million marks." "Metropolis begins as an abstract animation film." "The film's title is created from surfaces and lines and forms the bridge to the graphic design of the city-mountains." "Animated drawings are followed by animated models and then documentary shots." "Metropolis, the last expressionist film is also the first New-Objectivity film." "Reviewing the film, young Luis Buñuel wrote:" "Cinema is being used as a faithful interpreter, serving the boldest dreams of architecture." "Several city areas, vertically structured, can be identified." "The upper city consists of high-rise buildings, intersected by railways, road-traffic systems and aircraft, and is crowned by the multi-storey" "New Tower of Babel." "ln his first design," "Erich Kettelhut saw the medieval cathedral in the centre of the city, over which towered modern skyscrapers." "ln a revised second design, the cathedral's place has been taken by the New Tower of Babel, whose top floor was envisaged as a pentacle shaped aerodrome." "The Club of the Sons forms an independent area in the Upper City, a design by Kettelhut, with its stadium and with the Eternal Gardens, the playground of the jeunesse dorée of Metropolis." "Two alien elements in the modern upper city are Rotwang's Old House and the Gothic cathedral." "Somewhat distant from the Yoshiwara, the city's red light district." "Further down and accessed using steps:" "the machine area, including the M-, the Moloch-Machine, the Paternoster Machine, as it was called in the novel, and the Heart-Machine, the city's energy centre." "Below this, again connected to the upper floors by stairs, elevators and shafts, are the ancient catacombs with a kind of crypt at their centre." "Yet the buildings in Metropolis insinuate neither an intrinsic whole, nor a unified world." "Instead of three-dimensional buildings just sketches of non-executed architecture, indeed, not even intended to be executed..." "fantastic, imaginary architecture." "I am living, Lang said, through my eyes." "The camera for Lang is no longer an apparatus for passively recording pieces of action." "The camera, by moving slowly towards Gustav Fröhlich, expresses Mary's tender attentiveness." "Together with Freder's hand the camera reaches out for Mary's scarf." "Behind the camera, Karl Freund." "At Lang's request," "Pommer had purchased two Mitchell cameras while visiting Hollywood, the first of their kind to be used in Germany." "Here you can see them," "Karl Freund is beside the right one and Günther Rittau next to the left one, between the to cameramen their visiting Hollywood colleague Charles Rosher." "Another camera, to be used on the Metropolis set, was the Stachow-Filmer, a German-made light metal camera." "This panoramic shot from the scene in the Eternal Gardens was taken with a Debrie camera." "It was made, Rittau wrote, with the help of a small model in the form of a painted backdrop." "Because this model had to be photographed from very close up, the camera could not be allowed to move." "So we moved the model past the front of the camera instead." "The Debrie, in front of the model, with Rittau at the left side and Kettelhut, who created the relief picture." "Seeing with devices is the central topic in the scene with the video telephone." "Seeing and showing merge into one." "Günther Rittau described this as an interesting problem. lt was solved by projecting the image of the foreman Grot backwards onto the TV screen using a projector, before filming this with the camera positioned in front of it." "The projector and camera were phase connected to ensure they worked at the same speed." "The Tower of Babel at night, a "tricktableau" by Erich Kettelhut." "He wrote:" "On strong cardboard l drew two pictures of 60 by 40 centimetre format in the same naturalistic and minutely detailed manner as would be produced by photography." "My range of shadows stretched from black to mid grey, only the constantly illuminated windows were given a lighter shade." "If I wanted to depict a beam of light moving across the front of a building, I would have to erase millimetre for millimetre the same amount of shading from one side as I added at the other." "The picture would then be exposed and the process repeated until the beam of light disappeared completely from the picture screen." "And so I had to make around 1 ,000 individual images." "25 images for every second of the film." "So it can too be imagined, how from Kettelhut's drawing of daybreak the moving image of the city-mountains resulted." "Frame-by-frame shooting was one of three special effects processes used in the making of Metropolis." "Lang had seen this in Hollywood." "The set for the main shopping street combined two- and three-dimensional presentation - a relief model with painted background - the building in the foreground at a scale of 1 to 16 to the simulated heights, a painting of the New Tower of Babel in the background at a scale of 1 to 100," "three and a half meters representing three hundred and fifty." "For filming the shots of the traffic on the roads of the upper city, they used three hundred tiny model cars, each of which had to be moved forward by a few millimetres for each frame." "How did the M-Machine change into the Moloch?" "Using a combination of the Schüfftan' process and sliding mirror, writes Kettelhut, the Moloch head, which was positioned opposite the M-Machine, blended into the machine, with the image appearing from top to bottom." "The Schüfftan mirror trick process, the second special effect method used in Metropolis." "Eugen Schüfftan was a painter and architect and Hans Poelzig's assistant at the Berlin Academy of the Arts." "This proceedings brought me to the film, because I was very interested in moving pictures." "At that time we only knew still pictures." "This was the most important part of my proceedings, because the mirror is required for the depth of the picture." "Schüfftan's mirror trick process enabled the combined use of models and real scenery." "Here, between the model buildings on the street below can be seen the real pursuit of Mary by the crowd." "The same model was used in another take, with the addition of several abutments and a skyway, on which a model car runs, while on the street below two real worker gangs plod past each other." "To achieve this effect, a mirror mounted at 45º in front of the camera lens, reflecting the image of the miniature model positioned directly behind the camera." "Part of the mirror surface had been scratched away, so as to provide the camera an unrestricted view of the real scenery." "The lower floors of the buildings around the central square of the Workers' City were constructed to full scale." "The upper floors were mirror image models." "ln the Stadium of the Sons, the track and lower portion of the wall, ten meters high, were real." "The section above with buttresses and the dome in the background, were a mirror image of the model, 1/20 of the simulated size." "ln Rotwang's house, the memorial to Hel." "The head was a model 60 cm in height, a mirror image of which was projected above the headless pedestal, which, when taking a reverse angle shot of Rotwang flitting by the memorial, was used as a platform for the crew and camera." "The third special effect used for Metropolis: multiple exposure." "Not copying one on top of the other subsequently in the laboratory, but actually during the shoot, in the camera, on the same reel of film which had to be rewound several times." "Günther Rittau." "He was very helpful when I directed metropolis." "Particularly when we created the mechanical woman, when we created a human being out of a metal robot." "Due to his brilliant work I'm still sought after in America:" "How did you do that?" "The same piece of negative was exposed up to thirty times." "We first shot the mechanical person on the pedestal." "The figure then was replaced by a black silhouette, and around this figure two circular arched neon lights in tubes made from sandwich paper were moved up and down repeatedly by a type of elevator, filmed through a glass plate which was smeared" "with a thin layer of grease." "Finally, the electrical discharges were filmed without the greased glass plate." "Sets have become architecture, says Buñuel, costumes and make-up become sculpture." "Schultze-Mittendorf:" "The figures were actors wrapped in a layer in a gothifying style, made out of thick, hard and wired jute." "Their heads were encased in a full mask made from a new "malleable wood" material which had just appeared on the market." "The material could be sawn, grated, filed and planed." "The futuristic mechanical person is made from the same material." "Brigitte Helm had to be able to sit, stand and walk in the "costume"." "A plaster mould of the helmet was constructed onto which I directly attached the body, which could be broken down into several parts." "The same principle as for knight's armour." "The Metropolis music was composed - unusual for the time - during the filming." "Huppertz had already written the Nibelungen music." "The Metropolis music is dominated by leitmotifs to which characters and groups of characters and even particular content have been assigned, for example, as it is called by the composer, the motif of the epigram." "Or the opening titles music." "Mechanically-rhythmic Ostinato figures accompany the machine scenes." "Two dances are assigned as specific settings: the Yoshiwara... and the "Eternal Gardens"." "After the magnificent premiere at the Ufa-Palast am Zoo, the film runs at a 600-seat cinema, whose facade is silver-plated and adorned with a golden gong." "The film is seen there by 15,000 people." "Then the distributor withdraws the film." "When the film is re-released six months later, its length, following the example of the American version, has been reduced by one quarter." "Paramount commissioned playwright Channing Pollock with the task of editing the film." "ln his autobiography, he makes fun of the mechanical woman through which Rotwang wants to give new life to his dead love." "The story was of an inventor who, widowed and not liking it, built for himself a second wife constructed of steel." "She must have been, I should think, an uncomfortable bed-fellow on winter nights." "The adaptor builds a different story into the film, one which can be told using the available shots." "Not a very original story, based on the Frankenstein theme." "Pollock turns the rival of Fredersen, whom he calls Masterman, into his faithful assistant." "Rotwang worked for 30 years in order to realize Masterman's great dream:" "It is not clear though, why he is so angry." "It is also puzzling as to why Rotwang endows the mechanical man, who is meant as a robot, to replace the workers, with female attributes." "How do we know what these scenes looked like in the version screened at the premiere?" "One source is Huppertz' musical score, to be exact: the bandmaster's copy." "It contains keywords for the conductor, to allow him to conduct the music synchronous to the images and titles." "For the scene in Rotwang's house the following is written:" "Paramount writes "John Masterman."" "But then:" "for this and in the further key words the images are missing in the existing versions." "Only once in my life did I forget..." "Let the dead rest in peace..." "For me, she is not dead, Joh Fredersen." "Rotwang's hand." "That could be this." "Do you think that losing a hand..." "Do you want to see her?" "Spiral staircase..." "We are familiar with this." "Another document providing insight into the original version is the censorship certificate which contains the text of the titles." "We read, for the third reel of film:" "Hel, born for my happiness..." "This has no equivalent in the score." "A mind like yours:" "This was a keyword in the score." "This too:" "I have forgotten only once." "The score said, Let the deads rest in peace." "Obviously a typographical error." "A still explains the keyword "Memorial's pedestal" in the score and shows the text reproduced on the censorship certificate." "Another still shows the memorial with the Head of Hel." "If we also study the surviving screenplay, we understand other keywords in the score as well:" "This explains "Curtain up"." "Fredersen close-up the score said." "The text of the titles we know from the censorship certificate." "How they must have looked, a surviving torso of the shortened German version tells us." "Thus we can imagine the sequence." "Here lives Rotwang, the inventor." "Joh Fredersen in front of a dark curtain, with his back in direction to the camera." "He draws a cord." "The curtain opens to both sides." "Fredersen is standing on the left side." "His hand reaches into the curtain." "He looks surprised and sees in front of him:" "His eyes fall on the words engraved on the pedestal." "Hel, born for my happiness and mankind's blessing." "Lost to Joh Fredersen, died giving birth to Freder," "Joh Fredersen's son." "Rotwang has silently entered the room, Pauses, sees..." "Fredersen in front of the monument moving his hand like he's about to touch the name on the pedestal." "Furious, he rushes to the monument... and tears closed the curtain." "They stand in front of each other." "Although Fredersen is annoyed he controls himself." "Rotwang is furious." "The angrier he becomes, the calmer grows Joh Fredersen." "A brain like yours, Rotwang, should be able to forget..." "Only once in my life did I forget   and you a man..." "Let the dead rest in peace, Rotwang." "For you, as for me, she is dead." "Metropolis and other failures forced Ufa to forge a connection with nationalist Hugenberg's Scherl Corporation." "Lang formed his own company, which produced his last two silent films." "The first, Spies, a thriller along the lines of Dr. Mabuse, again with Klein-Rogge." "The second, The Woman in the Moon, pure science fiction, not a mixture with other genres, as in Metropolis." "A trip to the moon... von Harbou had envisioned this already for Metropolis:" "Freder and Mary were supposed to leave the earth and fly into space with a spaceship." "Three years and two Lang-von Harbou films later - their first sound films - world economic crisis, unemployment as well as political and economic backers bring an admirer of Lang's to power." "Goebbels, his propaganda chief, told Lang that after attending a screening of Metropolis, Hitler said he wanted its director to create the national socialist cinema." "Reichsminister for Economy and" "Agriculture, Hugenberg, the Boss of Ufa." "Goebbels banned M and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, but continued to offer Lang a great future." "As Lang remembers later:" "1933... in March, beginning of April." "Goebbels offered me the leadership of the German film industry, I went to Paris that same night." "I didn't want to come back to Germany." "After 9 months in Paris I went to the States." "Lang directed 21 films in Hollywood, for MGM, Paramount," "Centfox, Universal, Columbia... usually never more than two consecutive films for the same company, then three more in Germany, the last in 1960:" "The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse." "The elements criticised in the twenties aided the revival of Metropolis from the nineteen-eighties onwards into the new century: the mixture of genres, styles and time levels..." "That there is no clear line between past and future, that antiquity and middle ages provide models for the future..." "That the city of the future doesn't broaden systematically but instead grows wildly to delirious heights in small a space..." "That it sees political and economic power in a single hand and does not envision the two in liberal opposition, the megacity as a company's empire..." "That associations are made between science and magic, enlightenment and myth..." "That it allows a man to dream of recreating his lover, which fate has taken away from him, as a replicant..." "That it fails to present a modern realistic image of the plight of the workers, and instead gives a metaphorical picture based on the early age of capitalism..." "That it generally favours similes, metaphors and allegories over confidence in the sensual perception and rational analysis of the outside world..." "That as the only remedy for dissolving contradicting class interests it offers an appeal to the good will of the social partners..." "Subtitles:" "VlCOMEDlA 1 1/2002 �" "Were someone to carry out a survey today into the most well known title from Germany's filmmaking history, Metropolis would certainly win hands down." "Yet, had critics at the time been asked to bet on which German film would be remembered some 70, 80 years after its launch, none would have put so much as a penny on it." "THE CASE "metropolis"" "It would appear that it is the very contradictory and inconsistent nature of this film, that made it such a flop in the 1920s, is the reason for its consistent up-to-dateness." "How did it happen?" "How did German cinema come to Metropolis?" "The emergence of German cinema following World War One was marked by another film." "The writers intended the film to be a kind of reckoning with the autocracy of Wilhelminian Germany." "The collapse of which allowed German cinema to blossom for the first time." "The collapse of traditional social values released energies, which now flowed into the new art." "Before the war, the path towards the aesthetic formation of German cinema was being laid by expressionism in literature and the arts." "By the painters of The Bridge in Dresden, by the Blue Rider in Munich." "By George Grosz in Berlin." "Expressionism in art and literature was followed by Expressionism in the theatre." "It was followed by expressionist architecture, initially just designs." "Followed by:" "cinema." "Metropolis was the last expressionist film, Caligari, the first one." "Caligari is, above all, the work of painters Hermann Warm," "Walter Reimann and Walter Röhrig, writers Carl Mayer and Hans Janowitz and actors Werner Kraus and Conrad Veidt." "The architect, Hans Poelzig, built the ghetto of Der Golem." "Architects, painters, theatre people and writers were all strongly drawn to the medium of film." "Film seemed to offer the opportunity to counteract the division between progressive elitist and reactionary mass entertainment." "Theatre director Karlheinz Martin, set designer Robert Neppach and the actor Ernst Deutsch made a movie from Georg Kaiser's play" ""From Morning until Midnight", which by the way was" ""the first German black and white film", all others had been coloured." "The painter Walter Ruttmann calls his abstract or "absolute" film" ""Lichtspiel Opus 1 , 2, 3 and 4"." "The creation of these films at a time other than this would have been impossible." "The mark's devaluation enabled the German industry to sell its films cheaply abroad, it also made the German market uninteresting for imports." "Four, five, six hundred films were now being produced in Germany every year, an unprecedented chance for all manner of trash and art." "The first ones to achieve international standing are films by Ernst Lubitsch." "He too came from the theatre, from Max Reinhardt." "He swapped the theatre for the cinema." "Another student of Reinhardt's, who had enjoyed a friendly relationship with the expressionists before the war:" "Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau." "Next to Caligari, his Nosferatu plays a major role in establishing prestige for Germany's cinema in its arch enemy's capital, Paris." "Then Paris raves about another German film, Der müde Tod" " The Weary Death." "The film by a Viennese born:" "Fritz Lang." "The painter Lang, during a leave from the front, started writing screenplays." "He got his first screen credit for the first time with Hilde Warren and Death." "During a sick leave, Lang also appeared on stage as an actor:" "Then, Erich Pommer saw me and we talked about filming." "Pommer liked what I had in mind." "Afterwards, he engaged me as a dramatic advisor." "I went to Berlin where l first worked as a dramatic advisor." "For Erich Pommer's production company Decla." "Seven films, for which he had written the screenplay, were premiered in 1919." "I didn't really like the way my films were staged." "Then I wrote a film named "Halbblut" in which DECLA was very interested in." "So I said, ok, I'll sell it to you under the condition that I'll direct it." "During the inflation years, Lang makes film after film after film." "At this time they had a poster in Berlin:" ""Berlin, your dancer is the death."" "Der müde Tod - artistic prestige for Lang came with his eighth film." "Death itself is featured as an architect, narrator and director." "He has built a wall with neither door nor windows." "The young woman," "Lil Dagover, whose lover has been taken away by death, sees in her dreams a gap opening in the wall." "Only in death does she find her way back to her lover." "After the fairy tale a detective novel." "Dr. Mabuse, the gambler, a picture of the era... and inferno." "People of the era." "Dr. Mabuse is the archetype of this era." "He is a gambler." "He plays cards, he plays Roulette, and he plays with people." "He plays with her destiny." "Mabuse too is a producer, and is himself a part of his production." "Mabuse has no face, he is an array of masks." "The actor playing him, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, was married to Thea von Harbou, screenwriter at Decla." "It was there she and Lang met." "They became a couple." "Shortly after the start of Dr. Mabuse the director and the writer married." "She is involved in all his films from 1920 to '33." "Lang's supporters always held Harbou responsible for the trash and clichés in his films." "Lang always defended her." "They were in agreement: for them, the newspaper novel was as valuable as fairytales and legends." "Just think about the brutality, barbarity and crime, accumulated in the most charming of German fairytales," "Lang wrote... and in German legend." "Lang filmed Die Nibelungen." "First film:" "Siegfried." "For her, writes Thea von Harbou, this was not the Song of Loyalty, but a tale of deceit and betrayal, murder and revenge, blame and penance in pitiless chains." "Second film:" "Kriemhild's Revenge." "Fritz Lang during the making of the film." "The Burgundians are coming, to celebrate Midsummer's Night in Etzel's banqueting-hall." "A Burgundian comes with a grave message." "For Lang, this presented both another architectural dream and nightmare." "The strict system of rule at the Burgundian court in the first part is answered in the second with the earthy shapes of the castle of the Huns," "when at the end, Etzel's castle is smoke and flames, one does not expect to ruin, the flames and the smoke are themselves moving architecture." "As the film premieres, the post-war period is at an end." "The mark has regained its stability, the laws of the marketplace are back in effect. ln the arts, New Objectivity is replacing Expressionism." "The heyday of inflation driven cinema is over." "So, too, the self-sufficiency of German filmmaking." "The Universum Film AG, in short Ufa, has developed into Germany's most powerful film company." "But now Hollywood is making huge efforts to get a foothold in the German market." "For a loan of 1 7 million marks, Ufa agrees to reserve half of all its cinema performances for films produced by Paramount and Metro Goldwyn and to grant these two companies the US rights of its own films." "The Par-Ufa-Met agreement, which would also decide the fate of the next Lang-von Harbou film." "The screenplay is written during a holiday in June 1924." "Ufa publicly announces the project in July." "Filming is scheduled to start in the Autumn." "But first Lang and Pommer sail to America on the steamer named Deutschland." "Also on board:" "the architect, Erich Mendelsohn." "Mendelsohn speaking about Lang:" "Apart from his monocle and other" "Viennese paraphernalia, he's a thoughtful, active and firmly daring person." "Harbour entrance, Mendelsohn writes, turns, spatial cataract, spatial battle, endless lush of victory." "Mendelsohn calls his journey a voyage of discovery for optics and mind." "The city fills with energy during the day, at night it bubbles with life, in a web of vehicle lights, in the bright calling of the billboards, in the vertical heights of the skyscrapers." "A photo by Lang." "He would later claim that it was New York's skyscrapers that provided him with the inspiration for Metropolis." "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 hypnotise..." "From New York Lang and Pommer travel to Hollywood, visiting studios, studying special effects, purchasing cameras." "Thea von Harbou, at the same time, is writing a novel and a screenplay." "The novel is serialised in a magazine from August 26 onwards, before being released as a book." "Announced on several occasions, delayed again and again, filming eventually begins on the 22nd of May 1925." "Filming takes place on the premises and in the studios belonging to Ufa in Neu-Babelsberg and the Zeppelinhalle at Staaken near Berlin." "Filming continues until the end of October 26, 310 shooting days and 60 nights." "Instead of the planned budget of one and a half million marks, the films final cost is reported to have been six million marks." "Metropolis begins as an abstract animation film." "The film's title is created from surfaces and lines and forms the bridge to the graphic design of the city-mountains." "Animated drawings are followed by animated models and then documentary shots." "Metropolis, the last expressionist film is also the first New-Objectivity film." "Reviewing the film, young Luis Buñuel wrote:" "Cinema is being used as a faithful interpreter, serving the boldest dreams of architecture." "Several city areas, vertically structured, can be identified." "The upper city consists of high-rise buildings, intersected by railways, road-traffic systems and aircraft, and is crowned by the multi-storey" "New Tower of Babel." "ln his first design," "Erich Kettelhut saw the medieval cathedral in the centre of the city, over which towered modern skyscrapers." "ln a revised second design, the cathedral's place has been taken by the New Tower of Babel, whose top floor was envisaged as a pentacle shaped aerodrome." "The Club of the Sons forms an independent area in the Upper City, a design by Kettelhut, with its stadium and with the Eternal Gardens, the playground of the jeunesse dorée of Metropolis." "Two alien elements in the modern upper city are Rotwang's Old House and the Gothic cathedral." "Somewhat distant from the Yoshiwara, the city's red light district." "Further down and accessed using steps:" "the machine area, including the M-, the Moloch-Machine, the Paternoster Machine, as it was called in the novel, and the Heart-Machine, the city's energy centre." "Below this, again connected to the upper floors by stairs, elevators and shafts, are the ancient catacombs with a kind of crypt at their centre." "Yet the buildings in Metropolis insinuate neither an intrinsic whole, nor a unified world." "Instead of three-dimensional buildings just sketches of non-executed architecture, indeed, not even intended to be executed..." "fantastic, imaginary architecture." "I am living, Lang said, through my eyes." "The camera for Lang is no longer an apparatus for passively recording pieces of action." "The camera, by moving slowly towards Gustav Fröhlich, expresses Mary's tender attentiveness." "Together with Freder's hand the camera reaches out for Mary's scarf." "Behind the camera, Karl Freund." "At Lang's request," "Pommer had purchased two Mitchell cameras while visiting Hollywood, the first of their kind to be used in Germany." "Here you can see them," "Karl Freund is beside the right one and Günther Rittau next to the left one, between the to cameramen their visiting Hollywood colleague Charles Rosher." "Another camera, to be used on the Metropolis set, was the Stachow-Filmer, a German-made light metal camera." "This panoramic shot from the scene in the Eternal Gardens was taken with a Debrie camera." "It was made, Rittau wrote, with the help of a small model in the form of a painted backdrop." "Because this model had to be photographed from very close up, the camera could not be allowed to move." "So we moved the model past the front of the camera instead." "The Debrie, in front of the model, with Rittau at the left side and Kettelhut, who created the relief picture." "Seeing with devices is the central topic in the scene with the video telephone." "Seeing and showing merge into one." "Günther Rittau described this as an interesting problem. lt was solved by projecting the image of the foreman Grot backwards onto the TV screen using a projector, before filming this with the camera positioned in front of it." "The projector and camera were phase connected to ensure they worked at the same speed." "The Tower of Babel at night, a "tricktableau" by Erich Kettelhut." "He wrote:" "On strong cardboard l drew two pictures of 60 by 40 centimetre format in the same naturalistic and minutely detailed manner as would be produced by photography." "My range of shadows stretched from black to mid grey, only the constantly illuminated windows were given a lighter shade." "If I wanted to depict a beam of light moving across the front of a building, I would have to erase millimetre for millimetre the same amount of shading from one side as I added at the other." "The picture would then be exposed and the process repeated until the beam of light disappeared completely from the picture screen." "And so I had to make around 1 ,000 individual images." "25 images for every second of the film." "So it can too be imagined, how from Kettelhut's drawing of daybreak the moving image of the city-mountains resulted." "Frame-by-frame shooting was one of three special effects processes used in the making of Metropolis." "Lang had seen this in Hollywood." "The set for the main shopping street combined two- and three-dimensional presentation - a relief model with painted background - the building in the foreground at a scale of 1 to 16 to the simulated heights, a painting of the New Tower of Babel in the background at a scale of 1 to 100," "three and a half meters representing three hundred and fifty." "For filming the shots of the traffic on the roads of the upper city, they used three hundred tiny model cars, each of which had to be moved forward by a few millimetres for each frame." "How did the M-Machine change into the Moloch?" "Using a combination of the Schüfftan' process and sliding mirror, writes Kettelhut, the Moloch head, which was positioned opposite the M-Machine, blended into the machine, with the image appearing from top to bottom." "The Schüfftan mirror trick process, the second special effect method used in Metropolis." "Eugen Schüfftan was a painter and architect and Hans Poelzig's assistant at the Berlin Academy of the Arts." "This proceedings brought me to the film, because I was very interested in moving pictures." "At that time we only knew still pictures." "This was the most important part of my proceedings, because the mirror is required for the depth of the picture." "Schüfftan's mirror trick process enabled the combined use of models and real scenery." "Here, between the model buildings on the street below can be seen the real pursuit of Mary by the crowd." "The same model was used in another take, with the addition of several abutments and a skyway, on which a model car runs, while on the street below two real worker gangs plod past each other." "To achieve this effect, a mirror mounted at 45º in front of the camera lens, reflecting the image of the miniature model positioned directly behind the camera." "Part of the mirror surface had been scratched away, so as to provide the camera an unrestricted view of the real scenery." "The lower floors of the buildings around the central square of the Workers' City were constructed to full scale." "The upper floors were mirror image models." "ln the Stadium of the Sons, the track and lower portion of the wall, ten meters high, were real." "The section above with buttresses and the dome in the background, were a mirror image of the model, 1/20 of the simulated size." "ln Rotwang's house, the memorial to Hel." "The head was a model 60 cm in height, a mirror image of which was projected above the headless pedestal, which, when taking a reverse angle shot of Rotwang flitting by the memorial, was used as a platform for the crew and camera." "The third special effect used for Metropolis: multiple exposure." "Not copying one on top of the other subsequently in the laboratory, but actually during the shoot, in the camera, on the same reel of film which had to be rewound several times." "Günther Rittau." "He was very helpful when I directed metropolis." "Particularly when we created the mechanical woman, when we created a human being out of a metal robot." "Due to his brilliant work I'm still sought after in America:" "How did you do that?" "The same piece of negative was exposed up to thirty times." "We first shot the mechanical person on the pedestal." "The figure then was replaced by a black silhouette, and around this figure two circular arched neon lights in tubes made from sandwich paper were moved up and down repeatedly by a type of elevator, filmed through a glass plate which was smeared" "with a thin layer of grease." "Finally, the electrical discharges were filmed without the greased glass plate." "Sets have become architecture, says Buñuel, costumes and make-up become sculpture." "Schultze-Mittendorf:" "The figures were actors wrapped in a layer in a gothifying style, made out of thick, hard and wired jute." "Their heads were encased in a full mask made from a new "malleable wood" material which had just appeared on the market." "The material could be sawn, grated, filed and planed." "The futuristic mechanical person is made from the same material." "Brigitte Helm had to be able to sit, stand and walk in the "costume"." "A plaster mould of the helmet was constructed onto which I directly attached the body, which could be broken down into several parts." "The same principle as for knight's armour." "The Metropolis music was composed - unusual for the time - during the filming." "Huppertz had already written the Nibelungen music." "The Metropolis music is dominated by leitmotifs to which characters and groups of characters and even particular content have been assigned, for example, as it is called by the composer, the motif of the epigram." "Or the opening titles music." "Mechanically-rhythmic Ostinato figures accompany the machine scenes." "Two dances are assigned as specific settings: the Yoshiwara... and the "Eternal Gardens"." "After the magnificent premiere at the Ufa-Palast am Zoo, the film runs at a 600-seat cinema, whose facade is silver-plated and adorned with a golden gong." "The film is seen there by 15,000 people." "Then the distributor withdraws the film." "When the film is re-released six months later, its length, following the example of the American version, has been reduced by one quarter." "Paramount commissioned playwright Channing Pollock with the task of editing the film." "ln his autobiography, he makes fun of the mechanical woman through which Rotwang wants to give new life to his dead love." "The story was of an inventor who, widowed and not liking it, built for himself a second wife constructed of steel." "She must have been, I should think, an uncomfortable bed-fellow on winter nights." "The adaptor builds a different story into the film, one which can be told using the available shots." "Not a very original story, based on the Frankenstein theme." "Pollock turns the rival of Fredersen, whom he calls Masterman, into his faithful assistant." "Rotwang worked for 30 years in order to realize Masterman's great dream:" "It is not clear though, why he is so angry." "It is also puzzling as to why Rotwang endows the mechanical man, who is meant as a robot, to replace the workers, with female attributes." "How do we know what these scenes looked like in the version screened at the premiere?" "One source is Huppertz' musical score, to be exact: the bandmaster's copy." "It contains keywords for the conductor, to allow him to conduct the music synchronous to the images and titles." "For the scene in Rotwang's house the following is written:" "Paramount writes "John Masterman."" "But then:" "for this and in the further key words the images are missing in the existing versions." "Only once in my life did I forget..." "Let the dead rest in peace..." "For me, she is not dead, Joh Fredersen." "Rotwang's hand." "That could be this." "Do you think that losing a hand..." "Do you want to see her?" "Spiral staircase..." "We are familiar with this." "Another document providing insight into the original version is the censorship certificate which contains the text of the titles." "We read, for the third reel of film:" "Hel, born for my happiness..." "This has no equivalent in the score." "A mind like yours:" "This was a keyword in the score." "This too:" "I have forgotten only once." "The score said, Let the deads rest in peace." "Obviously a typographical error." "A still explains the keyword "Memorial's pedestal" in the score and shows the text reproduced on the censorship certificate." "Another still shows the memorial with the Head of Hel." "If we also study the surviving screenplay, we understand other keywords in the score as well:" "This explains "Curtain up"." "Fredersen close-up the score said." "The text of the titles we know from the censorship certificate." "How they must have looked, a surviving torso of the shortened German version tells us." "Thus we can imagine the sequence." "Here lives Rotwang, the inventor." "Joh Fredersen in front of a dark curtain, with his back in direction to the camera." "He draws a cord." "The curtain opens to both sides." "Fredersen is standing on the left side." "His hand reaches into the curtain." "He looks surprised and sees in front of him:" "His eyes fall on the words engraved on the pedestal." "Hel, born for my happiness and mankind's blessing." "Lost to Joh Fredersen, died giving birth to Freder," "Joh Fredersen's son." "Rotwang has silently entered the room, Pauses, sees..." "Fredersen in front of the monument moving his hand like he's about to touch the name on the pedestal." "Furious, he rushes to the monument... and tears closed the curtain." "They stand in front of each other." "Although Fredersen is annoyed he controls himself." "Rotwang is furious." "The angrier he becomes, the calmer grows Joh Fredersen." "A brain like yours, Rotwang, should be able to forget..." "Only once in my life did I forget   and you a man..." "Let the dead rest in peace, Rotwang." "For you, as for me, she is dead." "Metropolis and other failures forced Ufa to forge a connection with nationalist Hugenberg's Scherl Corporation." "Lang formed his own company, which produced his last two silent films." "The first, Spies, a thriller along the lines of Dr. Mabuse, again with Klein-Rogge." "The second, The Woman in the Moon, pure science fiction, not a mixture with other genres, as in Metropolis." "A trip to the moon... von Harbou had envisioned this already for Metropolis:" "Freder and Mary were supposed to leave the earth and fly into space with a spaceship." "Three years and two Lang-von Harbou films later - their first sound films - world economic crisis, unemployment as well as political and economic backers bring an admirer of Lang's to power." "Goebbels, his propaganda chief, told Lang that after attending a screening of Metropolis, Hitler said he wanted its director to create the national socialist cinema." "Reichsminister for Economy and" "Agriculture, Hugenberg, the Boss of Ufa." "Goebbels banned M and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, but continued to offer Lang a great future." "As Lang remembers later:" "1933... in March, beginning of April." "Goebbels offered me the leadership of the German film industry, I went to Paris that same night." "I didn't want to come back to Germany." "After 9 months in Paris I went to the States." "Lang directed 21 films in Hollywood, for MGM, Paramount," "Centfox, Universal, Columbia... usually never more than two consecutive films for the same company, then three more in Germany, the last in 1960:" "The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse." "The elements criticised in the twenties aided the revival of Metropolis from the nineteen-eighties onwards into the new century: the mixture of genres, styles and time levels..." "That there is no clear line between past and future, that antiquity and middle ages provide models for the future..." "That the city of the future doesn't broaden systematically but instead grows wildly to delirious heights in small a space..." "That it sees political and economic power in a single hand and does not envision the two in liberal opposition, the megacity as a company's empire..." "That associations are made between science and magic, enlightenment and myth..." "That it allows a man to dream of recreating his lover, which fate has taken away from him, as a replicant..." "That it fails to present a modern realistic image of the plight of the workers, and instead gives a metaphorical picture based on the early age of capitalism..." "That it generally favours similes, metaphors and allegories over confidence in the sensual perception and rational analysis of the outside world..." "That as the only remedy for dissolving contradicting class interests it offers an appeal to the good will of the social partners..." "Subtitles:" "VlCOMEDlA 1 1/2002 �"