Metropolis · reception & legacy
1927 · Fritz Lang
How Metropolis has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
A notorious flop in 1927 — it nearly bankrupted the Ufa studio, got hacked down by distributors, and H.G. Wells trashed it as 'the silliest film' — yet it's now the towering urtext of screen sci-fi and the first film ever added to UNESCO's Memory of the World register.
What's debated
Fans still argue over its 'the heart must mediate between head and hands' moral — naive kitsch or sincere power? — a critique Lang himself later half-disowned.
Its footprint
The Maschinenmensch is one of cinema's most-copied images — echoed in C-3PO, Blade Runner's cityscapes, Queen's 'Radio Ga Ga' video, and Madonna's 'Express Yourself'; Giorgio Moroder even gave it a 1984 pop-soundtrack rerelease.
Where it stands
An unshakeable 'you must see this' — the silent film even people who skip silents make an exception for, and a fixture of every greatest-sci-fi list.