Metropolis

4 Pages 880 Words

1) The story takes place in 2026, 100 years from when the movie was made. The world Lang created was a cold, mechanical, industrial one. The city of Metropolis is a crowded one where people are either of the privileged class, or of the depressed and poor. Numbers of the lower class live underground to run the machines that keep the above ground Metropolis in working order. The workers run the machines, but the machines run the lives of the workers. Lang shows this with a huge number of cattle-like herds of people, heavy machinery, and clocks. The other half of this futuristic world plays in gardens. This is when we meet one of the main characters, Freder Fredersen. Later we see Freder frolicking with a girl in a Garden. As Freder flirts with the girl at the fountain, he sees Maria. Maria, is dismissed as the daughter of “some worker” by others, but Freder is likes her. Freder pursues her into the Underground City. In the Underground City, Freder sees an old worker struggling with the dials on a piece of clock-like machinery. The worker fails to keep up with the demands of the machine, and thus the machine blows up. Freder begins to hallucinate that the masses of workers are being shoved into the mouth of the machine. Freder, who is astonished by the horror of the Underground City, rushes to talk to his father. Later on, Freder once again ventures down into the Underground City. Freder visualizes the worker struggling with the dials, and the image of a clock bleeds through in a dissolve. Freder remembers what happened to the last poor, struggling worker and goes to help this one. Freder volunteers to “trade clothes and identities” and work the machine for the man. Freder tells Georgy the worker to give a message to his friend Josephat. Georgy goes to deliver the message, but is side tracked by another part of Metropolis. Josaphat does not receive his message. Mean while, Freder comes across a copy of the worker’s plans, and a...