METROPOLIS AND FRITZ LANG

6. "Metropolis" (1927) by German director Fritz Lang was cited as the most influential science fiction film of all time. Describe the film. 

Fritz Lang

Written by Lang and his wife Thea Von Harbou, Metropolis is a very famous film that born in the period of German Expressionism. The movie was filmed in 1925, at a cost of approximately five million Reichsmarks. 

The set is a futuristic urban dystopia, and follows the attempts of Freder, the wealthy son of the city's ruler, and Maria to overcome the vast gulf separating the classist nature of their city as this film is categorized in science fiction genre.

The film message exhibits the influence of historical events occurring during its time frame of the Industrial Revolution, including a time of economic misery and the rise of fascism in a pre-Hitler Weimar Republic Germany following the war, the rise of the American labor movement and unions during the 1920s due to oppressive working conditions, muckraking journalists, the contrast of poverty with the upper-crust classes of the Roaring 20s, the rise of immigration into the US and exploitation of workers, labor strife (Capital or management vs. Labor), and the 1917 communist uprising in the Soviet Union. It also reflects the on-going struggle between light and dark, good and evil, and the dark ages versus modern science.