Fritz Lang’s 1927 science fiction film Metropolis has been criticized from the start as simplistic, contradictory and unclear, and yet it is still considered important in a sea of 75 years of film. Despite the fact that some of the images of the film are outdated and more alien to the year 2001 than 1927, the film still holds value in its theme. The film opens with a quote by Thea von Harbou, the screenwriter:
It tells of no place.
It serves no tendency, party, or class.
It has a moral that grows on the understanding:
‘The mediator between brain and muscle must be the heart.’This straightforward but romantic idea still stands as the film’s single most important statement. This essay will explore and elaborate upon the mediators in the film who attempt to at once balance and unify the two classes of the Metropolis, the “brain” being the idle controlling class, and the “muscle” the mindless working class. Several characters serve as examples of this philosophy: the mad-scientist Rotwang represents a possible mediator that fails due to his alienation; the working girl Maria and prince of the Metropolis Freder cooperate as one mediator with the Robot, though it is heartless and does not intend to be a mediator.
Metropolis was first released in a Berlin theatre in 1926. The film had taken a year and a half to film, as well as the highest production cost of any film at that date. Most scholars accept the myth that Lang was inspired to create the film during a 1924 visit to New York, after seeing all its grande skyscrapers. However, although the film’s towers and city seem influenced by the skyscrapers of New York, as Thomas Elsaesser points out in his analytical book Metropolis (2000), this is half myth. By the time of that visit, Thea von Harbou had been working on the script for three months, and plans to make the film had already begun.
The film received immense criticism at these first few showings. Embracing America’s general reaction to the film, H.G. Wells states in his famous New York Times review of the film that “every possible foolishness, cliché, platitude and muddlement about mechanical progress in general . . . originality: there is none, independent thought none . . . I do not think there is a single idea, a single instant of artistic creation” (Wells). It was taken back to be edited in the hands of an American film company. As such, it was slashed from its original twelve reels to the feature length seven reels. What results is a film where motivations are at times questionable and the plot, somewhat contradictory, is incredibly simple. This final release is the only version of Metropolis in existence today. For my purposes here, I will examine only the excised plot lines that apply to my discussion of the mediator.
The Metropolis is a world where only two classes exist: the idle rich and the de-humanized worker class. Maria, a girl of the working class, introduces Biblical parables and values to the workers in the catacombs deep underground, the open tomb of the Christian ancestors of this new society. Here she preaches patience for a mediator between the two classes to a dissatisfied working class that is ready to revolt. Freder, the son of Joh Frederson who owns the entire Metropolis, goes to the workers’ city one day, donning the clothes and bearing the labour of a worker for the day. He attends the catacomb meeting and falls in love with Maria, knowing that he is the mediator for whom she longs. Meanwhile, Frederson discovers the meeting and orders a mad scientist, Rotwang, to make his newly invented robot look like Maria in order that it will create confusion among the workers and undo the unity built by her teachings. He mistakenly believes that this will cure ideas of rebellion, despite the fact that Maria openly preaches nonviolence. Nevertheless, Rotwang makes the robot’s features exact to those of the girl, and holds Maria captive as the robot is revealed at a club doing a striptease for the upper class, established here as a mechanical vamp. She then rebels against the commands of Frederson when she riles up the workers to destroy all the machines. Once the workers realize that this destruction is flooding their homes and jeopardizing the lives of their children, they burn the robot as a witch. Freder, who had fallen victim to a fever over these coming occurrences, flees from his room, and Maria escapes from Rotwang when the scientist falls off the roof of his antiquated Gothic home among the towering modern skyscrapers. The film closes with the image of Frederson shaking hands with Grot, the foreman, as Freder, the white-clad mediator, stands between them.
Traditionally, Metropolis has been interpreted in Judeo-Christian terms: Maria represents Mary, the virgin mother; “Surrounded by children and neo-Christian symbols, the working girl Maria represents . . . the Madonna” (Ruppert). She is also representative of hands, a necessary extreme on this remarkably simple social structure. Through her purity and motherliness she “gives birth” to Freder’s awareness of the world of the workers, bringing him down from his heavenly home, (even called the “eternal gardens” in the film), and in essence giving birth to the man who becomes the mediator, or the Messiah. In essence, Freder represents the son as the intercessor between God the father and humanity . . . he descends to the workers’ level and takes the place of an exhausted worker, where he suffers and is ‘crucified’ on the control dial of the Pater Noster machine, crying out to his father for relief. (Rutsky, 7) His Heavenly Father is his paternal father, Joh (Jehovah) Frederson who sits at the very top of the social order of the Metropolis, its creator, and owner and ruler mind. The workers represent humans on earth who must toil rather than spend eternity is blissful peace like those in Heaven.
However, this traditional reading is incredibly flawed. Frederson is not aware of his son working in the workers’ city, nor would he approve of it. Being equated with Mary, Maria is completely underrated as a mediator in her own right. As R.L. Rutsky points out, Maria is “much more a representative of the ‘heart’ than of the ‘hands’” (Rutsky 6). Additionally, Maria and Frederson are romantically in love with one another, a far cry from the mother/son relationship of Mary and Christ.
What actually emerge from this setup are several sets of mediators and balances. Rotwang, a cross-section of mind, hands and heart is his own mediator; his detachment from society is a barrier from mediation between the two classes. Maria and Freder work together as a collective mediator between the two classes. Completely opposite Maria and Freder, cooperatively, is the robot, which represents both hands and mind but lacks the heart. However, in its rebellion against the mission of Maria and Freder, it unknowingly aids their mission. The character Rotwang, with his prominent nose, star on his door and “white, unkempt hair,” is representative of a Jewish character (Dolgenos). He lives in a gothic style house amidst the bases of the skyscrapers, and as Dolgenos also points out, “descriptions of Jews, from The Merchant of Venice on, stressed the age of the Jewish people and frequently used medieval imagery and language” (Dolgenos). Rotwang represents a dominantly Jewish character in the midst of an elaborately symbolic Christian structure. As such, Rotwang represents the cultural “other.” He resides outside society, neither in the heavens with Frederson, nor in the worldly class of the workers. He is an alienated union of the two classes but nevertheless a balance complete with mind, muscle and heart.
As the audience learns, Rotwang not only invents the robot, but physically creates it as well. In the novel and original screenplay, the audience learns that Rotwang loves Hel, the woman who married Frederson and died giving birth to Freder. Rotwang creates the robot in the metallic image of this woman in an attempt to ease his unrequited love for her. Here is the heart that motivates his mind to cooperate with his hands in the creation of a robot to look like Hel. When the robot is first created, we see a man finally at peace after the loss of his love. As such, he is a mini-version of the peaceful potential of the Metropolis, far too alienated by his nonconformist religion, unaccounted-for class, and physical separation from the rest of the Metropolis to remedy the class-conflict.
The robot is the external expression of this peace. It is created with the intention of uniting the classes by replacing the workers. The robot offers the possibility of the workers joining the class of the rich and live idle and enjoyable lives. It is created to eliminate the sole difference between the classes: work.
However, once Rotwang is instructed by Frederson to make the robot in the image of Maria, this balance is disturbed. He creates the android without the element of his heart, as we see no love for Maria and therefore no heart to mediate the muscle and brain that is the robot. Here is not a casual or friendly relationship. Frederson’s affiliation with Rotwang is mind commanding the hands, and for the ten minutes where Rotwang creates the Robot, he is reduced to the status of an ordinary worker. He loses his mind/heart/hand unity when he surrenders mind and heart to Frederson’s irrepressible commands. In the scene where the imitation Maria is created, Rotwang moves mechanically, much like a worker in the factory, a cog in the giant machine that is the Metropolis. He becomes a worker in his own factory as he mindlessly pulls the switches and operates the machine. At this point it is apparent that Rotwang will not be the mediator with his creation. He lacks the necessary balance of mind, hands and heart. Instead of perpetuating the original intentions of Frederson, the robot has its own agenda, aiming to destroy both classes by not only increasing the gap between them, but also physically destroying the machines, ruining the workers’ city as well as that of the ruling class. Rotwang eventually meets his demise, plummeting to his death from the roof of his eerily Gothic-style house. With him dies the possibility of a Robot mediator. Even if he were to create another Robot out of love, it is simply not possible to make a machine have a heart.
Nevertheless, the Robot appears to be a potential mediator to the plot. It represents the cross-section of mind and hands so crucial to the social balance for which the mediator strives. Both classes rely on one another for stability and balance. Without the upper class, the working class has no means to provide for itself; the workers are uneducated and ignorant of the composition of the machines. They are familiar only with the operation of the equipment. Conversely, without the working class, the upper class would have no way to keep the Metropolis in working condition. However, without a mediator between them there is no cross-section to create a true balance. Like the fulcrum of a seesaw, a point in the middle is necessary to allow balance.
Initially, the robot represents this balance point. Prior to Frederson’s interference in its creation, the robot is the expression of Rotwang’s balance of hands, mind and heart. It represents the possibility of reconciliation between the classes. It is a cross-section of the three elements of a balanced society and has the potential to free the workers from their dangerous, perfunctory jobs while eliminating their dependency on the upper class. Likewise, the ruling class would no longer be required to provide for the workers because the robots would be capable of doing so for all citizens of the Metropolis.
Once the Robot is designed to fool and create confusion, however, this potential is lost. The Robot is unveiled at the club of the upper class gentlemen, doing a seductive belly dance that draws the attention of all the eyes in the room. Here Lang inserts the image of a dozen sets of eyes peering at it, all hungry with lust. Even outside the club, the robot moves in an angular and grotesque fashion, a far cry from the soft and gentle movements of Maria, who is full of heart. Instead of the heart so desperately needed in this society, the robot becomes a representation of empty and detestable lust, the semblance of heart but lacking the essence of it. The Robot’s failure can be attributed to her lack of maternal instincts. As Peter Ruppert states in his article “Technology and the Construction of Gender in Fritz Lang's Metropolis,” the robot “is replicated, not born” (Ruppert). It therefore has no maternal model of how a nurturing woman would behave. It is simply a machine created in a laboratory without feeling, moral or emotion. However, once it is fused with Maria’s biological blueprints, it becomes a dangerous android without a heart, in contrast to its physical likeness to Maria. Notwithstanding its biological attributes, because the robot is not human, it is little more than a mechanical animal acting on impulses of lust and its newly acquired biological needs.
Andreas Huyssen is credited with one of the most complete modern criticisms of Metropolis, in his analysis of gender roles in the film. He states that “by creating a female android, Rotwang fulfills the male phantasm of a creation without mother” (Huyssen, 227). Where heart, as love between Maria and Freder, is pure, lust is the hollow semblance of love, and is destructive in its nature. Created by Rotwang under the command of Frederson, this synthetic woman’s licentious appetite can be traced to the impious desires of Frederson. Though not explicitly sexual, Frederson’s lust for control of the workers leads him to command this creation. In a literally sexual sense, Frederson himself arranges the Robot’s believability be tested at a burlesque house. The Robot, then, is inherently designed to lust without love; it is a close, but not exact, replica of Maria. It is corrupted in its being the product of the worker/master relationship shared by Rotwang and Frederson. Like this relationship, the Robot lacks the heart.
The Robot’s opposite is the very woman whose image it dons. Maria is maternal in all forms, contrary to the robot’s lack of motherliness. The audience first sees her in the scene in the eternal gardens where she stands among all the workers’ children. “These are your brothers,” she tells Freder who looks on in awe of her beauty and message. Her mother-like concern for the children is repeated when she saves them from the floods within the workers’ city. She preaches peace to the workers, assuring them that one day the mediator will come. She loves the workers and therefore protects them from the harm that would accompany a revolt.
Roger Dadoun notes that the dark tunnels leading into the catacombs and the cavernous space therein contained is representative of the womb. Suitably, this womb gives birth to Maria as a mother figure. It is here that she becomes the mother of all the seemingly orphaned worker men by teaching them religion as a good Christian mother would. Conversely, the violent gestures and lust of the robot rapes the catacombs by perverting their original symbol as a place of patience and peace. The robot takes advantage of the workers’ weakness, as a rapist does a woman’s, by prompting them to destroy the machines in the Metropolis. This destruction causes the workers’ city to flood and ruins their homes. The damaged homes represent the virtue taken by the robot as it symbolically rapes the vulnerable workers. Similarly, in Rotwang’s pursuit of Maria in the catacombs, “Rotwang’s flashlight [pins] down Maria in the caverns and symbolically [rapes] her” (Huyssen 230). Parallel to his “rape” with the flashlight, Rotwang takes advantage of Maria in even a physical form. He obtains her purity and distorts it in the creation of the robot, converting her heart and purity to lust and corruption. Maria’s physical image goes from virginal to promiscuous through the actions of Rotwang under Frederson’s control. This metamorphosis represents a connection between the women. In procreation, as with the robot’s conception, a certain level of lust is necessary. And in nature, in order to become a mother and fully express the nurturing nature of motherhood that Maria possesses, it is necessary to succumb to the lust that allows a child to be conceived. Like all opposites, Maria and the robot share a connection despite their conflicting values. Without this connection, balance can never be reached. And indeed, without the Robot’s seemingly negative intervention, true peace may never have been achieved within the social fabric of the Metropolis.Freder also has a place in this discussion. The man is as pure and caring as Maria, and together they effectively represent the heart. In his fitful recovery in bed, Freder is tortured by his hallucination of the Robot as a sexual being. Clearly, this is meant to show the man’s repulsion from the Robot’s blatant sexuality. Huyssen argues that Freder is a sexual being throughout the film until this scene where he is miraculously cured of his sexual desires for Maria, who is unchangingly pure. However, a main point illustrated by the film is a connection between lust and violence. The virginal Maria promotes peace while the lustful robot shatters it. Freder is not violent at all, and represents purity throughout the film, just as Maria does. Even his kiss with Maria is not sexual. The kiss represents an emotional connection; it is not sexually passionate, violent or licentious. In many ways, in fact, the kiss is an extension of Maria and Freder’s nurturing and peaceful personalities.
This kiss also represents the connection of the two as mediators. It is the necessary physical connection directly between the two classes. Freder lowers himself from his ruling class position to that of a worker. R.L. Rutsky points out that in the original plot line, Hel is the loving and nurturing woman who marries the hard-minded Frederson. Freder, their offspring of these two, is an intersection of these two personalities, inclusive of their love for one another. Freder “combines both brain and heart, masculine and feminine, he lacks nothing”(Rutsky 8). However, he is still a part of the ruling class of the Metropolis, and therefore can never lie precisely in the middle of the opposition that connects the working class to the thinking class. Similarly, Maria is another cross-section. Though a member of the working class, she has brain enough to comprehend spirituality and spread it to the ignorant working class. Maternal and nurturing, she also possesses the heart necessary to mediate between these two extremes. But like Freder, she is only close to the balance point because she is identified solely with the working class. Maria and Freder each represent their class of origin, heart, and a closeness to the opposing status. Nevertheless, individually neither is capable of mediation.
True balance is achieved within the romantic union of Maria and Freder, in particular the kiss, indicating that in order to efficiently mediate two loving people of opposing genders and classes are necessary, rather than the solitary Christ figure suggested by the Biblical reference in the film. As such, Maria is a saviour as well as the bringer of the saviour, half Christ and half Mary. Freder himself is the piece that balances her half of Christ.
The Robot, however, loves nobody. It stands on its own, a lusty vamp who flirts with Frederson and the men at the burlesque club. The film’s self-proclaimed theme states “the mediator must be the heart,” and the Robot has nobody to love. It does, however, become a common enemy of these classes, a situation where the mediator seems appealing to both classes. The Robot works as a cooperative opposite that assists the intentions of Maria and Freder. Through its defiance of both Frederson’s instructions and Maria and Freder’s struggle for peace, it becomes at once a scapegoat and unifier. Because both classes can blame the robot for its damage to the Metropolis, the equally damaged classes unite in their hatred of this android. This is very similar to the structure of the Judeo-Christian spiritual society. Satan works unknowingly as an assistant to God; he is the example, the “other” that serves to show the obvious drawbacks of being evil. In a sense he serves to strengthen the belief of the masses by showing the alternative, the fire and brimstone of Hell. Likewise, the robot has its own fire and brimstone when the workers decide to burn it as a witch. Clearly, the Robot is representative of Satan in Hell, indicating pure evilness as it laughs at its own destruction amidst the flames, much as Satan laughs in Hell. The Robot demonstrates to the workers and ruling class alike that its lust and lack of heart has the capability of leading to destruction.
The Robot’s cooperative opposition to Maria and Freder aids their mediation. As such, it should be included in this mediation team. It has elements of both classes, and in this combination its empty lust is filled with Maria’s heart. Maria is very motherly in her heart, and in order to fulfill maternity by producing a child, lust, like that of the Robot, is necessary. A male donor, who in this instance is Freder, must also assist the procreation.
The necessary mediator between brain and muscle cannot be one person and one heart alone as indicated by traditional interpretations of Metropolis. The mediator is instead a balance of these extremes in cooperation with the heart. In the film this balance is achieved through the collective attributes and efforts of Maria, Freder and the Robot, all of who exist within the social confines of the Metropolis. Though Rotwang represents a balance as well, he is prevented from being a mediator because he does not fit into the Metropolis’s social structure and lacks a female opposite. Metropolis is a very general statement on internal balance. As seen through the events in the plot, imbalance leads to violence and dissatisfaction. However, once a balance is reached internally through the element of the heart, violence is soothed to peace and this dissatisfaction between extremes is resolved. Metropolis has implications far beyond societal conflict, and as such it is a vital lesson to all who view it.
This film is not of today or the future.
It tells of no place.
It serves no tendency, party, or class.
It has a moral that grows on the understanding:
‘The mediator between brain and muscle must be the heart’
—Thea von Harbou, 1925
Works Consulted
Dolgenos, Peter. “The Star on C.A. Rotwang’s Door: Turning Kracauer on Its Head.” Journal of Popular Film and Television: 25:2: 68. 29 November 2001 (http://ehostvgw8.epnet.com/ehost.asp?key=204.179.122.141_8000_490767069&return=y&site=ehost)
Elsaesser, Thomas. Metropolis. London, England: British Film Institute, 2000.
Huyssen, Andreas. “The Vamp and the Machine: Technology and Sexuality in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.” New German Critique: and Interdisciplinary Journal of German Studies: 25 (1982): 221-237.
Lungstrum, Janet. “Metropolis and the Technosexual Woman of German Modernity.” Women in the Metropolis: Gender and Modernity in Weimar Culture, ed. Katharine von Ankum. Berkeley, CA: U of California P, 1997. 128-144.
Metropolis. Dir. Fritz Lang. Perf. Brigitte Helm, Alfred Abel, and Gustav Froehlich. UFA, 1926.
Ruppert, Peter. “Technology and the Construction of Gender in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.”Genders 32 (2000): 29 pars. 27 November 2001 http://www.genders.org/g32/g32_ruppert.html
Rutsky, R.L. “The Mediation of Technology and Gender: Metropolis, Nazism, Modernism.” New German Critique: an Interdisciplinary Journal of German Studies: 15 (Fall 1986): 137-163.
