WORLD CINEMA, BEGINNINGS TO PRESENT-ENG 171

The Use of Cinematography to Foster Modernity in Metropolis

Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, which debuted in 1927, is regarded as one of the best movies of the Weimar period. The sets’ grandeur and the filmmaker Fritz Lang’s inventive cinematography immediately made the movie appealing. The film explores broader cultural and political themes both visually and thematically. The movie’s social themes can described as both a warning concerning Germany’s future course and an observation on the political environment that was in place at that point in Germany. The movie was also made during the Weimar Republic in Germany, as the country attempted to establish democracy in the very difficult years that followed World War I. Following Germany’s defeat, the country experienced hyperinflation, street uprisings, and a general feeling of unease and discontentment with the governing authorities due to the political and economic fallout and the rise of modernity.

Essentially, modernity is a concept of time; it marks the transitional period that precedes the alleged postmodern era and follows the premodern or “traditional” age. Agrarian society led to an industrialized, “modern” one during this time (Ben 17). Through this process, societies developed and grew, producing positive and lasting effects. In this silent film, director Fritz Lang illustrates some negative consequences of this culture shift. In this film, Fritz Lang illustrates the alienating and dehumanizing aspects of modernity in Metropolis through inventive cinematography in extreme camera works, fragmented editing features, and tracking of shorts within the film. The science-fiction elements of the movie and the visually captivating cinematography make up for the lack of dialogue, make it abundantly evident that Metropolis is a city heavily reliant on industry, mainly machinery.

Throughout the film, Fritz Lang illustrates modernity’s marginalizing and alienating effects with vertiginous high-angle shots. When rows of cars speed along highways that cut between enormous skyscrapers in the opening scene, the camera is pointed directly down from an extremely high altitude. A futuristic cityscape is traversed by tiny vehicles, giving the impression that every individual is merely a little and lost in the vast mechanized system. When Freder looks over a railing to see the hard work below, this viewpoint reappears as he descends into the underground factory.

Tiny worker figures move in formation as excessively tilted camera angles accentuate the environment’s disorienting scale and inhuman proportions. At one point, to emphasize this industrial machine’s enormous size and relentless repetition, the camera completes a full 360-degree rotation. Lang switches between superior aerial views and close-ups of the crowd, where faces blend into the background. The human cost of such work is hidden from view from above, but it is felt more directly by those who are part of the anonymous ranks. With the help of cinematic equipment, Lang can use vertical dimension and extreme aerial perspectives to illustrate the paradox of modernity effectively, that is, the way that rapid technological advancement leads to human alienation on the ground.

The film’s opening scene features an abstract montage of moving machinery juxtaposed against massive skyscrapers that take up the whole frame. Close-ups of rotating pistons and a turbine engine rotating in opposing directions crescendo as additional gears and movements are added. A further machine, a depiction of a ten-hour clock, is intercut throughout the sequence to signal the approaching beginning of a new shift. A new change is announced by a title card as the steam whistle blows, relieving the pressure that has been building. These machines operate independently; the viewers are unaware of who operates them, but we can see how powerful they seem to be, showing great progress from the moment this film was set, hence modernity.

This film’s fast-paced montage scenes reinforce the idea of industrialization leading to dehumanization by breaking the human body up into repetitive mechanical movements. Siegfried Kracauer, a film critic, notes that the workers’ bodies are orchestrated as components of a “mass ornament,” incorporating people into a system that resembles a machine (Kracauer 176). Lang uses quick editing to highlight this body’s mechanization. In one scene, workers are shown marching in unison while close-ups of their hands, feet, and torsos are cut between quickly. The workers on an assembly line are reduced to automaton parts in this fragmented perspective, as they execute coordinated motions. The editing strikes a faster rhythm, absorbing their individuality into the group.

Lang splices in minute details of pistons pumping, cranks spinning, wheels turning, and gauges tilting in a later scene that shows the M-Machine. The workers appear to be just another set of gears in this enormous machine thanks to this kaleidoscope of mechanical motions. The fast-editing pace visually reflects the efficiency and speed of contemporary industrial production. However, it also reflects the confusion and alienation the human characters feel confined to this world. Editing adopts the inhumane brutality of the machine itself as the machinery montage intensifies into an overwhelming crescendo of whirling sprockets and bursting steam, eliminating any sense of human consciousness. Lang creates a contemporary, mechanical, onscreen world with percussive editing that breaks up bodies and isolates machine parts as he promotes modernity in the film.

Lang captures the feeling of isolation and detachment from the modern city through fluid tracking shots as he follows the protagonists through crowds of people. The camera follows Freder on his first exploration of the bustling crowds of the workers’ city as he looks around with wide eyes. As bodies rush by quickly in all directions, the tracking shot transports us to his point of view. Freder is kept in the center of the frame by the camera, but his quick movements keep him apart from his surroundings. The tracking shot emphasizes Freder’s status as an objective observer, cut off from the ordinary laborers whose lives are so dissimilar from his own.

Freder and Maria struggle to express their feelings to each other in the face of the anonymous crowds, even though they constantly move and are close to others in public places. According to Kracauer, many “distractions” in cities keep people from interacting with one another (Anton 176). The catacomb scene, where a slow, wavering track drifts through the vast darkness behind Freder, emphasizes the protagonist’s isolation even more. This unsettling image highlights his solitary condition and his existential loneliness even in an area with a total of huddled bodies. Lang uses the tracking shot’s mobilizing power to powerfully evoke the paradoxes of contemporary city life, where proximity to and anonymity within the constantly moving metropolitan crowd persist.

This film employs groundbreaking cinematography to present a melancholic picture of alienation and mechanization in the contemporary city. The dizzying perspectives of the urban landscape are conveyed through the masterful use of the camera. The inhuman rhythm of fragmented editing seamlessly blends automated human and machine movements. The protagonist wanders alone through crowds of uninterested strangers, and the viewer is fully immersed in his or her experiences thanks to fluid tracking shots. Collectively, these methods portray the chilly inertia of automated modernity through visual means. But Lang also highlights the price paid to the human spirit in this machine society, especially in Freder’s haunted face as he struggles with existential. Despite having been released a century ago, the film’s visual impact forces us to keep debating the delicate legacy of modernity. Despite its strange imagery it is still relevant today with most of its contents being fulfilled in this era.

Works Cited

Anton Kaes, “Cinema and Modernity: On Fritz Lang’s Metropolis,” in High and Low Cultures: German Attempts at Mediation, ed. Reinhold Grimm and Jost Hermand (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994), 19-35.

Ben Singer, Melodrama and Modernity: Early Sensational Cinema and Its Contexts (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 17-35.

Lang, F. (Director). (1927). Metropolis [Motion picture]. Germany.