Metropolis

1927 Director Fritz Lang

This is the biggest budgeted movie ever produced at Germany's UFA. Fritz Lang's gargantuan Metropolis consumed resources that would have yielded upwards of 20 conventional features, more than half the studio's entire annual production budget. And if it didn't make a profit at the time, indeed, it nearly bankrupted the studio, the film added an indelible array of images and ideas to cinema, and has endured across the many decades since its release.

In the somewhat distant future the city of Metropolis, with its huge towers and vast wealth, is a playground to a ruling class living in luxury and decadence. They, and the city, are sustained by a much larger population of workers who labor as virtual slaves in the machine halls, moving from their miserable, tenement-like homes to their grim, back-breaking ten-hour shifts and back again. The hero is oblivious to the plight of the workers, or any aspect of their lives, until one day when a a beautiful subterranean dweller named Maria visits the Eternal Gardens, where he spends his time cavorting with various ladies, with a small group of children from the workers' city far below. They are sad, hungry, and wretched looking, and he is haunted by their needy eyes, something he has never seen or known among the elite of the city, and by this strange and beautiful woman who tells all who hear her, workers' children and ruler's offspring, that they are all brothers. And so she sets him onto a collision course with the rulers and controllers of this dark empire.

When it was premiered in Germany in January 1927, Metropolis ran 153 minutes. That complete version was heavily cut for release in America, removing a quarter of the movie. Only very recently has the entire uncut version been found and restored. Both Hitler and Goebbles were so impressed by the film that they invited Lang to join their publicity campaign. Lang packed his bags and left for America that day.