Why I Hate Metropolis

The other night I saw Fritz Lang’s ‘Metropolis’ for the first time. A cinema in Berlin showed the 1927 sci-fi movie on a huge screen and the theatre was packed with hundreds of people celebrating what they call one of the most important silent films, the grandfather of sci-fi, a technical master piece and on goes the praise. Weirdly, no one ever mentions how extremely anti-semitic this movie is. I can’t figure out whether they are too afraid to admit it or completely oblivious to the fact due a dull obsession about cinematic technicalities.

One of the characters in the film is the mad scientist Rotwang. Just in case the audience should fail to notice his Jewishness by name alone, the director decided to decorate his laboratory with a massive Star of David on the wall. If being a smart ambitious inventor is not evil enough for you, Rotwang also invented a lot of the machinery the capitalists in the film use to enslave the proletariat with. He clearly has to leave for the Christian society of Metropolis to get back to an equilibrium of love again. This idea is not new. Theodor Herzl saw the need for Jews to leave behind the Christian countries to found the Zionist state Israel, where they could live freely and prosper instead of being jealously discriminated against for having admirable qualities. Bruno Bauer on the other hand suggested, the only way for Jews and Christians to live together, is for Jews to completely give up their cultural and religious identity. Premeditating Hitler, the film goes one step further with its answer to the Judenfrage. At the end of the film Rotwang is in a fight with the main character Freder, who sees himself as a Messiah on a mission to create equality in the world. Freder throws Rotwang off the roof and by killing him finds the solution for the Judenproblem.

The film’s anti-semitism doesn’t stop with its suggested Endlösung, however it becomes more subtle. The super-villain of Metropolis is the cold hearted factory owner Joh Fredersen. There is no mention of him being Jewish and his name wouldn’t suggest so either, but he is the prototype of the capitalist and according to Karl Marx, the Jew and the capitalist are the same species. Marx calls money the god of Israel and according to him the cult of the Jews is profiting. In the film Fredersen is evil, because he profits, is rich, owns factories and employs workers, who he pays little. In a Marxian sense this anti-capitalistic ideology is also an anti-semitic one. According to the film capitalists are obsessed with money and profit and have no considerations for other human beings. They have to be disposed of, too. One way to destroy a capitalist is to take away his capital, so in Metropolis the workers of Fredersen decide to blow up one of his factories and then celebrate the destruction by dancing. Why, I don’t know, because with this solution they are surely worse off.

The film goes on dreaming about what the world without Jews and capitalists would look like. A world with Christian values. These values are more anti-Nietzsche than anti-semitic and yet in this narrative it becomes necessary to get rid of the Jews and convert the capitalists to Christians. Freder is the son of Joh Fredersen and while he inherited his dad’s lavish lifestyle, he apparantly isn’t gifted with his abilities. Hence he aimlessly hangs out at some rich kids’ club and whores around. Then a girl called Maria sneaks into the club with a cohort of children from the slums. She pleads to Freder’s conscience for him to have pity with these less fortunate human beings. He immediately falls in love with her and follows her agenda, which is also the message of the film. Between head and hand is the heart. If we use our brains like the scientist Rotwang does, it will lead us into trouble. If we use our hands to operate machines like the capitalist Joh Fredersen, it will spoil humanity. All we have to do, is follow our heart and love one another. Don’t think for yourself, but give to others who have less than you, because who are you to assume that you deserve more than others. Once they have it, should they give it back to you and ad infinitum? Just feel, don’t think. Thinking is what got us into trouble and made these kids poor. Feeling will make us all rich. How, she doesn’t say. She also doesn’t say, that this way, we’ll all be as poor as the children.

The irony is, that Metropolis was at the time the most expensive movie ever produced. So expensive it nearly bankrupted the studio that financed it. From this I take that either all this communist ideology is just populist nonsense or that this was a secret commie plot to bankrupt the studio or, and this is the one backed by history, that Fritz Lang didn’t have a clue what he was creating and it was his communist wife who made him do this preposterous movie.

Cinephiles can be obsessed with focusing on technicalities. They hail the way the film was shot, how revolutionary production was, its set design, camera work and while doing all that forget to take into consideration the symbolism of the story. If you ignore the message of a film — the main purpose it was made for — you should at least be aware of what you are shutting out. When watching Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia, it’s okay to admire her genius film making, because you are aware that it was Nazi propaganda and you don’t conflate the two. Yet, I highly doubt that most people watching Metropolis understand its disgraceful message, because they just focus on the how and not why and not understanding the message, they might very well believe it.