Metropolis has always been a film which opened doors for others, despite being practically mutilated to incomprehensibility after its premiere, drastically censored for a reissue, and again further edited for foreign audiences. Since it first came out in 1927, its depiction of an exciting and epic vision of the future inspired a whole new type of audience and filmmakers.
Metropolis is the city of the future, the idea of its founder Jonh Fredersen realized in perfection. While we witness a perfect idyll in which the elite lives in comfort and leisure, below lurks an underground city where people are being worked to death, away from the eyes and hearts of the ruling class.
Fritz Lang was born in Vienna, Austria in 1890. After high school he studied briefly at the Technische Hochschule Wien, and then began to study painting in Paris. At the beginning of the First World War he returned to Vienna, enlisting in the army in January 1915. He was seriously wounded in June 1916, and during his recovery he wrote several screenplays for films. In Berlin he worked briefly as a writer and then as a director. In 1920, he began a relationship with actress and writer Theo von Harbou (1889-1954), who wrote screenplays with him for his most famous films: Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler (1922), Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (1924), Metropolis (1927) and M (1931).
