H. G. Wells' review of Metropolis

January 19, 2010 3:15 PM

A review of Fritz Lang's film Metropolis by H. G. Wells, published in the April 17, 1927 issue of the New York Times and reprinted in his essay collection The Way the World is Going.
posted by Prospero (39 comments total)

Wow, he really didn't like it all.
posted by oddman at 3:24 PM on January 19, 2010

I haven't seen a movie review that pissy since I stopped reading Rex Reed.*

* I have never actually read Rex Reed.
posted by Joe Beese at 3:28 PM on January 19, 2010

Huh. He didn't even mention the soundtrack by Queen.
posted by mudpuppie at 3:30 PM on January 19, 2010 [9 favorites]

A fun read. I am not suggesting Avatar is on a par with Metropolis, but I have to say the attacks on the plot seemed reminiscent of some of the sharper criticism of Avatar I've been reading lately on MetaFilter. For example:

One is asked to believe that these machines are engaged quite furiously in the mass production of nothing that is ever used, and that Masterman grows richer and richer in the process. This is the essential nonsense of it all.

I also enjoyed the fact that Wells disliked so much that the film reminded him of some of is own younger work:

Possibly I dislike this soupy whirlpool none the less because I find decaying fragments of my own juvenile work of thirty years ago, The Sleeper Awakes, floating about in it.

I do wish this review reprint was printed on a quieter background, though. I have little green sailboats dancing before my eyes.
posted by bearwife at 3:33 PM on January 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

Reads like an Avatar comment on MetaFilter!
posted by brundlefly at 3:34 PM on January 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

"Never for a moment does one believe any of this foolish story; for a moment is there anything amusing or convincing in its dreary series of strained events. It is immensely and strangely dull. It is not even to be laughed at. There is not one good-looking nor sympathetic nor funny personality in the cast; there is, indeed, no scope at all for looking well or acting like a rational creature amid these mindless, imitative absurdities."

Wow, what would he have made of Robert Altman.

I saw Metropolis for the first time fairly recently. I was way more impressed with its ambition and its dreamy logic than I was with its characters or its politics. Ultimately I became sort of crazy about it! But I can sympathize with Wells, because sometimes when you watch a movie, all you can see is the film you think could have been made instead of this one.
posted by hermitosis at 3:35 PM on January 19, 2010 [3 favorites]

If Wells was alive today, he'd probably have a Metafilter account. He'd fit right in here.
posted by octothorpe at 3:35 PM on January 19, 2010 [3 favorites]

Shoulda previewed.
posted by brundlefly at 3:35 PM on January 19, 2010

No, we posted our comments at the same time, brundlefly. Great minds and all that.
posted by bearwife at 3:36 PM on January 19, 2010

all you can see is the film you think could have been made instead of this one.

Yea but have you ever seen the film that he did make? Aside from some cool model effects, it's pretty dreadful.
posted by octothorpe at 3:43 PM on January 19, 2010

There was one filmmaker he seemed rather fond of.
posted by cazoo at 3:44 PM on January 19, 2010

True story:

Back in the stone age I finally convinced my parents to let me buy them a VCR. As well I rented a couple of movies to show off the amazing new technology. The first film I popped in?

Metropolis. I really wanted to see the version with the new soundtrack.

My dad: "The movie you picked to show this thing off is a silent movie? Take it back."

Fail.

/threadjack
posted by Splunge at 3:47 PM on January 19, 2010 [3 favorites]

Six million marks! The waste of it!

Avatar, indeed.
posted by Joe Beese at 3:54 PM on January 19, 2010

In college I asked my stoner roomate to pick up a copy of "Metropolis" from the rental store. Instead he returned with a copy of "Necropolis" a movie whose only redeeming feature was a six breasted woman who breastfed the punk-zombies. Actually I guess that makes at least twice as good as "Total Recall."
posted by ExitPursuedByBear at 4:05 PM on January 19, 2010 [2 favorites]

True story: Metropolis was the first movie I saw on a big screen. I was 6.

Reading Brave New World on vacation has made me think about Metropolis more, and the idea of Satire turning into Seriousness over the years - Metropolis could be seen as the some of the same ideas done as dreamy SF Opera rather than a lot of funny pokes at American Consumerism (Huxley did write BNW after a trip to the States which left him ...put out). How come none of my teachers seemed to stress that BNW is *hilarious* and has *such* 1930s-era prejudices, or am I being A Beta Plus for kinda siding with the World State? John Savage does seem hilariously grotesque.

What am I saying? Oh yeah, I like Metropolis. A lot.
posted by The Whelk at 4:08 PM on January 19, 2010

I love Metropolis and Wells, so the conflict there makes me love this post even more.
posted by brundlefly at 4:17 PM on January 19, 2010

It may indeed create temporary masses of unemployed, and in The Sleeper Awakes there was a mass of unemployed people under the hatches. That was written in 1897, when the possibility of restraining the growth of large masses of population had scarcely dawned on the world. It was reasonable then to anticipate an embarrassing underworld of under-productive people. We did not know what to do with the abyss. But there is no excuse for that today.

Waitaminute...he's not implying what I think he's impl—Oh. Yes, yes he is:

I believe … that now and always the conscious selection of the best for reproduction will be impossible; that to propose it is to display a fundamental misunderstanding of what individuality implies. The way of nature has always been to slay the hindmost, and there is still no other way, unless we can prevent those who would become the hindmost being born. It is in the sterilization of failure, and not in the selection of successes for breeding, that the possibility of an improvement of the human stock lies.

And the finale, from the review:

The increasingly efficient industrialism of America has so little need of drudges that it has set up the severest barriers against the flooding of the United States by drudge immigration. 'Ufa' knows nothing of such facts.

Those damn sentimentalist Germans; will they ever get a clue?
posted by Kadin2048 at 4:21 PM on January 19, 2010 [4 favorites]

He didn't even mention the soundtrack by Queen.

Actually, that would be Freddie Mercury singing on his own, "Love Kills". Just one of the tracks written and produced by Giorgio Moroder for that particular soundtrack, which also featured Bonnie Tyler, Jon Anderson, Billy Squier, Loverboy, Adam Ant, and Pat Benetar. Seriously great stuff.

For all you Metropolis fans out there, remember that this year will mark the premiere of the newly restored Metropolis including the footage which was lost for nearly a century. Showing first in Berlin, being brought to the US for the TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood in April 2010. (Previously.)
posted by hippybear at 4:22 PM on January 19, 2010 [4 favorites]

Fully half of his complaints seem to be that the envisioned future isn't a realistic extrapolation from our present-day circumstance. That is not always the only point of science fiction.
posted by shakespeherian at 4:25 PM on January 19, 2010 [3 favorites]

Last summer I watched all of Fritz Lang's films available on Netflix; I saw a newly restored version of "Metropolis" [Hmmmm- every time I've seen it, it's been a newly restored version.] Yes, it makes no economic sense for workers to spend 10 hours shifts wrenching giant dials. Yet who has ever forgotten that scene? Who has forgotten the machine turning into the giant god Mammon? The movie is pretty terrible, but next time there's a newly restored version, I'll be in line to see it.

Incidentally, it's too bad Wells didn't sneer about how unlikely it would be for men of the future to still be wearing suits and ties. You'd think the actors would be wearing silver jumpsuits. And yet here we are, in the future, wearing pretty much the same clothes.

Splunge: The first movie I watched on my brand-new VCR was "Birth of a Nation".
posted by acrasis at 4:29 PM on January 19, 2010

Awesomely, I was watching a scene from Metropolis this morning and thinking what a hypocrite I am for loving it purely for its visuals while disdaining Avatar for having nothing but visuals. Yes, I think it's awesome when I catch myself being an asshole.
posted by COBRA! at 4:31 PM on January 19, 2010 [2 favorites]

shakespeherian: "Fully half of his complaints seem to be that the envisioned future isn't a realistic extrapolation from our present-day circumstance. That is not always the only point of science fiction."

I agree. This is the same objection I have to "mundane science fiction."

Previously
posted by brundlefly at 4:32 PM on January 19, 2010

Interesting that Wells' review seems animated by a threatened, competitive spirit, needling the movie for not being, um, realistic. Or forward-thinking. Or something. I'm sure future views of Avatar will be either very forgiving of its weaknesses, seeing it as a big dreamy expression of its time, or quite savage; a middle ground is unlikely. Anyway, I just watched Metropolis again a couple of days ago; I'd remembered that the ending made sense as a message yet was crazy in terms of emotional logic... but I'd forgotten that the film also manages to move along at a fast neat clip.
posted by darth_tedious at 4:36 PM on January 19, 2010

You find such a real proletariat in China still; it existed in the great cities of the ancient world; but you do not find it in America, which has gone furtherest in the direction of mechanical industry, and there is no grain of reason in supposing it will exist in the future.

HA HA HA. Wells, you kidder!
posted by COBRA! at 4:37 PM on January 19, 2010

I've been watching bits of Metropolis recently, so its quite interesting to read a contemporary review of it by (one of the first?) sci-fi writers. I find the issues it is concerned with to be dated, so it is fascinating that he did too, when the film originally came out.

Even Fritz Lang expressed doubts about the films motto "The mediator between the Head and Hands must be the Heart":

The main thesis was Mrs. Von Harbou's, but I am at least 50 percent responsible because I did it. I was not so politically minded in those days as I am now. You cannot make a social-conscious picture in which you say that the intermediary between the hand and the brain is the heart. I mean, that's a fairy tale -- definitely. But I was very interested in machines. Anyway, I didn't like the picture -- thought it was silly and stupid -- then, when I saw the astronauts: what else are they but part of a machine? It's very hard to talk about pictures--should I say now that I like Metropolis because something I have seen in my imagination comes true, when I detested it after it was finished?

So, the director felt that he'd wasted the money (Metropolis was the most expensive film of its time) to some extent.

I don't think anyone's saying that about Avatar, by the way
posted by memebake at 4:38 PM on January 19, 2010

The fairy-tale aspect of Metropolis was always my favorite part.
posted by The Whelk at 4:40 PM on January 19, 2010

If Wells was alive today, he'd probably have a Metafilter account. He'd fit right in here.

He'd probably be a Boing Boing contributor, sadly.
posted by empath at 4:43 PM on January 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

I always thought that using Ray Charles' "I Can't Stop Loving You" during the destruction of the Ziggurat was brilliant.
posted by eyeballkid at 4:46 PM on January 19, 2010 [2 favorites]

damn you eyeballkid that was the only part of that movie I liked, but I liked it A Lot
posted by The Whelk at 5:00 PM on January 19, 2010

I saw Metropolis with a live score (done by the Austin band that did the music for A Scanner Darkly) last summer. It was another new version and they told us at that time that even more footage had been found. I don't think the additional footage would have made any difference to this review, but I do wonder exactly what Wells saw given how much the movie has been missing over the years.

I also saw a different Fritz Lang silent film a few months later. Destiny is fantasy where Metropolis is theoretically SF. The fantastic elements in Destiny have a surprising commonality of feel with the Rotwang sequences in Metropolis in exactly the way that Wells complains about.
posted by immlass at 5:09 PM on January 19, 2010

"It gives in one eddying concentration almost every possible foolishness, cliché, platitude, and muddlement about mechanical progress and progress in general served up with a sauce of sentimentality that is all its own."


Wells could easily have been talking about this year's burning man theme.
posted by Catblack at 5:10 PM on January 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

One is asked to believe that these machines are engaged quite furiously in the mass production of nothing that is ever used, and that Masterman grows richer and richer in the process. This is the essential nonsense of it all. Unless the mass of the population has the spending power there is no possibility of wealth in a mechanical civilization. A vast, penniless slave population may be necessary for wealth where there are no mass production machines, but it is preposterous with mass production machines. You find such a real proletariat in China still; it existed in the great cities of the ancient world; but you do not find it in America, which has gone furtherest in the direction of mechanical industry, and there is no grain of reason in supposing it will exist in the future. Masterman's watchword is 'Efficiency,' and you are given to understand it is a very dreadful word, and the contrivers of this idiotic spectacle are so hopelessly ignorant of all the work that has been done upon industrial efficiency that they represent him as working his machine-minders to the point of exhaustion, so that they faint and machines explode and people are scalded to death. You get machine-minders in torment turning levers in response to signals - work that could be done far more effectively by automata. Much stress is laid on the fact that the workers are spiritless, hopeless drudges, working reluctantly and mechanically. But a mechanical civilization has no use for mere drudges; the more efficient its machinery the less need there is for the quasi-mechanical minder. It is the inefficient factory that needs slaves; the ill-organized mine that kills men. The hopeless drudge stage of human labour lies behind us. With a sort of malignant stupidity this film contradicts these facts.

Talk about missing the mark.

Also Avatar rocked, suck it haters.
posted by delmoi at 6:21 PM on January 19, 2010

"The film is too cliche for my tastes but boy is it getting butts in seats like you wouldn't believe."

Plus que ca change...
posted by Spatch at 7:14 PM on January 19, 2010

In fairness, pretty much every sci-fi movies falls apart if you try to analyze the economics of it.
posted by GuyZero at 9:09 PM on January 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

I don't feel competent to evaluate Metropolis since I'm not familiar enough with other films, theater or literature of that era, but that was a fun read. I LOVE this quote:

Possibly I dislike this soupy whirlpool none the less because I find decaying fragments of my own juvenile work of thirty years ago, The Sleeper Awakes, floating about in it.

It's just such fun, over the top writing!
posted by serazin at 10:24 PM on January 19, 2010

You'd think the actors would be wearing silver jumpsuits.

Jumpsuits and shoes.
posted by No-sword at 2:10 AM on January 20, 2010

I thought this part was interesting.

That vertical city of the future we know now is, to put it mildly, highly improbable. Even in New York and Chicago, where the pressure on the central sites is exceptionally great, it is only the central office and entertainment region that soars and excavates. And the same centripetal pressure that leads to the utmost exploitation of site values at the centre leads also to the driving out of industrialism and labour from the population center to cheaper areas, and of residential life to more open and airy surroundings.

While he's associated with skyscrapers, Wells seems to be predicting a future of suburbs and exurbs.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 2:22 AM on January 20, 2010

Let us not forget that about the time H.G. was writing this, a lot of very smart people were conspiring toward the creation of an atomic weapon in large measure because, having read H.G. Wells' The World Set Free they thought it would put an end to war by making the very thought of war too horrible to contemplate. At least Fritz Lang didn't create his flawed Metropolis IRL and live to see what a bad idea that was.
posted by localroger at 5:23 AM on January 20, 2010

After the worst traditions of the cinema world, monstrously self-satisfied and self-sufficient, convinced of the power of loud advertisement to put things over with the public, and with no fear of searching criticism in their minds, no consciousness of thought and knowledge beyond their ken, they set to work in their huge studio to produce furlong after furlong of this ignorant, old-fashioned balderdash, and ruin the market for any better film along these lines.

Hollywood in general?
posted by njohnson23 at 8:26 AM on January 20, 2010