Metropolis Film Notes

 Metropolis - Film notes

Metropolis 

- An upper/lower class analogy. The worker’s city is a lower-class underground while the upper class is above ground 

- Freder sees the woman and falls in love – the children with the woman are dirty, barefoot (working class)

- Humans behave like machines in the worker’s city – people fear machines, but the parallel between humans and machines reflects how the real fear should be of man and his evils

- Reflects the way society has always been – higherups make decisions and look down on lower class

- They work until death and are just replaced by a new set of workers 

- While metropolis thrives with technology and cars, trains, planes, a huge city 

- Tower of Babel – biblical analogy. The tower of babel represents the pride and arrogance of humans trying to be equal with God 

- When Freder expresses his sympathy for the workers, his father is disappointed and does not care to understand 

- Workers heads always down 

- Freder is rebelling against the upper class and his father – trying to stop the worker from working

- Freder takes his role as a worker – trades lives with a worker 

- Everyone is just a number – as they have on their hats 

- Mad scientist has a robotic hand – machines taking over 

- Diabolical devilish star pointing downwards – the robot he created 

- More biblical references ^ plus the way maria is standing in front of crosses with candles, he takes his hat off out of respect for her

- Maria is light, soft, sweet, represents good. like a heavenly angel. She is the heart. She is praying 

- He wants to destroy maria – devil want to destroy good and God

- Skinny man – costume reflects his role in the movie

- 7 deadly sins – death 

- Evil taking the form of something that is good to accomplish