Fritz Lang’s Metropolis
Director: Fritz Lang Run Time: 153 min. Format: Digital Rating: NR Release Year: 1927 Language: English subtitles
Starring: Alfred Abel, Gustav Fröhlich, Rudolf Klein-Rogge
Fritz Lang’s science-fiction masterpiece Metropolis is a Vamps and Virgins Live Sound Cinema event with a live score by Black Lodge.
The utopian society of Metropolis unravels when the son of the city’s main planner realizes there is an entire network of underground workers/slaves. Subsequently, he falls in love with the leader of the underground workers movement in society “Maria” who prophetically claims a savior will come to send the class war. Helm masterfully portrays a double role of “virgin” and “vamp” in Metropolis as the angelic “Maria” who is a prophet/mother to her followers with elements of both the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist. Helm also plays the false Maria, a robot whose role is to destroy Maria’s revolution. The false Maria is nothing less than the “Whore of Babylon”, the apocalyptic figure of Revelation, rousing the workers into acts of violent sabotage.
Providing the live score to Metropolis is Black Lodge.
Metropolis is part of Nitehawk Cinema’s Vamps and Virgins series that explores the two sides of the leading lady spectrum in silent film.