Fritz Lang’s Metropolis was found to be nearly complete in Buenos Aires in 2008. This find not only brought back long-lost footage that brought the movie closer to its Berlin debut in 1927, but it also brought back the design of intertitles that were assumed to have been lost forever. The most significant of these, a picture that twice appears in the final cut at pivotal points in the movie, serves as the basis for this article. The recent scholarship (such as the articles in Minden, Bachmann and Telotte) has focused on the political context of the film or its visual and technological influences on later science fiction films. Åke Bergvall’s contribution builds on Tom Gunning’s significant 2000 study of Lang’s films by examining the film as an emblematic and allegorical structure. It is not necessary to replace these legitimate political interpretations; rather, it is necessary to balance them with a symbolic viewpoint that will bring some closure to a movie that, in many ways, still defies comprehension.
The Renaissance saw the height of the emblem book, which is defined as “a book containing drawings with accompanying interpretations of their allegorical meaning” (OED). However, the silent film, which combines spoken intertitles with moving images, can be considered a continuation of this tradition, and Gunning demonstrates how Lang, as a director, purposefully places Metropolis within it (52–83). The restored intertitle, which in and of itself blends spoken and visual elements by showing a Bible opened at chapter 17 of the Apocalypse, replete with a woodcut of the Whore of Babylon, highlights the film’s iconic style particularly.
Thus, the Buenos Aires cut heightens the viewer’s awareness of apocalyptic images that necessitates metaphorical interpretation. Before, the sequences were explained by lifeless cue cards; now, they are shown to be just as significant as the film’s central motif, the Tower of Babel sermon that Maria delivered to her catacomb audience.
The earlier, shortened cuts made the connection between the false Maria and the Whore of Babylon evident, but the full extent of the comparison is only revealed in the nearly complete cut. This forces us to focus more on the Bible’s last book and the lengthy literary and theological tradition that links it to the Tower of Babel, a tradition that Metropolis draws upon.
In actuality, the recently discovered intertitle provides an interpretive key that explains why the movie’s apocalyptic metaphor eventually fails, as does Maria’s sermon. In order to illustrate this, Åke Bergvall utilize an earlier allegory that shares striking similarities with Lang’s Metropolis: Book One of Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (1590), a Renaissance work that also draws inspiration from imagery from the Apocalypse.
The two woodcut instances serve as bookends for the Intermezzo (Zwischenspiel), emphasizing the cataclysmic undertones of this crucial middle segment of the movie. The scene that has benefited the most from the restored sequences is the Intermezzo, which is now more than fifty percent longer than it was in the original version.
The Intermezzo opens with Freder, the protagonist of the movie, going to the cathedral at Maria’s request. Freder has been looking for Maria, a visionary lady, throughout the whole Prelude (Vorspiel) of the movie. Instead, Freder hears a monk lecture about the end of the world when Maria fails to appear (having been kidnapped by Rotwang, an inventor employed by Joh Fredersen, Freder’s father and the capitalist genius behind Metropolis): “Verily, I say unto you: the days of which the Apocalypse speaks draw nigh!” We never really see the monk since this is one of the few segments of the film that is still missing, but thanks to the Buenos Aires version, we do obtain a copy of the Bible page he points to:
The apocalyptic similarities are corroborated by the novel Metropolis (1926), written by the film’s scriptwriter (and Lang’s wife) Thea von Harbou. The Maria of the novel is described as being “the source of a light, as mild as God” (Harbou 42), and is closely associated with a statue at the top of the cathedral, a “star-crowned virgin” who like the Woman clothed with the sun hovers “on the sickle of the silver moon” (Harbou 8-9). Thus, while there are sometimes striking differences in detail and plot between von Harbou’s novel and Lang’s film version (based on her screenplay), Harbou in this instance reinforces what is visually present in Lang.
Apocalyptic Imagery in Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis”
Åke Bergvall
Literature/Film Quarterly, Vol. 40, No. 4 (2012)
Beyond this direct impact on Metropolis, what is particularly significant for the literary and artistic traditions of later Europe is the way Augustine (and Plato) interpreted the Apocalypse, creating a dichotomy not only between good and evil but also between authentic originals and false copies of the two cities: not only is there Christ, but also the Antichrist, as well as the true bride of Christ and the false bride, the Whore of Babylon. Numerous early modern epics demonstrate this progression, which began in Italy and moved steadily northward. The claim made by Andrew Fichter that Augustine supplies “the two cities that oppose each other in Renaissance epic”, although true, is also supported by the early church fathers’ Platonism.
While Andrew Fichter is right when he claims that Augustine supplies “the two cities that oppose each other” in the Renaissance epic, Plato’s ideas about the early church fathers also serve as a basis for the numerous parallels seen in the same works. This is especially true of Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (1590), which is regarded as England’s first epic and its most famous allegorical work. Its first book, “The Legend of Holiness,” is purposefully structured around the two cities and is nearly entirely populated by characters who are walking around as false versions of themselves (see Bergvall 192-210).
In conclusion, there are several plot and character parallels between Spenser’s poem and Lang’s film, which stem from a shared apocalyptic heritage. These parallels are manifested in both works through enduring symbols, like the two women associated with the two cities, the dragon, and the hero who kills dragons (known as George). All things considered, nevertheless, the narrative effects of the poem and the movie are not comparable, despite these parallels. In contrast to “The Legend of Holiness,” Metropolis is “a text whose allegorical e narrative” (Gunning 82), despite all of its numerous merits, including all the apocalyptic imagery highlighted in this study. Lang’s seems unable to come together into a cohesive whole, but Spenser’s allegorical cosmos remains intact. I think a major structural puzzle relating to Lang’s use of the apocalyptic model is the fundamental cause of this. He draws a pattern from Revelation that assumes a deep dualism in the form of two opposing cities, each linked to a corresponding lady (the two Marias). However, he dissolves the dualism by combining the two into one: Babylon and Jerusalem become one, thereby combining the two Marias as well. The central allegorical narrative of Maria’s sermon, the Tower of Babel parable, conveys the idea that it is possible and even desirable for the Tower of Babel and, by extension, Metropolis to be both the city of God and the city of man. This viewpoint is encapsulated in the sermon’s tagline, “And at the tower’s zenith we shall write: Great is the world and its Maker!” And man is awesome!” The film and the sermon both contend that the vanity of constructing the Tower of Babel in the first place is not what makes it a failure. As a result, even after all the devastation in the Furioso segment, the movie ends with a handshake rather than the fall of the New Tower of Babel.
Because of this, the movie ends with a handshake that will guarantee the reconstruction of the New Tower of Babel rather than with its destruction during the Furioso part. The film’s cohesive symbolic and apocalyptic structure is undermined by this finale, which refers back to a fundamental discrepancy arising from Maria’s sermon and is more apparent in the recently restored version.
