Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
In a futuristic city sharply divided between the rich and the poor, the son of the city's mastermind meets a prophet who predicts the coming of a savior to mediate their differences.
Metropolis is a landmark of cinema history whose visual ambition and expressionist grandeur remain genuinely extraordinary — the iconic machine-city imagery, Maria's robot double, and Lang's monumental scale earn the highest Cinematography marks. Its Novelty is equally unimpeachable: no film before or since has quite the same mythic, operatic sweep fused with industrial dystopia, and its influence on virtually every sci-fi film that followed is incalculable. The Plot, however, is schematic and allegorical to a fault — class tensions resolved through a simplistic 'heart mediates between hand and brain' thesis feel thin even by 1927 standards. The acting is expressionistic and stylized, effective in context but broadly gestural by any objective measure. The Ending is the film's weakest point — the reconciliation between capitalist master and worker via a handshake feels abrupt, unearned, and naively utopian, a problem even contemporaries noted.