Fritz Lang's Metropolis: Cinematic Visions of Technology and Fear

by Michael Minden (Editor)

Fritz Lang's classic 1927 film Metropolis has justifiably become an icon for the complexities of Weimar culture. Among the important general issues it also raises are the relation between ideology and art, the status and authorship of the film text in the entertainment market, the city, the construction of gender, the relation between the human body and the machine in modernity, and the relation between mass and high culture. This volume provides abroad range of materials and resources for the study of Lang's film, including both well-known, previously published critical essays and contributions appearing for the first time here. The editors provide a two-part introductionthat furnishes context for what Bachmann's part deals with the genesis, production, and contemporary reception of the film, while Minden's defines the problems posed by the text and reviews thesolutions to these problemsas proposed by later generations of critics.The first part of the book proper includes selected contemporaryreviews, commentary by Fritz Lang and others involved in the making ofthe film, and extracts from Thea von Harbou's original novel. In the second part, eight modern scholars provide fresh essays on the genesis, promotion, and reception of the film. Approximately half of the material in the volume has never before appeared in print. The volume will appealto students of German, film, cultural and intellectual history, and social theory.

Michael Minden is University Lecturer in German at Cambridge University and a fellow of Jesus College. Holger Bachmann received hisPh.D. from Cambridge on Arthur Schnitzler and film.

Genres: Nonfiction, Film

340 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

Reviews

[Bill Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good collection of contemporary. historical, and critical writings about Fritz Lang's flawed masterpiece. Been years since I've read academic film criticism and this book, featuring essays that span 70 years provides a kind of microcosm of the development of film theory, from primitive beginnings to the vapid, self-reflexive air castles of post-Freudian sexual and pseudo-feminist analysis. Silly stuff indeed. Still, it's fun to see critics grapple with the widespread sense that the film fails on some level to unify its story and its amazing world with varying degrees of success. The contemporary essays, including H.G. Wells' famous polemic, are entertaining too. Worth reading, some contributions far more than others.