It's strange - and somewhat unbelievable - to think that Metropolis was made all the way back in 1927. Especially since there was a noticeable lack of worthwhile science-fiction movies in the wake of its release until decades and decades later. It's well known that director Fritz Lang went about assembling his vision for Metropolis with all the subtlety of a bull in a china shop - the production process was notoriously nightmarish. People were injured. Sets were burned to the ground. And yet the final film is a dizzying, technical accomplishment - a sci-fi classic. Lang achieved his dreams of conjuring Metropolis' detailed, dystopian city using clever camera tracks and by way of constructing some of the most ambitious sets ever built at the time. And it's all up there, in all its glory, to behold: indeed, not a single shot in Metropolis disappoints. The movie is genuinely mesmerising on a purely aesethic level, but it being a movie in the sci-fi canon, it probes far deeper into the nature of humanity and its relationship with technology, but also deals with the class system and how it affects us all. A silent masterpiece.
Sam Hill is an ardent cinephile and has been writing about film professionally since 2008. He harbours a particular fondness for western and sci-fi movies.
