Metropolis

Director: Fritz Lang, Fritz Lang

1927 / 124min / 35mm

Lang’s futurist epic imagines a dystopian 2026 where the proletariat has been reduced to a state of near-automation, until a Maschinenmensch robot simulacra of a real woman is used to sow dissent amongst their ranks. The Babel-like skyline of the film’s city setting and Walter Schulze-Mittendorff’s robot design are wellsprings from which most all subsequent science-fiction cinema may be said to have sprung, oft imitated but never surpassed in vision or soundstage scope.