Absolutely crammed full of future references to all of your favourite science fiction feature films, series, books, comics and video games. There's also quite a lot rooted in the current world of science non-fiction with the age of automation and robots concurrently being consumed by A.I. and Machine Learning. You could squeeze gene editing in as well if you have the imagination.

I saw a clean restored version and spent a lot of time wishing I was consuming the experience in a cinema as a result. Ambitious, visionary and epic in its making - seldom can any film lay claim to having such huge influence. It must have been quite breathtaking for the paying public of the day, in their time away from the grindstone, to encounter such an alien and yet metaphorically familiar world, as the one they encountered here.

In the future, the society of Metropolis is divided in two social classes: the workers, who live in the underground below the machines level, and the dominant classes that lives on the surface. The workers are controlled by their leader Maria (Brigitte Helm), who wants to find a mediator between the upper class lords and the workers, since she believes that a heart would be necessary between brains and muscles. Maria meets Freder Fredersen (Gustav Fröhlich), the son of the Lord of Metropolis Johhan Fredersen (Alfred Abel), in a meeting of the workers, and they fall in love for each other. Meanwhile, Johhan decides that the workers are no longer necessary for Metropolis, and uses a robot pretending to be Maria to promote a revolution of the working class and eliminate them.

"Metropolis" is a fantastic futuristic view of the fight of classes. When "Metropolis" was shot, it was a romantic revolutionary period of mankind history, with socialist movements around the world. Fritz Lang directed and wrote the screenplay of this masterpiece certainly inspired in this historical moment and defending a position of agreement and understanding between both sides, showing that they need each other. I wonder how this great director was able to produce such special effects in 1927, with very primitive cameras and equipment. The city of Metropolis is visibly inspired in New York. The performance of Brigitte Helm is stunning in her double role, and this movie is mandatory for any person that says that like cinema as an art. My vote is ten.

Title (Brazil): "Metropolis"

Note: On 05 March 2019, I saw this film again on Blu-Ray.

Fritz Lang's groundbreaking landmark remains one of the biggest mysteries in the world of cinema. How can a movie that'll soon turn 80 years old still look so disturbingly futuristic?? The screenplay by Thea Von Harbou is still very haunting and courageously assails social issues that are of all ages. The world has been divided into two main categories: thinkers & workers! If you belong to the first category, you can lead a life of luxury above ground but if you're a worker, your life isn't worth a penny, and you're doomed to perilous labor underground. The further expansions and intrigues in the screenplay are too astonishing to spoil, so I strongly advise that you check out the film yourself. It's essential viewing, anyway! "Metropolis" is a very demanding film-experience and definitely not always entertaining. But, as it is often the case with silent-cinema classics, the respect and admiration you'll develop during watching it will widely excel the enjoyment-aspect. Fritz' brutal visual style still looks innovative and few directors since were able to re-create a similarly nightmarish composition of horizontal and vertical lines. Many supposedly 'restored' versions have been released over the years (in 1984 and 2002, for example) but the 1926-version is still the finest in my opinion, even though that one already isn't as detailed and punctual as Lang intended it. "Metropolis" perhaps is THE most important and influential movie ever made. "2001: A Space Odyssey", "Star Wars" and "Blade Runner" owe their existence (or at least their power) to it.