In the battle between society and Wanley, the society, or destiny-machine, slowly seizes control of Wanley's destiny with machine-like precision.
What also remind the audience of the machine-like precision are the clocks that are so prevalent in this film. Professor Polan mentioned that the theme of clocks are consistently present in many Lang's films. Characters in Lang's films oftentimes use clocks to follow deadlines, which creates a lack of freedom and thus sense of confinement. In this film, the men's club and Wanley's home seem to be constantly echoing with ticking clocks. There is also a noticeable clock towering over Reed's apartment, which reminds the audience of the concept of time. Every time a character enters or leaves a room, members of the audience can record the time of the event if they wanted to. It almost seems that the sequence of events are indexed by time and all the characters are forced to follow a set schedule. The fates of each character seem to be entrapped by a higher power, or as Gunning words it - the destiny-machine. .
While the presence of clocks contributes to the bleak and pessimistic atmosphere, the mood that encompasses the feeling of entrapment depicted in the film is also created by the stylistic techniques employed in the film. Lang employs numerous stylistic techniques, many of which can be attributed to Film Noir, to emphasize the intended meaning and themes of each scene. Copjec point out that the main characteristics and visual style of Film Noir are:.
low-key lighting, the use of chiaroscuro effects, strongly marked camera angles, either low or high; jarring and off balance shot composition; tight framing and close-ups that produce a claustrophobic sense of containment. The films are predominantly urban, the action taking place at night and filmed night for night on location, to produce a strong contrast between the enveloping dark and intermittent pools of light; (126) .
The film, M, directed by Fritz Lang, is an instant classic because of its innovation in sound. ... This film was also Fritz Lang's first "talkie". ... For Fritz Lang, however, it was to be used sparingly. ... Fritz Lang uses sound as if it were another part of the visual. ... It is believed that Fritz Lang based his movie on this serial killer. ...
Fritz Lang"s: Metropolis Critical Response By. Josh BoockThis Fritz Lang classic silent film of the futuristic city of metropolis and its mechanized society is possible more powerful to day then when it was released, at depicting the dehumanization of centralized urban cites. ... Fritz shows us this by contrasting; the people marching like rats in step from a shot looking down at the divisions and the people frolicking above ground in this dreamy trance, the dinginess and hard, sweaty, dangerous work below to the beauty of the city. ...
Evidentially the most noteworthy movie of the era, Fritz Lang's Metropolis came to Germany with impressive special effects and direction and later spread throughout Europe and to North America. ... Unfortunately for the genre, this was a gem in a trash-heap; for cinema, the 1950's were a time of shameless monster movies with non-sensical plots, poor acting, and special effects that were none-too-special. ... The 1960s passed with much the same mix of monster movies and novel adaptations. ... From 1902's A Trip to the Moon to 2003's Terminator 3, these quasi-science fiction...
While other movies from around the same time were using painted-on sets to illustrate normal, everyday locales, Metropolis" sets seemed limited only by the imagination of Fritz Lang and others who were involved in the film's creation. ... Lang visually shows us how cold, crowded, but still beautiful Metropolis is. ... Suspended streets, air traffic, and oddly shaped buildings manage to show us the bustling city as Lang envisioned it. ... One thing I found difficult to grasp was what, exactly, Lang was trying to say with this movie. ... Certainly, Lang presented the world as being horr...
The themes of the films cover everything from pre-war paranoia in Germany, with Fritz Lang's M(1931), to American gangster movies like Public Enemy (1931). ... It started in Germany with directors such as Lang and Wiene who began making films about sly and dangerous criminals while at the same time their country was being taken over by censoring dictators. ...
The history of movies/film, although only a century old, is rich and complex. ... Although the German film industry was booming, filmmakers found it difficult to create movies because of the hard economic times and because of the big competition with Hollywood. ... Writer Carl Mayer, designer/painter Hermann Warm, Walter Roehrig, and Walter Reimann played significant roles in the movement, as did Directors Robert Wiene (The Cabinet of Dr.Caligari, 1919), Fritz Lang (Dr.Mabuse, 1922; Metropolis, 1927), Murnau (Nosferatu, 1922; The Last Laugh, 1924), and Paul Leni (Waxworks, 1924, and in Holl...
In particular, the dehumanization of workers, into what Marx called a "cattle - like existence", echoes throughout both movies, albeit in different degrees. ... In the opening scenes of Metropolis, Fritz Lang uses a montage of machines and workers to draw similarities between the two. ...
Released in 1927, "Metropolis" is a silent science-fiction film directed by Fritz Lang, the famous German Expressionist filmmaker. ... Whether it be in movies or music videos, to this day, we can see that the influence of it certainly lives on. ... The image Fritz Lang created in Rotwang is actually extremely influential in the iconography of the "standard" mad scientist. ... They continuously sprout up in films and movies, and with real significance to the characters' identities and plots' storylines. ...
