Metropolis - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of Metropolis or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to Metropolis

[leo]

For the U.S. version, Paramount hired playwright Channing Pollock to re-write the film around Fritz Lang's footage. He created an entirely new story that blamed all of the action on a greedy employee and identified many of the revolting workers as soulless robots. For the film's U.S. release, Paramount replaced the UFA logo with its own and reshot the credits. Lang refused to see this version.

[gerald]

The multiple-exposed sequences were not created in a lab but right during the filming on the set. The film was rewound in the camera and then exposed again right away. This was done up to 30 times.

[maureen]

In some international versions, in the credits Heinrich George is mistaken for Fritz Rasp.

[amber]

Rotwang's mechanical right hand was later imitated in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964).

[jesse]

No optical printing system existed at the time, so to create a matte effect, a large mirror was placed at an angle to reflect a piece of artwork while live footage was projected onto the reverse. To expose the projected footage, the silvering on the back of the mirror had to be scraped off in strategically appropriate places. One mistake would ruin the whole mirror. This was done for each separate shot that had to be composited in this manner. This procedure was developed by Eugen Schüfftan and is known as the "Schufftan Process."

[carla]

The cast of the film was mostly composed of unknown actors; Heinrich George was a theatre actor, Gustav Fröhlich was a journalist and 19-year-old Brigitte Helm who had no previous film experience though she had given the trial shots for Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (1924).

[gabriel]

The screenplay itself went through many re-writes, and at one point featured an ending where Freder would have flown to the stars; this plot element later became the basis for Fritz Lang's Woman in the Moon (1929).

[kyle]

Included among the '1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die', edited by Steven Jay Schneider.

[kyle]

Fritz Lang insisted that Brigitte Helm should wear the robot costume instead of a stunt double. During the transformation scene, Helm actually fainted, as the shot took so long and she couldn't get enough air in the restricting costume.

[albert]

This was the world's first feature-length science fiction movie.

[cassandra]

One of the major changes that Giorgio Moroder made in his 1984 version of the film was to change the inter-titles to subtitles to accelerate the pacing.

[lonnie]

Unemployment and inflation were so bad in Germany at the time that the producers had no trouble finding 500 malnourished children to film the flooding sequences.

[ronnie]

The film drew heavily on biblical sources for several of its key set-pieces. During her first talk to the workers, Maria uses the story of the Tower of Babel to highlight the discord between the intellectuals and the workers. Additionally, a delusional Freder imagines the false-Maria as the Whore of Babylon, riding on the back of a many-headed dragon. Also, the name of the Yoshiwara club alludes to the famous red-light district of Tokyo.

[chris]

The establishing shots of the city - with cars, planes and elevated trains moving about - were shot using stop-motion photography. The cars were modelled on the newest taxicabs driving the streets of Berlin. It took months to build the city model and several days to film the few short sequences. Then the lab ruined the first shots. The backgrounds in the shot had been dimly lit to create a greater sense of depth, but the head of the lab, who developed the film himself, decided that was a mistake and lightened the backgrounds, thereby destroying the sense of forced perspective.

[morris]

Brigitte Helm's robot costume was extremely uncomfortable to wear. Helm suffered greatly underneath it as it cut and bruised her though Fritz Lang insisted that she had to wear it.

[riley]

A set of 78 records containing the music with a spoken introduction by Fritz Lang was issued although only one is known to survive.

[caroline]

For the explosion of the heart machine, Fritz Lang refused to use dummies as stand-ins for the workers thrown about. He insisted that would look phony. So extras were to be hooked to harness belts and thrown through smoke, steam and fire. To lighten the mood before shooting, he insisted that his assistant, Gustav Puttscher, try out the harness, and then had him yanked almost to the top of the soundstage and left him there. During filming, he insisted the extras show pain, even though there were no close-ups. Fortunately for him, they already were in pain.

[miriam]

Film included more than 37,000 extras including 25,000 men, 11,000 women, 1,100 bald men, 750 children, 100 dark-skinned people and 25 Asians. 310 shooting days were required.

[harry]

Rotwang has a memorial monument to Hel. While it's explained that Hel was the late wife of Joh Fredersen, "Hel" is also the Norse goddess in charge of the "Halls of Hel," or underworld. Her name, and the location (often shortened simply to "Hel," which have us the word hell), were synonymous with death. To be blunt, Rotwang was quite literally worshipping death, which helps explain his plan for the mechanical Maria.