Mediation and Violence: The Relationship Between Workers and the Rich in Metropolis Alexis Johnston College

From the beginning of Metropolis, there is a stark divide between the upper class and the working people. We see working people walk like soldier into huge elevators, heads hanging in clear misery, descending into what we can only assume is their version of hell, deep below the earth’s surface. Their clothes are black and the world around them is just as dark. Topside, the sons of the wealthy are dressed all in white, playing and carefree. The intertitles make it clear that these wealthy people live off the backs of the workers. When the rich women see the children of the workers, they gawk at them like foreign creatures. Freder, the son of the master of Metropolis, is enraptured by Maria and follows her into the city of the workers, where he sees them toiling away at a machine. The workers struggle to control the machine as a gauge rises, eventually causing the machine to turn into a face with a gaping mouth that swallows scores of workers alive. These workers march obediently into the mouth, giving themselves over to death by machine, death by work. This is only one of many scenes that indicates the sense of violence that reaches across the otherwise clear class distinctions in Metropolis, a film that moves from a vision of...