Metropolis

Metropolis Imagery

Slow March

The workers pass each other at the gates to their jobs in the workers' city. All of them walk with their heads hung low and as one shift leaves their job they pass the new workers coming in to start their shift. The imagery shows that these people are brutalized by their work, turned into machines and deprived of their own humanity. They have no identity and no hope for a future because their lives are dedicated to work from which they don't get to see any direct benefit.

Feeding the Machine

Freder is in the depths of the city watching the workers do their jobs to keep the city running. While watching them, one of the machines explodes and Freder experiences a hallucination, seeing the machine as the large mouth of the ancient Biblical god Moloch. The advanced city turns to an ancient one, and this image helps to represent Freder's experience of seeing the industrial workers' city for the first time, his horror at seeing the abysmal conditions there.

The Seven Deadly Sins and Death

We see the statues of the seven deadly sins come alive and begin walking off of the marble wall. The grim reaper is at the center, wielding its scythe. The imagery shows that these sins have been unleashed into Metropolis by the arrival of Rotwang's robot, the fact that sin and destruction have been introduced into the city.

Brain, Heart and Hands

The final scene of Lang's film shows the worker across from Fredersen. Neither can shake the other's hand, as both are hesitant to make the connection. Maria says that they need the heart to connect them. Freder represents the heart, and he comes between his father (the brain) and the worker (the hands). Thus, in the final image of the film, all three symbolic entities from the epigraph of the film come together in harmony.

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