Summary
As the workers' city floods, Freder and Josaphat climb through an entryway and down into the main square where children are crowding around Maria on the platform. Freder climbs onto the platform and embraces Maria, finally reunited with her. Someone calls to them to go to the air shafts as the reservoirs are flooding. Maria and Freder, swarmed by children, run towards the air shafts, streaming up a staircase in throngs.
At the top of the stairs, they encounter a gate that will not open and begin to panic. Freder and Josaphat climb up to help and Freder pushes against the bars as the children swarm around Maria, clutching her in desperation. Freder eventually manages to push open the gate and the children run out of the workers' city.
Freder and Josaphat carry Maria, who has nearly passed out from the experience, out of the workers' city. The three of them hug the children and Maria says to Freder, "We'll take the children to the Club of the Sons!" Suddenly, they notice that all the lights are out and the scene shifts.
We see the revolutionaries encircling the Heart Machine. Meanwhile, Fredersen asks the Thin Man where Freder is. The Thin Man replies, "Tomorrow, thousands will ask in fury and desperation: Joh Fredersen, where is my son!"
As the revolutionaries encircle the Heart Machine, its operator whistles to get their attention. He yells at them, "Where are your children??!" and tells them that the city is completely underwater. Panicked, the revolutionaries begin to cry, thinking their children dead, as the operator tells them they are fools for wanting to attack the machines, as this will only kill them all. The revolutionaries declare that it is the "witch's fault."
The scene shifts and we see the witch—robotic Maria—dancing at the nightclub, surrounded by upper-class partygoers. "Let's all watch as the world goes to the devil!" Back at the Heart Machine, the operator tells the crowds to find the witch and "strike her dead!" He descends into the crowd and they go to find the robotic Maria.
Meanwhile, Maria, Josaphat, and Freder, surrounded by the orphans, go to the city above ground. Rotwang hears them from his dwelling and approaches a large monument to the woman he loved, Hel, saying, "Now I am going to take you home!"
Maria rests against a wall as the revolutionaries pour into the city with torches. When they see her, they mistake her for the witch and the Heart Machine operator asks her where the children are. She pleads with them, but they charge towards her, planning to burn her at the stake. She flees and they chase her through the city. At a corner the crowd converges with the robotic Maria, as the authentic Maria escapes. The Heart Machine operator grabs the robotic Maria and they lead her to the stake on top of a large pyre.
She cackles as they light the pyre aflame. Freder runs into the crowd and mistakes the robot for the actual Maria. Meanwhile, the authentic Maria watches from behind a statue, before running out to watch. When she emerges, Rotwang jumps out of the shadows and chases her. He grabs her, but she manages to wriggle free by grabbing hold of a rope connected to a large bell, which sounds the toll of the bell and captures the attention of the revolutionaries.
As the revolutionaries watch the robotic Maria burn, the flames expose her metallic body, and the crowds stand back in horror, seeing that the witch was artificial all along. Realizing that Maria is still alive, Freder runs into the church to find her, and saves her from the lascivious clutches of Rotwang. Meanwhile, Josaphat tells Joh Fredersen and the Thin Man what has happened.
Rotwang and Freder fight on the upper level of the church as the revolutionaries watch from below. Fredersen runs in and sees the fight, as chaos breaks out among the revolutionaries. Rotwang knocks Freder to the ground and carries Maria up to the top of the church, at which point she falls, hanging from the edge. Freder and Rotwang fall down the roof onto the next level and continue to fight, with Rotwang eventually falling to his death. Freder and Maria reunite, clutching each other.
The scene shifts and we see the revolutionaries approaching the church, as Fredersen, Maria, and Freder emerge. The operator of the Heart Machine walks towards Fredersen and doesn't know what to say. Turning to Freder, Maria says, "Head and hands want to join together, but they don't have the heart to do it...Oh mediator, show them the way to each other..." Freder approaches his father and the Heart Machine operator, bringing their hands together in a shake.
Analysis
Catastrophe strikes and the final part of the film marks the characters attempting to overcome the giant obstacles presented by the flooding of the workers' city. Freder is reunited with his beloved Maria and they set to work to free the crowds of parent-less children who have been abandoned by their revolutionary parents. Maria and Freder become representations of the mother and father, leading a group of orphans towards salvation during a catastrophe.
The shots of Freder and Maria surrounded by children trying to evade the flood are striking and impressive in their scale. The children reach their hands towards Freder and Maria as if in a tableau, and the image represents the fact that they are stuck at the bottom of the social hierarchy, desperately reaching to those in power for help. The image looks almost like a political drawing, a perfectly constructed allegory for the socio-political issues at stake.
The two Marias come in to represent two diametrically-opposed images of femininity, in spite of externally looking exactly the same. While the authentic Maria is presented as pure-hearted, giving, and maternal, the robotic version of her, programmed by Rotwang, is destructive, sinful, and witch-like. They represent the two poles on an infamous Freudian continuum between the virgin and the whore. Where human Maria wants to save the children and find a peaceful solution to the labor issues faced by the city, the robotic Maria wants only pleasure, indulgence, and chaos which the film suggests will necessarily lead to destruction. The solution to the political upheaval becomes as simple as finding the witch and killing her—an age-old patriarchal narrative.
The doubling of Maria leads to an exceedingly complicated and dramatic climax. The revolutionaries set out to burn the robot Maria as a witch, having no knowledge of the fact that she is a duplicate of the woman that once led them. Once they do capture the robot Maria and burn her, Freder cannot tell that it is the duplicate and not his beloved being burned at the stake, and mourns her loss. Meanwhile, Rotwang experiences his own delusions and mistakes the authentic Maria for his robot, a manifestation of his one true love, Hel. Simultaneously, several instances of mistaken identity play out, heightening the dramatic tension of the final moments of the film.
Ultimately everything works out and the different figures in the narrative become explicit symbols, allegorical representations of a political idea. The entire structure of the society in Metropolis is represented as a literal political body, in which Fredersen represents the head—the ideas behind how progress and society works; the workmen represent the hands—the literal utility that makes the society function; and Freder represents the heart—an anatomical fixture that connects the brain to the body and ensures that they are working together. In a literal moment of touch, Freder brings the hand of the workman to the hand of his father, literalizing a union between workers and the powers that be.
