Introduction

Fritz Lang’s masterpiece,
Metropolis was a landmark film in the history of visual effects not only for pionerring then state-of-the art film techniques but for its visual style as well. The purpose of this case study will be to demonstrate how Metropolis utilized techniques far ahead of its time to envision a dystopic industrial future in ways later borrowed by such films as Blade Runner and Dark City.

An Enormous Undertaking

Going from Lang’s vision to the actual production of the film required innovative techniques in visual effects- as well as a lot of money. The film was budgeted for 1.1 million marks, but ended up costing at least six million marks.The film broke all previous records for money spent, and very nearly bankrupted UFA in the process. The film’s cast of nearly 25,000 extras, as a result, were paid very little for their work- all in a time when many people in Germany could not even afford to eat. Filming began May 22nd, 1925, and continued until the end of October in 1926, consisting of 310 shooting days and 60 nights and took place in UFA studios, although some shots were done in massive sets in warehouses- and even one scene was shot inside of a zeppelin hull near Berlin.

Set Design and Models

The city shots of Metropolis were a combination of both two and three dimensional elements, consisting of matte drawings and paintings, flat wooden relief models, and three dimensional models scaled to 1/16th of the simulated heights. All matte drawings of the cityscape were scaled to a height of 1/100. The man responsible for most of the film’s models was Walter Schuzle-Mittendorf. The set designers- Otto Hunte, Erich Kettelhut and Karl Vollbrecht- first created a number of concept drawings for the imagined city of Metropolis, following Lang’s plan for the city to be divided into several sections. The emphasis was on the verticality of the structures, intersected by roadway systems and aircraft. The dominating architectural feature is the so-called New Tower of Babel, the largest building located centrally in the city. The building, like most of the buildings in the film, is a model.

The Film's Release

At long last, Metropolis, the film that took nearly a year to shoot, premiered in Berlin on January 10, 1927. Lang’s original version of Metropolis, at its intended frame rate, ran over three hours long. Before release, however, Metropolis went through a number of cuts and was re-edited to change many key elements before screening to satisfy the studio heads at UFA. Secondly, the film was hurt by the fact that threatre managers showed the film at a highly accelerated speed. The actual frame rate of the film has been disputed (although it was most likely the standard of the day, 16 frames per second), but in most theatres the film was shown at an incredible 26 frames per second to further shorten the film to 153 minutes. This disrupted the pacing of the film and the end result was a butchered and oftentimes illogical film that was received with only moderate enthusiasm.

The audiences at Berlin, however, saw the version that was closest to Lang’s intention. When the film debuted in the United States, threatre managers were generally unwilling to show films longer than ninety minutes in length, as they felt that most audience members would not want to see a movie that long. American playwright Channing Pollock re-edited the film once more, almost completely obscuring the original plot as it was considered to be too controversial by the American distributors and the film was shortened further, to its current length of 90 minutes.


A quarter of the film is believed to have been lost forever.