Metropolis: Critic Reviews

Far from a historical curio, Metropolis arrives, three-quarters of a century late, like an artifact from the future.

Unmissable.

The great thing is that despite the over-the-top acting, the makeup that doesn't know when to stop, the preciousness of so many of the compositions (Lang was nothing if not inventive), this is a great old movie-movie.

Here's a coincidence: The first must-see movie of 2010 is also the must-see movie of 1927. The difference is that you can actually see it now. Or most of it.

None of the film's many imitators has achieved something this immediately magnificent.

Lang's impossibly vast skyscraper-ziggurats (inspired, it's said, by his first view of the Manhattan skyline) are the blueprint for nearly every science-fiction movie city of the past 30 years.

A movie whose graphic intelligence is exceeded only by its conceptual audacity.

After 75 years, Fritz Lang's Metropolis still stands as an icon of the silent era.

You've seen the rest; now see the best.

Few films have ever been more visually exhilarating.

Trashy and glorious, the restored Metropolis is a pop epic for the ages.

The great Fritz Lang created this chilling 1926 evocation of a mechanized utopia run by underground slave labor.

The film looks fabulous, and Gottfried Huppertz's original score is another worthy addition.

The eye-popping design and sense of scale remains as fresh and vital as it was in 1927.

There's no denying either the influence of Lang's vision -- so much of what he did in this film lives on that we take it as cultural assumption -- or the still valid energy of his storytelling.

Catch it wherever and whenever it plays. It incarnates the idea of the Big City as a manifestation of modernism.

The extended version -- the additional footage is easy to spot because it's rather worn and a slightly different size -- provides more of the extraordinary performance by the teenage Helm.

A great artist contains multitudes, and Lang packed a host of contradictory longings into a single allegory.

Kino's The Complete Metropolis contains nearly a hundred instances of restored footage, ranging from brief reaction shots to entire sequences.

To see the film as the director intended, on the big screen with an original score recorded by a 60-piece orchestra, greatly enhances the reputation of a film already considered one of the icons of the silent era.

Devoted film- and music-lovers alike will enjoy the latest reconstruction (images and sound) of Fritz Lang's truly marvellous tale of mediation over violence.

Every dystopian vision owes a debt of gratitude to Metropolis.

A luminous and resplendent visual masterpiece yoked to a puerile and embarrassingly trite plot.