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Question: How is Fritz Lang’s ‘Metropolis’ a response to the social environment? Discuss how images of power relations and relations between classes in modern society are portrayed in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.
It is clear through an understanding of Expressionism and German Expressionism how Fritz Lang has portrayed feelings about the social environment in Germany through his 1926 silent film ‘Metropolis’. By using the German expressionist style Lang empathetically and abstractly provides the viewer with insight to class structure and power relations in Germany prior to the release of ‘Metropolis’.
To clearly identify with the social issues at play in Metropolis it is imperative to understand the characteristics and ideologies of Expressionism, which lead to German Expressionism. In the hundred years prior to the movement known as German Expressionism, the world had undergone much dramatic change. ... Through expressionism the artist became able to take a subjective position on their feelings and attitudes towards the world. ... Wilhelm Warringer in his thesis ‘Empathy and Abstraction’ cited in Dittmann, theorises Expressionism stating that there are two possibilities of human ‘attitude to the world, the drive to empathy and the drive to abstraction’ (Dittmann, 1989). In the art of expressionism according to Warringer we have these two possibilities of attitude, empathy, as stated in ‘The Concise Oxford Dictionary’, is ‘the power of projecting one’s personality into the object of contemplation’ (OUP, 1975). ... Through these two points Expressionism arrives at a ‘new relationship between man and nature’ expressing a worldview in total, including ‘feeling and expression precipitated in the work, and inner-life, the forces of whatever comes together in nature’ (Dittmann, 1989). ... I will elaborate with this point in terms of Metropolis shortly.
Through these theories we can see how the experimental art of German expressionism, is highly a projection of subjectivity, naturalism is removed to reveal states of mind which can be projected to the audience, such as dreams, fears, and anxieties. The German Expressionists used a stylistic device on screen known as mise-en-scene. ... In this way Lang is displaying a projection of culture, it is a emotional comment on the anxieties he felt in society about new technologies and class structure and power relations in German at the time.
In the opening scene, the shift begins at the underground workers city displaying the electric Moloch which powers Metropolis and which the workers serve.
Approximate Word count = 1924
Approximate Pages = 7.7
(250 words per page double spaced)
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