“METROPOLIS”

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 342, 1 May 1928, Page 14

“METROPOLIS”

ASTONISHING PICTURE FANTASTIC MECHANICAL CITY Has man. with his amazing mechanical inventions, his power, his advance in culture become a better human being? Is he still the frail creature who tried to reach the stars by the Tower of Babel? The motion picture producer says that without love man is still the primitive; without the heart as mediator the structure built by hand and brain must fall. This theory is advanced in•• Metropolis.” another U.F.A. masterpiece, which was shown privately yesterday afternoon at the Tivoli Theatre. It is colossal in its imagery, it is fantastic thought and execution. One is confounded by a stupendous production in which every preconceived idea of the motion picture goes by the board. Embellishing new ideas in art and thought, the producers have gone to Karel Capek, who first evolved his mechanical man, the robot, on the stage, and to the cubists and the futurists. But they have advanced their ideas until the whole theme becomes almost terrifying in its possibility. “Metropolis” is a fantastic city of j the future, controlled by one brain, , that of John Masterman. Giant sky- 1 scrapers tower to the sky. overhead j railways carry moving throngs of traffic, everything is hideously median- ! ical. The tall, slender buildings are joined by streets, high in the air, and | airplanes wing their way under and j over the vast frameworks of steel, like : trembling, swooping birds. Beep down under the city are John ; Masterman's workers. Their movements are like clockwork. Broken in spirit they shuffle in orderly battalions to work and shuffle homeward again. Lifts carry them up and down; everything is drab and grey and hopeless. They are compassed in a city of electric power. But salvation comes in the form of a beautiful girl, daughter of a worker. ! Unknown to Masterman and his I minions she preaches the gospel of

; love and talks of God—a figure of ao**“forgotten” religion. Beep in vaults of the city th© workers to her. She tells them that some <kthere will come a mediator the hand and the brain. Masterman’s son, who knos; nothing of the workers, comes on tfcj girl by accident on© day, and the finds his way to the machines. grows from the chance meeting. Masterman discovers what is gain, on and conceives the fiendish schei** lof evolving a mechanical wonu* ; with the face of th© girl his son lovfc who shall preach her master’s wish* to the workers. It is done, but the result is ov«r whelming. The mechanical wonu; preaches revolt, the workers ris e an destroy the machines, and the under ground city is flooded- Young Masterman and Mary, the girl he lov* escape and save the children wit; them; the mechanical woman j, destroyed and understanding reigns k the city that will be built from ruin. “Metropolis” leaves one astound* at the inventiveness of the producen Electricity has been used with a max ing results. The flooding and thruin of the city carry the convictfoi of reality—there is no asking “why* The actors in this astounding pi*, auction play noble parts—but It is fl. unexpected theme and the originalitof th© picture which live in th, memory of the spectator.