“METROPOLIS”

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 390, 26 June 1928, Page 15

“METROPOLIS”

IS IT A PROBLEM PICTURE? What future lies ahead of the unskilled worker? This problem has agitated the minds of Labour leaders and visionists for the past century or so. Fritz Lang, the producer of “Metropolis,” the new and marvellous motion picture, which is coming to Everybody’s Theatre on Thursday, attempts to show what might happen if science and business efficiency were allowed to run riot and individualism become stultified. He pictures a city controlled by one man with the workers subjugated to mere slaves, toiling far below the earth in a subterranean city artificially lighted and ventilated, with the pulsation of thousands of mighty machines over their heads night and day, slaving on a ten-hour shift without hope, without ambition, without even a name, only a number. The solution of this problem, the producer of “Metropolis” wisely leaves to those who will see his picture, but the contemplation of it offers no end of opportunity for controversy and hazard as to the eventual escape from such an impasse. Richard Dix had just completed his present picture for Paramount. “Warming Up,” when he was stricken with appendicitis, and was hastily removed to the Rooseveldt Hospital, Los Angeles, where he was operated on. The illness robbed him of a vacation he had planned to spend in New York, but now he will start on a new picture as soon as he is well. “Warming Up” is a baseball story and the leading lady is a find. Her name is Jean Arthur.