6. Fritz Lang and Metropolis in 1927
The Weimar Republic in post-World War I Germany was the home of filmmaker Fritz Lang, who gave the world many notable films over the course of his career, including noir classics The Big Heat, While the City Sleeps, and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, all in rotation on television channels specializing in such films. But it was his vision of a dystopian society which he depicted in 1927s Metropolis which changed history. Often viewed as a prototype for an entire film genre – science fiction – and noted for its scathing social commentary, Metropolis predicted the city and life of the future, the dangers of industrial society, and the rising contempt between the working class and the intellectual elite. It was both panned and promoted by critics upon its release and has continued to generate similar reactions ever since. It was particularly well received in Germany in which the Nazi Party was on the rise.
Joseph Goebbels was enamored with the film, and exhorted party leaders, including Adolf Hitler, to view it and study its underlying message. Goebbels insisted that he and Hitler view the film together, and convinced the future Fuhrer that the message of the lengthy film was the rise of labor, the workers, over the historic oppression of the intellectuals and bankers, which in the view of the Nazis was dominated in Europe by the Jews. French critics also viewed the film along the same lines, wary of the changes which it evoked among the Germans to their east. Lang’s wife, Thea von Harbou, joined the Nazi Party, believing that they espoused the vision in her husband’s film, which led him to divorce her and flee to the United States to escape the Nazis, but not until after he was informed that Hitler, by then Fuhrer, wanted Lang to make films sanctioned by the German government.