Welcome Brothers and Sisters. As a union worker, growing up in a union family, I have always loved watching and sharing labor films. All work has dignity, and all workers deserve dignity; union or non-union, you have come to the right place. I decided to try something a little different this week. The first time I saw this week’s film, I now realize I was far too immature to fully appreciate its artistry, and more importantly, its message. Consequently, I was hesitant to feature it as this week’s labor film, as my vague recollection of it only somewhat related to the intent of this diary; but upon viewing it again, I am glad I pursued the idea.
1927’s Metropolis is a visionary science fiction love story, set in a dystopian future, where the wealthy and privileged enjoy the fruits of society, living a charmed life in the shining modern city of Metropolis. The workers, who built the city, and operate the machines that make it function, are relegated to the depths of the dreary underground bowels of Metropolis, living a a life of privation and toil. Metropolis was directed by Fritz Lang, who worked with Thea von Harbou in adapting a screenplay of her novel of the same name, written 2 years prior.
My first exposure to Metropolis was fortuitous and unique. A long time ago, I was working part time at a second-run independent movie theater. Opening in 1928, this theater was built in the art-deco architectural style. I was fortunate to be offered an unclaimed seat for a special event the theater hosted, an “authentic” presentation of Metropolis.
The presentation was “authentic” due to the theater itself. There is no record of whether or not it had an original screening of Metropolis in its earliest operating years, but it was indeed well equipped to do so. In the silent film days, a film’s score was performed as a live musical accompaniment. In the case of Metropolis, the score was intended to be played on a “Mighty Wurlitzer” pipe organ, and this theater had one, complete with its groups of large bronze pipes, as decorative as they were functional, built into four great alcoves in the auditorium’s high walls. Until this time, I had never been particularly impressed with this theater’s acoustics, but upon hearing what it was actually built for, it was amazing.
An original screening of Metropolis must have been a spectacle to behold in its day. The very concept of “going to the movies” so long ago was very different than we think of it today. It was closer to what we think of as an operatic presentation, rather than a modern cinema screening. A recently unearthed 30 page program, which was included with the purchase of a ticket to the film’s London premiere, is a striking example of the difference in the movie-going experience of this time period.
A film preservation project, that chose to hold their event at the historic theater I worked at, had recently rendered the most complete, highest quality version of Metropolis ever assembled since its original days, clocking in at nearly 4 hours long. The exhaustive search for the best footage was worldwide, in libraries, old theater archives, and private collections.
There are many versions of the film, and sadly none are actually complete. As is common with films of this era, originally mastered on cellulose nitrate film, much of early cinematic history has been lost, literally to chemical decay. For what remains, it is a race against time to digitally duplicate what little is left. It is estimated that over 90% of cinema produced before 1929 is lost forever. Metropolis, despite its relative popularity, is no exception to this, and the version I saw that night, despite being considered the most intact, was itself still only 97% complete.
The version I chose to embed is in English, and is just under 2 hours long. Although the only streaming service that offers it is Amazon Prime, and not for free, there are numerous online sources that offer the various versions for free viewing. Here is the Internet Archive project’s link to the same version I embedded below.
The second time I recently watched Metropolis, I tried an experiment, which you might consider as a time-saver, as it will cut down the runtime to 1 hour. Personally, the score of the film in any online video I have found, does not do justice to the wonder I once heard performed live. I thought since it is a silent film, minus the score, I would try watching it at double speed, using the YouTube settings (the cogwheel icon in the lower right) and choosing a playback speed of 2. I’ll be honest, this is just me, but although I had to pause it a couple times to read longer captions, it truthfully held my attention better than watching it at its normal speed. Totally up to you, just putting it out there.
Metropolis was originally captioned in German. Some claim there is much lost in translation, which I am inclined to believe, but not being fluent in German, I could not positively confirm this. 1927 was the height of Germany’s Wiemar Republic, following its loss of World War 1. This period has been characterized as that of an artistic and scientific renaissance in Germany, and Fritz Lang’s film is characteristic of both of these cultural trends. The film is considered a masterpiece, both for the story it tells, and for the way it’s presented. It features some special effects that would be no small technical challenge to duplicate today, and for lack of spoken dialog, these special effects are actually essential to tell the story, and certainly not a gratuitous spectacle for their own sake.
From this point until the graphic below is my own analysis of certain elements of the film, but beware spoilers, as my analysis summarizes some key plot points.
The protagonist, Freder Frederson’s introduction, in my interpretation, hearkens back to two familiar literary examples, the first being similar to the early life of the Buddha, whereas the second seems akin to Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper. Also borrowing from other eastern philosophies, the concept of parts of the body, representing societal rank and function, is a central theme throughout Metropolis, particularly the head, the hands, and the heart. In short, the head represents management, the hands labor, and the heart, a means of mediation.
Freder, son of the city’s most rich and powerful man, is smitten with the beautiful Maria, and her message of peace and unity, which in the same instance exposes Freder to the existence of poverty, presumably for the first time in his life. In his unsuccessful first attempt to find Maria in the underground city where she lives, Freder witnesses an industrial accident. The Heart Machine, which powers all of Metropolis, and keeps the underground city from flooding, malfunctions due to the exhaustion of one of its key operators, who dies in an explosion, along with a great number of other workers. Through Freder’s eyes, he sees the machine as a cruel, indifferent beast, feeding on the very workers who operate it. Distraught, Freder turns to his father. When asked what he was doing underground, Freder tells his father he wanted to look into the faces of the people...his brothers and sisters. Freder appeals to his father, and what follows is striking:
Your magnificent city, father — and you the brain of this city — and all of us in the city's light..
..and where are the people, father, whose hands built your city?
— — —
Where they belong
After seeing his father for what he is, callous, and uncaring, Freder returns underground to search for Maria. He strikes a bargain with a worker he encounters, and he “trades lives” with him. Freder immediately mans the worker’s post. It is a machine that looks like a large face of a clock, and he must match the three hands to corresponding lights that brighten randomly on the periphery. It is an interesting scene, symbolic of modern work, as he is literally wrestling an imposing, uncooperative clock, exclaiming “Will ten hours never end!?”
When Freder at last finds Maria, it turns out she is a very important and revered person among the workers. The meetings she hosts in secret, where she tells stories based in the Christian faith, are held in the most ancient part of the lower city, the catacombs. The film permits the assumption that freedom of religion has been outlawed. It becomes clear that Maria, and her message of peace, is all that is keeping the workers from rebelling against their oppressors above. Their only means of doing so, however, would end in mutual destruction, but still poses an attractive end to their suffering. Her message is centered on the hope of a mediator arriving; a heart to reconcile the hands and the head. Maria tells the story of the Tower of Babel, but with a different twist on its demise.
In Maria’s tale, those who thought of building the tower, the “head,” could not build it themselves, and did not know how. Those hired “hands” who built the great tower in exchange for wages, did not understand why it needed to be built in the first place, or whether it was even a good thing for them. Division between the head and the hands grew. The captions read as follows:
One man's hymns of praise became other men's curses
— — —
People spoke the same language, but could not understand eachother
Is this not the essence of where we find ourselves today? What is met with thunderous applause of approval from one side is hissed and booed with suspicious derision from the other. This is a caption from a movie that is nearly a hundred years old. I shuddered when I read these words on the screen.
In Maria’s telling of the story, it was for want of a heart, a mediator between the head and the hands, that they failed to achieve an understanding, and the consequent chaos and rebellion, and all the death and suffering in the ensuing destruction, during which the biblical tower fell. Its collapse was not the cause of people no longer being able to understand eachother. Rather, people unable to understand eachother was the cause of its ultimate collapse.
A parallel plot involves an inventor, and Freder’s father, both of whom loved Freder’s late mother, Hel, who died giving birth to him. In his grief, the inventor built a robot, as a loving tribute to Hel’s memory. I believe it is no coincidence that Hel is also the name of the Norse goddess of death, partially analogous with Hades of Greek mythology. Freder’s father has learned the nature of his son’s underground visits, and the threat he believes Maria poses. He convinces the inventor to capture Maria, and replace her with the robot, who will obey the commands of Freder’s father. His intent is to sow discord, and destroy the workers belief in Maria, allowing their anger to boil over, so he will have justification to crush them.
The inventor complies, but for his own reasons, believing that Freder will die as a result of the scheme. This will be the inventor’s revenge on Freder and his father, for taking his beloved Hel from him. The robot in the guise of Maria, is sent on her mission. In the catacombs, she proclaims the mediator is not coming, and the workers have waited and suffered long enough. She incites the workers, who believe she is the real Maria they trust, to destroy the machines that the city above relies upon, paying no heed to their own reliance on the same machines, but it did not matter. The impostor convinces the desperate workers there is no future, and no hope.
Who is the living food for the machines of Metropolis?
Who lubricates the machine joints with their own blood?
Who feeds the machines with their own flesh?
The lower city floods, and power goes out all over Metropolis, following the destruction of the Heart Machine. Remorseful, in the midst of the frightening chaos, Freder’s father asks the faithful assistant he had following and keeping track of Freder “I must know! Where is my son?” Freder’s erstwhile monitor ruefully replies to Freder’s father, that in the morning, thousands will be asking him, in fury and desperation, “Where is my son?”
As tempers cool, and the lessons, learned at great cost, become clear, Freder’s father and the workers, the head and the hands, are still unable to understand eachother, and remain unwilling to reconcile. Only the mediator, the heart, can facilitate a reconciliation. In my interpretation of what happens next, the mediator, the heart necessary for the the head and the hands to come to an understanding and reconcile, is equally Maria and Freder.
Despite my initial misgivings, I am glad I chose Metropolis for this week. It stands as a nearly century’s old testament to class struggle, and the danger of prolonged inability to communicate, and reach a compromise. Here in the United States, we love to make this very complicated, and for no other reason than it is profitable to do so. As the old saying goes, “a fool and his money are soon parted.” We like to pretend we have overcome economic class division, or that it simply does not exist. When economic class division becomes more evident, at times we are able to address it honestly, but more often we use seemingly simple terms and concepts to conceal the division, and further avoid and confuse what should be a very simple issue.
Most Americans identify as “middle class,” a term that is effectively meaningless. While, granted, there does exist a quantitatively real “middle class,” with consistently disputed defining parameters, the term “middle class” is the common self descriptor of people who live on virtually every tier of the economic spectrum. It is used by those who in actuality subsist below the federal poverty line, and also by those with multiple millions of dollars in annual income, and assets tens and hundreds of times the greater. “Middle class” is a term used both with aspirational pride, and as code for ulteriorly diminished affluence.
We are for many reasons, culturally hesitant to to draw a line between rich and poor, workers and bosses, haves and have-nots. One reason is that we generally do not wish to institutionalize poverty, and value the economic mobility that the promise of equal opportunity affords. This, however, leaves a figurative back door open for agents in service of powerful business interests. When not proper scrutinized, these agents, these “fellow members of the American middle class” can divide us on non-economic politicized issues, distracting us from our own economic self interest. These distractions can be born of exploitable bigotry, and if they can get that ball rolling, it is all the easier for them, but really any socially divisive distraction will suffice.
Unchecked for a sufficient period, perhaps only one short term in elected office, they use this access to help destroy our best means of economic mobility and opportunity, leaving us with each with less economic power, and less money. In the United States, that not only means a less comfortable life, it also means less political influence. A vicious cycle then ensues, where these agents, these right wing politicians, assign false blame for our economic troubles, more deeply dividing us on non-economic politicized issues, and will repeat and continue until we have have nothing left if we let them, and will still insist with a straight face that our economic interests and theirs are one and the same, as they ask for a vote for re-election.
The moral of the film is that a means of mediation is required to facilitate an equitable agreement between labor and management, or more eloquently from the film:
THE MEDIATOR BETWEEN THE HEAD AND THE HANDS MUST BE THE HEART!
Maria and Freder, two halves of the same heart, represent a union, or more precisely, a union negotiation, where labor and management, the hands and the head, each send duly appointed representatives that are best able to talk to eachother, and come to an equitable agreement that both sides can accept. While the head and the hands are concrete representations of who is on either side of the negotiating table, the heart is less tangible. The heart is the setting, the process, and the agreement of both sides to negotiate in good faith.
To me, a union is the only viable means to facilitate this mediation. The setting of a negotiation has one simple purpose: time in exchange for money. Management wants to buy low, labor wants to sell high. in this setting, facts relevant to the value of the time for sale, and the manner in which purchased time is used are discussed, but the color of money and bull excrement are easily distinguishable, and neither side profits from abiding the later. Everybody knows the rules, and what side they are on. Nothing is left to assumption or the imagination. A compromise is reached in writing for the bodies each side represents to vote on. Everything else is immaterial and irrelevant, and free to be discussed on their own time. It’s not perfect, but I defy anyone to offer up a better alternative to stand scrutiny.
In addition to a union, protective laws are also indeed necessary, and rich people not being horrible is always nice. However, the benevolence of the rich is nothing a worker could ever count on. Also, this week’s film itself is older than any legislative protections workers enjoy today. Nonetheless, brave men and women struggled to organize unions, and bargained collectively, long before it was ever a protected right. They succeeded, despite the odds, and they never stopped. Should the day come to pass where these protections are obliterated, so help me I will die before I ever stop.
We are all theoretically equal under the law. In practicality, we are not economic equals, nor are we ever likely to be. So where do we draw the line? The top 1% control over 30% of the wealth, where the lower 50% control less than 2%. Draw your own conclusions, which side are you on?
Better yet, don’t worry about it. Join or organize a union. LABOR HISTORY NEVER ENDED!
Thanks for reading. If you’re interested, here is a link to last week’s Labor Film of the Week.