The Film Metropolis

The film Metropolis, Fritz Lang adopts the same way of thinking as Eliot. Lang depicts the fragmented society through social stratification. He depicts the bourgeois as people who lead a callous and monotonous life in order to serve the wealthy upper class. The crescendo in the non-diegetic music with the addition of wavering vector lines in the beginning of the film forebodes the exploitation of the working class and creates a sense of chaos. The centralisation of the clock indicates that the workers literally work ‘around the clock’ therefore accentuating their arduous repetitious life as they are expected to dedicate their existence to serve the upper class by running the city underground. In the scene where Freder first discovers the underground factory, Lang portrays the workers accomplishing uniformed and repetitious tasks on a monstrous machine. Through a close up shot Lang alludes that the machine the workers operates to the Moloch where the workers are fed as human sacrifices illustrating their excruciating rewardless hard work reflective of their mundane lives. This is further seen through the mise-en-scene in the opening scene which alludes the workers to prisoners which is depicted by the dark steel bars effusing a sense that they are stranded in a hellish prison
Lang depitcts the fragmented society through social stratification. He depicts the bourgeois as people who lead a callous and monotonous life in order to serve the wealthy upper class. The crescendo in the non-diegetic music with the addition of the wavering vector lines in the beginning of the film forebodes the exploitation of the working class and creates a sense of chaos. The centraliation of the clock indicates the workers literally “work around the clock” therefore accentuating their arduous repetitious life as they are expected to dedicate their existence to serve the upper class by running the city