Metropolis

The film became the most expensive project in the history of German silent cinema. Despite the resounding success with critics and quite decent fees, he was not able to recoup the cost of its production and almost caused the bankruptcy of the Studio.

"Metropolis" was one of the favorite films of Adolf Hitler.

Fritz lang made a film based on the novel by his wife and collaborator Thea von Harbou.

Among the journalists who covered the press for the film, was Kurt Sodmak, which later became known as a science fiction writer, and then as a producer and writer of many famous Hollywood trash films.

The band Queen used images from the film for your retrofuturistic clip Radio Ga Ga.

The group "Aria" is also used stills from the film for their music video "the Recluse".

The shooting lasted for 2 years.

In 2008, the Museum of cinema in Buenos Aires was discovered to be a double-negative of the full version of the film on 16 mm film, printed in the mid 70-ies with the original nitrokemia, which was destroyed. Missing scenes have been restored and inserted in the 2001 version. Thus, this fully restored version has a duration of 150 minutes.

Robot costume (a false Mary) was made by the architect Walter Schulze-Mittendorf of special plastic, which quickly hardened in the air

Under the guise of a correspondent of a Bulgarian newspaper on the shooting of the film got Zlatan Dudov, and Fritz lang took him to practice. Subsequently Dudov he became a Director

The plot of the film was borrowed for one of the episodes of "Stargate SG-1".

The film was attended by more than 37,000 extras including 25,000 men (more than a thousand of them agreed to shave my head), 11,000 women, and 750 children, 100 black people and 25 Asians. Only the shooting of the film took 310 shooting days.

For filming the most expensive at the time of the German film in 1926 in the Babelsberg was specially built Europe's largest Studio pavilion.

To recreate models of utopian skyscrapers of the city were invited to the best German architects of that time: Otto Hunte, Erich Kettelhut, Carl Vollbrecht.

Much to the dismay of Fritz lang, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels were big fans of the film. Goebbels met with the Director and told him that he could become an honorary Aryan, despite his Jewish origin. Goebbels also told him that they decide who is a Jew and who is not. Lang left for Paris the same night and moved to America.

The film is set in 2026.

This film greatly influenced the creators of Superman Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. It was in honor of him was called the city of the character.

The robot from this film many years later inspired the creators of the film "Star wars: Episode 4 – a New hope" (1977) on the character C-3PO.

Behind the camera on the film worked as one of the leading German cameramen Karl Freund, who later put in several Hollywood films and as a Director — including "the Mummy" (1932).

The special effects of the film done to a large extent, using frame-by-frame animation. In particular, shot the movement of vehicles on highways suspended (assistants moved each miniature). For the image of the rays of light crawling along the walls of the New tower of Babel, the artist Erich Kettelhut painted about a thousand paintings size 40x60 cm — separate image for each frame.

The author of the poster for the movie Heinz Schulz-Neudamm.

The film premiered in Berlin on 10 January 1927. There after several weeks of unsuccessful demonstrations in a single cinema "metropolis" was removed from the screen. After this it was decided to cut it and for distribution in Germany, with reductions largely based on the American version. 5 Aug 1927 was composed, cropped on the American model and is equipped with a modified intermediate titles new German version of "metropolis". Fritz lang to work on the second German version of the film were not involved.

Throughout the twentieth century, was known only to a shorter version, which led to misunderstandings and improper interpretations of the author's intention. Since 1960-ies there have been a number of attempts to restore the film.

In 1984 Giorgio Moroder edited the new restored version of "metropolis" duration of 88 minutes, wrote the music and was attracted to work on the music of famous performers — Freddie mercury, Jon Anderson, Bonnie Tyler.

In 2001, under the auspices of the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau on the basis of the various surviving versions were created a compromise version with a length of 117 minutes, giving a fairly complete picture of the plot of the film.

For shooting scenes of the flooding of the homes of the workers, who, in the film lasts less than 10 minutes, it took more than six weeks of filming.

Nightmare in which workers went to feed the Moloch, was shot in the middle of winter. Despite the spotlights and heaters in the Studio was extremely cold. This is particularly strongly affected by the extras, most of whom were unemployed. Naked they had to go into the mouth of God. Fritz lang spent a lot of days and takes to the shooting of this scene that his aides were afraid that the extras will rise. Finally, the producer Erich Pommer came to the site and informed lang that they have more than enough material for this scene, and he should stop.

The initial duration of the film was 153 minutes. For distribution in the U.S. by Paramount in 1927, the film was cut by almost half, losing many significant storylines, and with them, the important reasons for the characters ' actions. In particular, the main conflict between Fredersen and Rotanga — rivalry over the dead Hel — was completely excluded from the film