Worlds Apart - Metropolis

Metropolis (1927)

Director - Fritz Lang

This is a film I've heard plenty about, only because I'm a big Star Wars fan and I'm aware of the ifluence this film had on it, namely the robot that was so much an influence in the creating of C3PO. The vision of this film is so way ahead of its time and paved the way for the sci-fi genre. Film 4 put it as "this ranks among the most significant and visually spectacular films in the history of cinema". In this film you will find many ideas that appeared here for the first time on cinema. The robot, The mad Scientist and massive futuristic city scapes. There is a real scense of huge scale that envelopes the film. The Radio Times say "few can deny the majesty of the cityscapes" city scapes that inspired the likes of Bladerunner and look just as inpressive.

The employment of matt paintings in the films city scapes creates a vision that still looks truely spectacular even to todays standards. The buildings look so architecturally sound you can imaging them to be real. Again due to this being a silent movie I found my attention being draw away from the plot and focusing on the set design and special effects, in the Telegraph's words "the groundbreaking special effects all still dazzle" it's true there is so much eye candy to be seen you fon't know where to look on the sreen next.

Overall the film looked beautiful and played out many ground breaking ideas which are still in influence today. With a budget of 5 million German Marks with inflation today would be around the equivilent £100,000,000. The same amount as any massive block buster made today. In fact the making of this film very nearly bust the studio.