Metropolis by Thea von Harbou

Simplistic dystopian epic adapted into a landmark film

The 1927 science fiction film Metropolis, directed by Fritz Lang, is widely considered one of the masterpieces of the silent era of film. Few these days are likely to remember, however, that the film was adapted from a book. Metropolis the novel, published in 1925, was written by Thea von Harbou, who also wrote the screenplay for the film. She and Lang were married at the time.

The novel takes place at an unspecified time in the future, though some promotional copy for the book states the date as 2026, a hundred years after publication. Metropolis is a technologically advanced urban industrial center. It is not intended to be a future vision of New York or London, both of which are mentioned as separate cities. It’s unclear exactly where Metropolis is supposed to be located, though Germany would be a safe bet. Metropolis is ruled by wealthy capitalist oligarchs who live in lofty towers. Chief among these is Joh Fredersen, the city’s most powerful citizen, dubbed “the brain of Metropolis.” The army of laborers who operate Metropolis’s machinery of production dwell in underground cities. Existing only to perform their robotic jobs, they are veritable slaves to the machines they tend.

Joh Fredersen has a son, Freder, who lives an idle life hanging out at the Club of the Sons, a resort for male heirs of the oligarchs. One day while visiting his father’s place of work, however, he develops sympathetic feelings towards labor. He also falls in love with a beautiful woman who seems to run the factory’s day care. As he pursues this mysterious maiden, Freder learns that she is the leader and cult figurehead of an underground (literally) revolutionary movement. Meanwhile, a mad scientist has created a robot woman, which you likely already know if you’ve ever seen a single shot from the movie.

The story is fine, though rather predictable. I didn’t care much for the way that story is told, however. Von Harbou grandiosely exaggerates every phrase. She saturates the text with biblical imagery and constant hyperbolic references to “the gods.” Realism is not a concern. The prose is largely written in incomplete, choppy sentences, and sometimes it’s difficult to tell exactly what’s going on. In spite of the futuristic sci-fi trappings, the story resembles yet another Victorian-era romance. I guess this is German expressionist literature, but if so, it’s not as effective as German expressionist film or visual art. What makes Lang’s Metropolis such a stunning film are the visuals, which were developed apart from the novel. Von Harbou’s text doesn’t contain much visual description at all, not even of the robot woman. The author doesn’t go into a great deal of detail in describing the dystopian future she has created. There isn’t much futuristic tech, for example, or sophisticated social and political commentary. The most outstanding feature of this dystopia is the obvious extreme disparity between the lives of the rich and poor.

The revolution of the workers against the oligarchs inevitably delivers a socialist message, though it feels half-hearted, intended more to generate drama then for actual political persuasion. If social reform or forebodings of an authoritarian future were the important concern here, the novel would have needed more of a grounding in the reality of the class struggle. Metropolis reads more like opera than realism. It has more in common with sci-fi films like Star Wars or Logan’s Run than with novels like Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward (1888), Jack London’s The Iron Heel (1908), or even Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932). Metropolis is what it is, and it’s pretty good at what it is, but the film is more impressive than the book.