"Metropolis" released - January 10, 1927

On this day in 1927, the silent science-fiction film "Metropolis" premiered in Berlin.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Greetings, I'm Eves and welcome to This Day
in History Class, a show that believes no day in
history is a slow day. Today is January. The day

(00:25):
was January nine. The silent science fiction film Metropolis premiered
at the UFA Paulas m Zoo in Berlin. The futuristic
dystopian film is regarded as a pioneering work in the
history of film. Fritz Long was born in Vienna, Austria, Hungary.
He served in the Austrian Army in World War One,

(00:48):
but after the war he dove into the entertainment world.
He acted, wrote screenplays, and directed films, and his career
took him to Germany. In nineteen he met novelist and
screenwriter Ta von Harbo. They married two years later, and
over the course of their relationship, Von Harbo wrote the

(01:08):
script or story for many of Long's films. In four
Long traveled to the US to observe filmmaking techniques in
New York in Hollywood. When he returned to Germany, he
began working on the film Metropolis. The film was based
on von Harbo's novel of the same name, released in nine.

(01:29):
She and Lane collaborated on the screenplay, which is set
in the future in a city called Metropolis. In the city,
there's a class of wealthy industrialists and a class of
exploited workers who live underground. There's a robot of forbidden
Love and a revolution. Filming began at the UFA Film
Studios outside Berlin in May of nine and finished in

(01:53):
October of ninety. The production was over the top and expensive.
There were ends of thousands of extras and huge models
of skyscrapers. It cost uf A about five million reichs Marks,
which was the currency of the third Reich that would
have been somewhere around one million dollars at the time.

(02:14):
The studio was banking on Metropolis to be a success,
but the film was a flop. It premiered in Berlin
on January ninety seven and was criticized heavily. U f
A let the film run in Berlin, but it had
also entered into a code distribution deal with Paramount. Paramount
deemed its original length of one and fifty three minutes

(02:36):
too long for a US release, and playwright Channing Pollock
was hired to write a shorter version of the film.
The new cut of the film came in at under
two hours. It premiered in the US in March of nine,
but the high cost of the film, plus all the
other economic issues in Germany at the time, drove UFA

(02:56):
towards bankruptcy, and German businessman and politicians and Alfred Huggenberg
bought the company in nineteen seven. Hugenberg also had the
original film cut down, and that version was released in
German theaters in August. This shortened version went on general
release around the world. These versions have been edited further

(03:17):
over the decades, and different versions of the film exist
in different countries. Metropolis got mixed reviews. H. G. Wells,
author of sci fi classics The War of the Worlds
and The Time Machine, wrote in The New York Times
in nineteen seven that it was the quote silliest film,
but Nazi politician Joseph Gebel's praised the film. A note

(03:40):
here that von Harbo, who Long divorced in nineteen thirty three,
later joined the Nazi Party and was loyal to the regime.
But over the decades, the visual style and story told
in Metropolis became recognized as important work in film history.
Long ended up leaving Nazi Germany and moving to France,

(04:00):
then to the US to work in Hollywood. A large
part of the original cut of the film was recently
restored in screen in theaters. I'm Jefcote and hopefully you
know a little more about history today than you did
it yesterday. Have a hard time staying present as you
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(04:25):
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you liked this show. We'll be back tomorrow with another episode.

(04:49):
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