Metropolis [Sub: Eng]

Occasionally it strikes one that [Lang] wanted to include too much and then that all one anticipates does not appear. But at the same time the various ideas have been spliced together quite adroitly.

Each frame of this classic is drop-dead stunning.

One of the last examples of the imaginative -- but often monstrous -- grandeur of the Golden Period of the German film, Metropolis is a spectacular example of Expressionist design.

I have just had a sensational night at the movies, and the picture was only 83 years old.

A fully realized work of art whose influence on science fiction, set design and symbolism can scarcely be put into words.

Too bad that so much really artistic work was wasted on this manufactured story.

For years audiences have wondered how good this film might have been had it not been edited. It turns out that it's better than anyone could ever have expected.

The cinema, even here at its best, and full as it is of invention and thrill, is still only at the mental age of seventeen.

. . . the film is still something to behold, even if the newly restored footage occasionally looks like someone ran over it with a brillo pad.

Lang's allegory of allegories posits humanity's progress as a collision not just of labor and management but of technology and sorcery

[VIDEO ESSAY] Although it ends with an overwrought climax, topped off with a laughably banal cliché that unites the workers with their greedy overlord, "Metropolis" is filled with stunning archetypal imagery and grand-scale spectacle.

Metropolis remains the benchmark of agenda-driven extravaganzas, stirring and fun in the right spots.