Metropolis

This past Wednesday my group watched the movie Metropolis for our history through film assignment. To be honest, I was not looking forward to this assignment for many reasons. First, I really do not enjoy watching movies. Second, group papers are very difficult to accomplish due to different people’s writing style. Lastly, I have never watched a silent filmed before and I believe that it was going to be extremely boring and not engaging.
When Metropolis began I was confused about the direction of the film in relation to what we were studying in class. I researched the film and found out that the film was made in 1927 but was set in the year 2026. The film depicted what the director and the novelist believed was the direction of America. They based there interpretation of the future on the political, economical and social events of the current time period – the early 19th century. The city Metropolis was physically split between the underground industrial world and the above ground managerial world. The film highlighted the major economic class problems that were promoted in the early 19th century through this physically separation of the rich and the poor.
As the film continued, I realized that the directors and author of the novel that the movie was based on were pretty much wrong in the direction our society took. They completely disregarded progressive of society and industry. Currently, when we think of what America will look like in a hundred years, we think of a Jetsons futuristic vision filled with flying cars. Metropolis demonstrated that the people in the 1920’s did not have the same vision of progress in technology and social areas that we currently do in the Untied States.
Overall, the film was midely entertaining but more important highlighted the major issues that Americans faced in the early 1920’s. There was prosperity during this time period; however, many Americans were not able to partake in the consumer culture because they work in the industrial sector, like coal and textile, they were minorities or lastly they lived and work in rural communities.