"METROPOLIS."

Press, Volume XLIV, Issue 19391, 17 August 1928, Page 6

"METROPOLIS."

A DIP INTO THE FUTURE. GRAND THEATRE, MONDAY.. In "Locksley Hall" Tennyson takes a plunge into the future, and from his day in the late Victorian era tells of what he sees in our erg, a span of years that must have seemed a very long time indeed. But in

"Metropolis," some clever, secretive, inventive German takes an even wilder plunge into something like 3000 A.D., or even.later, and with a lavish imagination running riot, though always with the reins of reason sensible on the bit, gives us what in all probability will be the accepted thing in that age. "Metropolis" is a motion picture, a strange, almost inexplicable fantasy, a veritable maze of things and people all marshalled by some unseen hand in such a manner as to represent order out of chaos. It is said to be the most remarkable picture ever made. Perhaps not the most artistic, the most testhetic, the most restful; it creates thought, disturbs the sluggish brain that would close its mental eyes on what is piling up in tho world of politics, economics, and social conditions. It is like a solemn treatise on solemn things; but, being just "Metropolis," and by that one means something of everything, and in the best possible manner, it is also a charming ! romance, a shinjng love story running through the technical, mechanical nature. It has ail-the beauty and all the ugliness in in world, the futuristic world; and even in that age, when evidently things will be more incongruous and more apart than they are now, men and women will fall in love, and out of it; will plot in their jealousies, will copspire for the downfall of this one, and the rise of that one; will go on their merry way, and eat and drink and play—in the things that matter, 2000 A.D. will not be so very different. "Metropolis" is the story of a wonder city of the future, a mechanised city, owned by one master-mind, controlled, at the bidding of this remarkable man, by a half-crazy inventor, Rotwang, Everything jn this mammoth place is worked by machinery, but to work tho machinery there must be labour, and as one part of the community is gloriously wealthy, educated, and leisured, the labour must be recruited from the dingy ranks of the ignorant masses. for notwithstanding the idealistic plans of modern Socialists, there Wili be poverty r.r.d ignorance and lower classes in that psriod. draws sharply the line between these wretched 'workers and their masters. And when a daughter "of tho people falls in love with the sgn of their owner, and when the master commands his inventor to make a robot, an su'tpmiatom, in the form of this girl, and sends the soulless" thing on a mission preaching submission to the workers—"Metropolis" assumes the tensely dramatic garb of any average motion picture, Everything i$ dpne for power, for wealth; death and work and drab existences must ail work towards that end ;n the future; even a man and woman must be inconsolable, it appears, all to the end of power fpr one other map. Not all technicalities, and great futuristic sets, and strange robots, Is "Metropolis." The lighter, the gayer things; the little leves and hates, the little human touches that m?ko s perfect story ont of a scientific gq to make the perfect drama out of this picture. Jt is obvious that for actors tp play in such a picture, the greatest difficulties presented themselves, but the playing of the artists in "Metropolis" always appears lpgipal, easy, and natural. The acting of Brjgjtte Helm, its Mary, the daughter or the people, jtnd later as that Undine, tfte female automaton, js a triumph in contrasts. First, she is simplicity and innocence, the ppe beautiful thing In the subterranean world where live the workers; but as the automaton, she assumes tho gestures of the heartless and wicked being who would propound a false doctrine and keep a people in bondage. It is very well done, specially so as coming from an actress -of nineteen. ''Metropolis" ends on a note of bloody revolution on the part of labour; ttje question Ib, does capital rise and assert its rightful plaea once more, as it is; entitled to, Tiy Virtus of ancient possession of those rights? A question to be Answered.