This Fritz Lang classic silent film of the futuristic city of metropolis and its mechanized society is possible more powerful to day then when it was released, at depicting the dehumanization of centralized urban cites. Set in the year 2000, there are two distinctive class divisions in the megalopolis of metropolis: the toiling labor force dwelling underneath the conurbation in slums toiling away in a vain effort to keep the machine going, working ten hour days every day but never getting ahead. While the upper class surface dwellers reside in luxurious comfort, with out a care in the world. Presiding over this convoluted complex of complexity is the domain of Fredersen, the commodore of Metropolis. Freder his son lives a very sheltered life-until he meets the daughter of one of the slaves, Maria. When Maria leads him into the grueling underground city, and shows him the masses of people who keep the luxury of metropolis running, he joins them in a revolt against his father.
The relevancy of this film to this class is profoundly when you consider the planned obsolescence of material goods by designers, like Raymond Lowey and his "cold spot" refrigerator. The packaging of a product gets old when designers repackage by changing its color, size, features, or shape, and this primitive instinct of man " to be better then all other men" takes over and he buys a new refrigerator. But as a result a society of waste develops, because products are disposed of before they break. So the designers in a sense are the agents of Freder's father and are enslaving the masses to toil away while the wealth upper class live a carefree live of luxury.
The film used a large amount of visual and conceptual content to convey the idea of "There needs to be a heart between the planers and the hands that build". Fritz shows us this by contrasting; the people marching like rats in step from a shot looking down at the divisions and the people frolicking above ground in this dreamy trance, the dinginess and hard, sweaty, dangerous work below to the beauty of the city.
