NIGHT IN

THE MEDIATOR
BETWEEN THE BRAIN AND HANDS
MUST BE THE HEART

METROPOLIS

Fritz Lang (1927)

Official Restoration Site

Fritz Lang (b. 1890 in Vienna) collaborated with his wife, science-fiction novelist Thea von Harbou, to write a screenplay based on her novel, Metropolis, and created a vision to go with it: the vision that he had witnessed first-hand in Manhattan. His inspiration brought to the screen a fascinating image of man’s inhumanity to man.

“Lang investigated the city further, gaining the impression that ‘it was the crossroads of multiple and confused human forces, driven to exploit each other and thus living in perpetual anxiety . . .’

In an interview conducted shortly before his death, Lang said:

‘I didn’t like Metropolis after I had finished it because I didn’t think in those days a social question could be solved with something as simple as the line, ‘The mediator between the brain (capital) and hands (working class) must be the heart.’ Yet today, when you speak with young people about what they miss in the computer-guided establishment, the answer is always: ‘The heart!’ So probably the scenarist Mrs. Thea von Harbou had forsight and therefore was right and I was wrong.”

Introduction in "Metropolis" by Thea von Harbou (English translation)