SOURCE: "The Urbanistic Vision in Fritz Lang's Metropolis," in Dancing in the Volcano: Essays on the Culture of the Weimar Republic, Camden House, 1994, pp. 143-54.

In the following essay, Neumann discusses the urban architecture of Lang's Metropolis in light of contemporary thought about monumentalism, technological progress, and skyscrapers.

Fritz Lang's Metropolis is widely considered one of the great classics of the cinema, celebrated and described in every anthology on the history of the motion picture. It was the first feature length science fiction film ever and had an enormous influence on later productions. It has rightly been regarded as a paradigmatic product of Weimar culture, reflecting the rich variety of its contemporary discourse.

When the film was finally released in January 1927 after two years of a well orchestrated advertising campaign, it was considered a major cultural event all over Europe and in the United States. In New York...