These days many passages in Metropolis seem old-fashioned and even vaguely ridiculous, especially those in which the Kolossal is overlarded with sentiment. Lang had not yet attained the simplicity of M, in which reality is made to resound quite naturally with overtones of the weird….

The deliberate symmetry of Siegfried conveys a slow, inexorable rhythm like that of the destiny brooding over the epic. But in the crowd scenes in Metropolis the rhythm becomes dynamic. In addition to having an observant mind, Lang has the gift of assimilating in a very personal manner what he has seen. (p. 223)

To describe the mass of inhabitants in the underground town in Metropolis Lang used Expressionistic stylization to great effect: impersonal, hunched, servile, spiritless, slavish beings dressed in costumes of no known historical period. The stylization is extreme during the change of shift when the two columns meet, marching with rhythmic...