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Frankenstein and Metropolis

James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931) was still eight years off when Fritz Lang made

Metropolis, yet Mary Shelley’s novel permeates the film in odd ways. The critic Paul O’ Flinn

states, “Literary criticism only metaphorically rewrites texts…But a shift of medium means the

literal rewriting of a text as novel becomes script becomes film” (115). As a definite work of

science fiction, Metropolis plays with many of the tropes developed in the genre’s infancy by

Shelley: The Mad Scientist, the artificial creation of life, the human cost of progress. In the

exploration of these tropes interesting questions are posed to the role of the individual and his

obligation to not just his creation, but society; Society cannot function without a conscience to

mediate; without a conscience, science itself may be black magic. Lang develops these themes

posed by Shelley and engages them in a distinctive visual style which recasts Romanticism as

Industrial Expressionism: a contextual revision which reproduces Shelley’s text for the 20th

century.

As a work of Romanticism, Frankenstein celebrates the violent emotions of its characters

equally as their intellects. Nature is elevated over the often cruel civilization as experienced by

the Creature. Victor Frankenstein is the archetypal tragic Romantic hero, as Captain Walton

observes, “What a glorious creature must he have been in the days of his prosperity, when he is

this noble and godlike in ruin. He seems to feel his own worth and the greatness of his fall”

(Shelley 152). The Creature himself, in his infancy, stumbles through “A strange multiplicity of

sensations” before he can “distinguish between the operations of [his] various senses” (70) and

eventually learn to communicate and educate himself. He becomes aware of the nobility and

brutality or which humanity is capable. The novel is set among the beautiful but rugged terrain of
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the Alps and the Arctic, isolated environments few individuals can scale. Frankenstein and his

Creature meet in these difficult conditions, further distancing them from the rest of humanity.

Metropolis employs expressionistic mise en scene to demonstrate this Romanticism

projected into the Industrial Age. Because it is a silent film, the Romantic ideal of high emotion

is expressed through highly exaggerated acting styles. Freder and Maria (and others) place their

hands to their heart, expressing love, fury, and anguish. Freder embodies the Romantic hero:

noble, yet uncomfortable in his high born status. His sympathies lay with the workers, the

civilization literally condemned by Freder’s father to the Pandemonium below. Freder’s

alienation is emphasized in his first walk through the Worker’s City; the massive generators

tower over him as he walks through the middle, the symmetry of the mise en scene exaggerates

his smallness. His mission is Promethean, that of a mediator between the God above and his

creation below. Joh Frederson created the city of Metropolis. Freder asks “Where are the

workers?” Joh replies, “Where they belong.” Freder, Joh and Rotwang each play the Promethean

role as Frankenstein does. However, Rotwang creates for a selfish purpose: to replace the woman

in his life. He calls her “The greatest tool ever created by Mankind!” He has no intention of

bestowing or cultivating autonomy in his creation, that of the Machine-Man. He, eventually, she,

is a tool used to wreak havoc on the workers of Metropolis. Joh is slightly more sympathetic. As

architect of the vast, stratified city, he sees the caste system as necessary to maintain peace and

the city’s power. Josaphet attests to Joh’s cruel God-like power, “You do not know what its like

to be dismissed by Joh Frederson!” Flinn’s observation of Frankenstein’s creature could apply to

the workers of Metroplis. “The caricatured people-monster that haunts the dominant ideology is

reproduced through Mary Shelley’s politics and becomes a contradictory figure, still ugly,

vengeful and terrifying but now also human and intelligent and abused” (118).
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Rotwang serves as an interesting foil to Victor Frankenstein. The two scientists work

towards creating life in a laboratory, isolated from their environment. Frankenstein locks himself

away in his apartment/dormitory after his education with Professors Krempe and Waldman to

piece together a new man. He does not speak to his family or his friend Henry. Rotwang lives in

a conspicuously lonely house in the center of Metropolis, in which lies tunnels into the dreary

catacombs beneath the city. Rotwang represents the Gothic in Lang’s future world. His

appearance serves a prototype to all mad scientists: unkempt hair, sinister black gloves, constant

preening and unpredictable behavior. Both men are marked by the loss in their lives; Victor loses

his mother early in life; Rotwang loses Hel, the wife of Joh Frederson and mother of Freder.

Both men react in their pursuit to procreate without the aid of woman. Here, Lang

recontextualizes the goal of artificial intelligence. Victor hopes to bring life back to the dead,

eventually to discover immortality itself, for the benefit of mankind.

Rotwang conceives of his creation as a replacement for Hel: The Machine-Man. He

boasts it is “The greatest tool ever created by Mankind!” In his application of the Machine-Man

as a tool against the workers and his own loneliness, his creation is a slave, incapable of

autonomous thought. The creation sequence of Metropolis, certainly an influence on Whale’s

film, uses quick editing juxtaposing bubbling beakers of chemicals with bolts of electricity

transferring Maria’s face unto the Machine-Man. This sequence is obviously more explicit than

the birth of the Creature; Shelley does not detail the exact methods Victor uses to reanimate

corpses. This scene hearkens back to the idea of “the cinema of attractions,” the playful, often

avant-garde visual experimentation for its own sake, to shock and entertain viewers

unaccustomed to such trickery in film.

Shelley regarded Frankenstein’s downfall to be his pride, the audacity to play God. He

warns Walton in his tale, “Learn from me, if not by me precepts, at least by my example, how

dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his

native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow”

(32). Lang employs the Tower of Babel parable to demonstrate the same idea. Joh sits in his

office in the aforementioned tower where he lords over the huge city below. In the depths, Maria

tells the workers the Biblical story of Babel, yet emphasizes not the pride, but the rift of the Mind

which conceived of the tower and the Hands which built it. The destruction of the tower is not an

act of God, but the revolt of the slaves against the designer. To build the tower into the heavens,

a conscience, a heart must mediate between the two. This echoes the Shelley of the 1818

Frankenstein. Victor’s mistake was not his creation, but his reneging of his obligation to it. Here,

the idea of the Tower of Babel is not blasphemous, but to progress without a conscience will end

in destruction. Victor testifies to this:

A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind,

and never allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquility. I do not

think that the pursuit of knowledge is an exception to this rule... if this rule were

always observed; if no man allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere with the

tranquility of his domestic affections, Greece had not been enslaved; Caesar

would have spared his country; America would have been discovered more

gradually; and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed. (34)

This scene echoes the Creature’s first steps in the world, where he is bombarded with

confusing sights and smells. His time in the forest is idyllic. His observance of the De Laceys

deepens his perceptions as he feels empathy for the first time, “He raised [Agatha], and smiled
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with such kindness and affection, that I felt sensations of a peculiar and overpowering nature:

they were a mixture of pain and pleasure, such as I had never experienced…and I withdrew from

the window unable to bear these emotions” (70). Safie’s books guide him into the complex

world of ideas beyond his ken.

Freder begins the film frolicking in “The Eternal Gardens,” a hedonistic pleasure palace

built for the fortunate sons of Metropolis. The setting alludes to Eden, yet the Eternal suggests

stagnation. The gardens are overripe. The arrival of Maria and the children of the Worker’s City

awaken new feelings in Freder. She tells the children to look around, “These are your brothers!”

She speaks to Freder as well as the children; in his carefree life he remains ignorant of his

brothers down below. He looks around at the garden and is no longer satisfied. Lang pans across

the garden in Freder’s POV shot: the garden appears artificial and grotesque. Freder immediately

leaves in pursuit of Maria. It is significant Paradise Lost leaves the deepest impression on him,

the title of which fits both him and Freder.

The myth of Prometheus is the other major influence on both novel and film, so it is

worth explaining the myth itself. In Greek mythology, Prometheus is a Titan credited with

creating mankind out of clay. Seeing man shivering and hungry on Earth saddened him, and he

stole fire from Mt. Olympus to bring to man so that he may stay warm and fed. Zeus, enraged at

Prometheus’ theft, chains him to a rock and leaves him for an eagle to peck at his liver every day

for eternity. Mary Shelley subtitled her novel “The Modern Prometheus,” a role Frankenstein

takes upon himself. He boasts to Walton, “Life and death appeareed to me ideal bounds, which I

should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world. A new species would

bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to

me” (33). As mentioned before, Frankenstein attempts procreation without woman, a reflection
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of the absence of his mother from his life. This rejection of the Maternal: nurturing and loving,

leaves Frankenstein an absentee father from the life of his “child.” Rotwang and Joh also act the

role of cruel Patriarch, barren of kindness, until Joh sees the cost of his betrayal of the Workers.

He encourages the Workers to rebel, to flood their own city, until he realizes his child is among

them. He kneels in agony as Freder and Rotwang fight on the balcony in the underground world.

Maria fulfills the role of mother for the children of the Workers, as Freder fulfills his Promethean

role to reconcile his father (the mind) and the workers (the hands).

In the vast cultural jump from Shelley’s time to Lang’s, the motifs she brooded on after

Lord Byron’s Gothic suggestion gained new significance. Darwin revolutionized the way people

thought of their origins, of God himself; The technological advancements of the age made World

War I the most devastating war thus far; and the Russian Revolution proved what happens when

people are neglected by those who have a greater obligation to their fellow man. The overheated

emotions of Romanticism eventually lead to egoism, irrationality, and violence. In this sense,

Expressionism is the most natural way to adapt Shelley: its morbid chiarscuro and distorted

forms emphasize the cleave of the rational mind and the whims of emotion. They demand a

mediator, regardless of the medium.

Works Cited

Hunter, J. P., ed. Frankenstein: A Norton Critical Edition. Mary Shelley. 2nd Ed.

New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012. Print.

Lang, Fritz, dir. Metropolis. 2002. Film. 15 Oct 2012.

O'Flinn, Paul. "Production and Reproduction: The case of Frankenstein." (2012). Print.