FAQ for
Metropolis (1927)

The following FAQ entries may contain spoilers. Only the biggest ones (if any) will be covered with spoiler tags. It is assumed that no one who is diligently avoiding spoilers will be visiting this page in the first place.

The story goes that Thea von Harbou and her husband, Fritz Lang, also the director of Metropolis, collaborated in 1924 to write the screenplay. Two years later, the story was serialized by von Harbou. From screenplay to serial to movie seems to be the correct sequence.

Cinefex, a quarterly magazine devoted to motion picture visual effects, ran an in-depth article that included this effects shot -- the transformation of Maria into the stylish female robot that gets reborn and takes its first faltering steps. This extended sequence was essentially an extremely elaborate multi-exposure shot. An actress clad in non-reflective black velvet was aligned into a double-exposed shot of the seated Maria. Behind the double, greased circular reflective hoops were elevated up and down [one camera-pass at a time] by a forklift-like mechanism behind her, and the resulting blurred multiple-exposures enabled the over-exposed glowing rings to overlap.