Before Star Wars, before Blade Runner, there was Metropolis.
Fritz Lang’s 1927 silent epic imagines a gleaming city of the future, where the powerful live high among the skyscrapers and the workers who keep it running labor in the depths below. When Freder, son of the city’s master, falls for Maria, a young woman who champions the workers, he discovers a world he never knew existed. Then a brilliant, unhinged inventor unleashes a machine made in Maria’s image, and the whole city teeters on the edge.
Nearly a century later, Metropolis remains one of the most influential films ever made. Its towering skylines, Art Deco design, and unforgettable robot have inspired filmmakers for generations, and it was the first film inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register. For decades, a large portion of the original cut was thought lost forever, until a print containing much of the missing footage turned up in Buenos Aires in 2008.
There is something especially fitting about seeing it here. Metropolis premiered in 1927. The Midland opened its doors in 1928, a movie palace born in the silent era. This is the kind of night this building was made for.
Presented by the Licking County Library.