Exploring Religion in Metropolis

 Religious themes in Metropolis 

- Maria, Freder, and The Man-Machine

Maria is representative of the Virgin Mary, emphasised by her being lit with a downlight and soft focus to suggest her innocence and purity as a saviour of the exploited working class. She is also shown in extreme religious imagery, draped in cloth that mimics the Christian cross with candles symbolic of Jesus behind her as she acts as the bringer of comfort to the workers. She is often presented as a preacher who advocates for peace, unity, and justice for those impoverished with the want for a mediator –Freder, who represents Christ/Messiah –to become the bridge between the ‘head and hands’, ultimately acting as a voice for the oppressed within the catacombs. For example, as Freder follows the workers into the catacombs to see Maria gathering the crowd, she tells them of the ‘Tower of Babel’, a purely religious and biblical story that acts as an allegory for the foreshadowed events to come between the head and hands; a revolt from the workers to destroy the ‘Tower of Babel’ conceived by the privileged thinkers of the city as a result of their exploitation. In the original Genesis telling, the people of Babylon built the tower to reach the heavens, yet God disrupted the work by confusing their language. This is reflected in Metropolis as ‘they could speak the same language, but could not understand each other’, which Maria links to the need for a mediator to act as the symbolic bridge between the classes. Her Preaching from an abandoned chapel deep within the catacombs also evokes parallels to John the Baptist's own sermons where he foretold the coming of Jesus. Maria is represented as the Virgin Mary from her first entrance as she enters Freder's eternal garden – symbolic of the Biblical ‘Garden of Eden’ – with the impoverished worker’s children who clutch onto her in saintly grace, a clear maternal figure. Therefore, she is responsible for bringing Freder down to the level of the people in the symbolic Hell.

The first introduction of the Man-machine shows it underneath an inverted pentagram that symbolises satanic ceremonial magic. This creation is purely unnatural, against God’s creation and therefore against God’s natural law and guidance. This devilish creation is also represented as the whore of Babylon, learned by Freder in the cathedral, and symbolically shown in the Yoshiwara dance sequence as the machine is laid upon a podium held up by the 7 deadly sins as she lies with the devil. she becomes a symbol of sin and indulgence, using her female sexuality to manipulate the male onlookers in a fit of lust and envy –two of the sins she stands upon, the antithesis of Maria’s Virgin Mary. As her role within the film is to ignite chaos and destruction to Metropolis by misleading the workers into a revolt, she is countermanding Maria’s work and Freder’s messianic role to bring salvation. Even her ‘death’ is presented with religious connotations as she is burned at the stake like a witch, an identity associated with evil spirits, void of pious practises, and thought to be pagans doing the devil’s work as the man-machine destroys God’s – Fredersen as the head of Metropolis’ - work. 

Freder is the son of Joh Frederson, the ‘head’ of Metropolis. This places Freder as an allusion to Christ in the sense that Freder is the son of Metropolis’ God. He is led into becoming a messianic figure for the exploited/oppressed as he is directed by his heart to save his ‘brothers’ down into the symbolic Hell, the worker's city. His vision of Moloch symbolically shows his yearning to act as a saviour for these people as they appear to be walking into the mouth of a devilish creature, suffering at the hands that Frederesen – God – created. A strong religious depiction of Freder as Jesus is when he experiences the plight of the workers when attending to the machine, symbolically representing the 10-hour clock. As Freder works the machine, he becomes exhausted and collapses, calling out, ‘Father, father – will 10 hours never end!’, which can be likened to Jesus' cry to his Father from the cross: ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’. Freder’s messianic role is to bridge the gap between the workers and their overlord, just as Christ bridges the gap between God and man in Christian theology. Freder envisioning the machine that powers the upper city as ‘MOLOCH,’ which was a god, that its worshippers sacrificed children - specifically sacrifice by fire - is a key event in the film. This is presented in Metropolis as the machine churns in the depths of the city, giving off clouds of steam onto the masses of workers that never rest from their exploitation. This smoke present in the worker's city also alludes to Lang representing the lower levels as Hell, with the utopian gardens above as a heavenly Garden of Eden. Jesus, like Freder, experiences the suffering of the oppressed people, who came from privilege with God in heaven/upper city. 

The flood that the man-machine initiates by igniting the workers to destroy their oppressive machines can be compared to the many biblical floods in Christian theology, both in scale and purpose; they were intended to cleanse the earth of the sin brought upon it by humans, and those chosen to repopulate the earth are the ones that were right in the eyes of God. This parallels Metropolis, as Freder and Maria act as the saviours of the worker's children within the city, acting as the chosen propagators after the flood waters recede, and they do so by creating understanding between the Upper and Lower citizens in the final scene.