I've just started re-reading Thea Von Harbou's METROPOLIS for the first time in perhaps forty years, as it occurred to me that it might prove interesting to compare the book with the screenplay for the 1927 movie in its extant versions. But because this entails a lot of detailed analysis I'm posting my reactions as I go along, which I haven't done with a prose novel review since I did Rider Haggard's SHE on this blog. My understanding is that Von Harbou began the novel with the expectation that her then-husband Fritz Lang intended to adapt it for the UFA studio, and that she completed the novel before she wrote the screenplay. It's possible Lang had some input into the novel but I have no evidence of this.
The first thing I'll point out is that the city of Metropolis, which means roughly "mother-city," is the true star of the story, easily eclipsing any of its human characters. That said, the viewpoint character Freder is almost as important in the novel, if not so much the truncated original release. The name "Freder" is generally translated as "son of Frederick," which itself means "peaceful ruler." Von Harbou only calls Freder by his first name, but his father, Joh (short for Johann) Frederson is called by his full name. One online source says that both "Freder" and "Fredersen" can be patronymics," but I don't know if Von Harbou intended this to carry any special symbolism. I think, for reasons I'll show later, that Von Harbou might have chosen the name "Freder" because it sounds like the Latin word "frater," meaning "brother."
The 1927 release opens with a quick montage of scenes in Metropolis, with the memorable image of dozens of identically clad workers trudging down into "the City of Workers." After that, the film shifts to "the Club of the Sons," a paradisical pleasure-dome for the male children of the city's movers and shakers. Freder is first seen cheering on other young men engaged in sports, and playing tag with a cute young serving-girl-- all of which is meant to suggest that he's unaware of the suffering of the lower classes.
The novel, however, starts with what seems much like a "sturm-and-drang" moment from a 19th-century German novel. Freder is still at the Club when first viewed, but he's in a room with star-designs on the ceiling, playing an organ and apparently working himself into a froth about some tormenting matter. By the second page it's disclosed that he has some obsession with an idealized image of femininity, which in early chapters Von Harbou calls, at least three times, "the austere countenance of the virgin, the sweet countenance of the mother-- the agony and the desire with which he called and called for the one single vision for which his racked heart had not even a name..."
Now, why is Freder so "racked" by thinking about what sound like rather pacific images of femininity, both of which have strong associations with Christian imagery? I find it interesting that both "virgin" and "mother" become blended in the icon of Mary Mother of Jesus, but I don't think Freder is so wrought up by any sort of religious vision. What I think Von Harbou is editing out is the other half of what Sigmund Freud, in 1905, called "the Madonna-Whore Complex." In this formulation, Freud observed that young men felt ambivalence toward females their own age, for though the men had been raised from childhood by non-sexual mothers, or "madonnas," what young men in their maturation wanted from females was their sexual availability. I think its likely Von Harbou was aware of Freud's theory, but that she elided the scandalous part of it to make her protagonist seem more noble and selfless-- though even in 1925, I feel sure that most readers would have made the same correlation I've made, that Freder is tormented by his natural biological concupiscence. A later scene with Freder in the Clun with other young men does NOT show him canoodling with barmaids, and in conversation with his father in the novel, he as good as admits to being a virgin.
Back to the novel: Freder dolefully leaves the organ-room and mixes with other young men in the stadium of the Club, where he is served a drink by a sexy young woman-- the book's first image of a provocative female-- but Freder certainly does not pursue this girl.
Then book and film enter a parallel course, for into the Club comes a pretty young woman-- later given the name "Maria"-- who is surrounded by an entourage of children. In both works Maria's only purpose seems to be to show the children the pleasures of the city's idle rich, though she does so without condemnation. She says only to the children, "Look, these are your brothers." She does not seem to see Freder but he immediately recognizes her visage to be that of the "virgin mother" with which he's obsessed. Maria and the children then leave the Club-- which leads to another divergence I'll address in Part 2.
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