It’s the vision of the future we still imagine: a city of concrete and steel, swarming highways threading across towering skycrapers with planes gliding past the windows. The 1926 epic Metropolis, free on DVD with The Times on Saturday, has cast a huge shadow over cinema.

Fritz Lang’s fable of industrial hubris and nemesis featuring Jazz Age decadent rulers and exploited workers remains famous as the name of Superman’s earthly home. But it has also informed countless celluloid cities, from Blade Runner and the anime epic Akira to The Fifth Element, Minority Report and, I, Robot. Lang’s deco-noir vision has enveloped Batman ever since Bob Kane unleashed his dark avenger in 1939.

James Whale’s Frankenstein movies from the Thirties borrow liberally from Lang’s creation of the robotic double of the heroine Maria, a kind of machine-age Joan of Arc, with its fantastical machinery, jagged flashes and concentric circles of light. In this sleek female robot, the prototype for Star Wars’ C-3PO, can be found the first suggestion of the equation of technology, sex and death that so obsessed writers such as J. G. Ballard and directors such as David Cronenberg.

Rotwang, the robot’s creator, also defined the image of the mad scientist for years: thick accent plus some kind of physical disfigurement equalled lab-coated loony. Stanley Kubrick paid tribute with Peter Sellers as Dr Strangelove.

Metropolis remains a stunning visual achievement. No wonder it was the Heaven’s Gate of its day. It took 17 months to shoot and strained to breaking point a cast of thousands and the coffers of Germany’s UFA studios.

A thousand men, culled from the Depression breadlines, had their heads shaved. Many more were stripped to the waist, at the height of the Berlin winter, to haul rocks into the mouth of Morloch, the city’s giant furnace. Others had to swim for their lives as the set for the city’s catacombs was flooded during the industrialist Fredersen’s desperate attempt to punish his rebellious workforce.

Lang was no less easy on his main players. He forced Gustav Froehlich, as the son of Metropolis’s ruler, to batter a wooden door until his fists were pulped and bloody. He swung Brigitte Helm, as Maria, to and fro on a rope, allowing her to ricochet from the walls; her bruises authenticated the character’s suffering. Later, when Maria’s robotic double (also Helm) was due to be incinerated, Lang strapped the actress on to the pyre and watched as sparks began to barbecue her.

Metropolis was conceived as a spectacle to top Lang’s previous effort, a sprawling, two-part version of Die Nibelungen, based on the legends that had inspired Wagner’s Ring cycle. And like all great visions of tomorrow — 1984, with its smuggled commentary on 1948 — Metropolis, set in 2026, was a critique of the Twenties. Its depiction of the social stratification of society had the clarity of a Marxist parable, but then it also suggested how brainless workers and heartless industrialists could be united into a mighty force by the will of a charismatic spiritual leader.

No wonder Adolf Hitler loved the film. But after the movie’s Berlin premiere in 1927, audiences stayed away, confused by its ideology and daunted by its original two-and-a-half-hour length. Six months later Paramount re-edited the film for the international market, removing a quarter of the footage and concocting a new story from what remained.

Other versions based on the Paramount cut were released across Europe. They began the proliferation of alternative versions of Metropolis that would later include Giorgio Moroder’s infamous disco-mix of 1984 and a shortlived West End musical version with Brian Blessed in 1989. Despite all these incarnations, Lang’s fusing of Bahaus, Modernism and Futurism with brooding Gothic remnants amid a collison of electricity, clockwork and steam, science and fairytale, remains an enduring future vision. As most sci-fi films now tend to look out of date by the time they reach DVD, it’s worth taking a look at how the sci-fi genre began.

It’s one of the most iconic films in cinema history

Metropolis (1926)
126 mins Director: Fritz Lang

Few films have inspired as many doomed Utopian fables as Fritz Lang’s German masterpiece, Metropolis. The story is almost simple-minded, but the power and reach of this silent movie is impossible to quantify. It’s a colossal folly: a monstrous epic that has shrugged off critics and defied time to become one of the most iconic films in cinema history.

Set in the year 2026, Metropolis paints a future where millions of workers slave in underground factories to feed the ambition of an insatiable tyrant. While the privileged few gambol on the rooftop gardens of giant skyscrapers, the oppressed masses sweat their guts out in the furnaces 984 floors beneath their feet.

A saintly young woman, Maria (Brigitte Helm), captures the heart of the dictator’s naive son, by stifling moments of insurrection among the workers with impulsive acts of charity.

A mad, jealous inventor builds an evil robotic clone of Maria to trigger a revolt. It works. The fear of a mechanised society is as frenzied as the anger. Even by today’s standards, the anarchy is genuinely exhilarating.

Frankly, it was destined for instant box office disaster. Audiences could barely comprehend this concrete urban Paradise Lost; or the stark monumental beauty of a majestic skyline built on an exploited underclass.

The film has been restored and re-released several times in the past decade. Tragically, chunks of the original print are lost, but the drama and pleasure are marvellously intact.

One of its many fans was Hitler’s favourite architect, Albert Speer. He was famously impressed by the epic scope of the set designs. Stalin probably took notes. Enjoy.

JAMES CHRISTOPHER

Explore Film

• Film Reviews

• Trailers

• DVD

• Oscars

• Cannes

Editor's choice

• U2 at Nou Camp Stadium, Barcelona
• The 50 Best Movie Villains
• The 15 golden rules of theatre etiquette