Metropolis (1927) Screening

METROPOLIS (1927)

There can be no understanding between the hands and the brain unless the heart acts as mediator.

Tuesday, November 17 | Orem Library Hall
Admission is free

Nearly 100 years ago, filmmaker Fritz Lang imagined the city of the future.
Now, the future has caught up with us.

Join Film Maven Haven Society at Orem Library Hall for a special free screening of The Complete Metropolis, the restored version of one of the most important and influential films ever made.

Released in 1927, Metropolis helped define what science fiction would look like on screen for generations to come. Its towering cityscapes, machines, robots, laboratories and monumental architecture can still be seen echoed in films ranging from Star Wars to Blade Runner and countless stories that followed. 

And yes—this is a silent film.

There is no spoken dialogue. Instead, the story is told through extraordinary images, performances, English intertitles and Gottfried Huppertz’s sweeping original orchestral score. For anyone who has never experienced a feature-length silent film, Metropolis is one of the great places to start.

High above the city of Metropolis, the wealthy live lives of extraordinary comfort. Far below, an enormous workforce keeps the machines—and the city itself—alive. When Freder, the privileged son of the city’s ruler, discovers the world beneath his feet and encounters the idealistic Maria, he begins to question the system that has shaped his entire life. What follows is a story of technology, power, class, labor, artificial humanity and what can happen when people become little more than parts of the machines they have created.

For decades, Metropolis has been famously associated with the year 2026. Watching it in 2026 gives this nearly century-old vision of the future a particularly strange resonance. Its questions about automation, inequality, technological progress, artificial intelligence and the relationship between human beings and the systems they build no longer feel like distant science fiction.

The version being presented is Kino Lorber’s The Complete Metropolis, the acclaimed 2010 restoration incorporating more than 25 minutes of footage once believed lost. Those rediscovered scenes restored characters, relationships and entire sections of the story, bringing audiences closer than ever to Fritz Lang’s original vision.
The screening will begin with a brief introduction providing some context about the film, its remarkable history, and the restoration you are about to see.

Admission is free.

Concessions will be available for purchase, with proceeds directly benefiting Film Maven Haven Society, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit working to establish a permanent community cinema in northern Utah County. FMHS believes movies are at their best when they are experienced together—and is working to create a welcoming home for repertory film, independent cinema, special events, film education and the shared experience of watching stories on the big screen.

Come experience a film that helped invent the cinematic future—
in the year that future finally arrived.