ABSTRACT
Fritz Lang's Metropolis, premiered in Berlin in 1927, ends with these words: 'There can be no understanding between the hands and the brain unless the heart acts as mediator." The film was an attempt to examine some of the industrial and scientific themes troubling Europe in the 1920s, and was based on a novel by Thea von Harbou, Lang's wife and close collaborator, in which the central female character, Maria, symbolises the heart as mediator between the labouring classes and the ruling elite.
