Similarities Between 1984 And Metropolis

Fritz Lang and George Orwell express their concern for the welfare of future societies throughout their texts Metropolis and Nineteen Eighty-four, stimulated by the scenes they witnessed from their contexts. Fritz Lang directed and released Metropolis (1927) in Germany during the time of the Weimar Republic, significantly influencing his film. George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four (1949) was motivated from the events from both World Wars and the malicious dictators such as Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini that came to power, demonstrating totalitarian dictatorships. Through their dystopic texts, they present a warning on the detriment of totalitarian leaders with their covetousness to demonstrate power and control by all means necessary leading

Lang represents totalitarian power through his character Joh Frederson, who demonstrates this power from the tower of Babel, looking over the city. The long shot of the window emphasises his omniscient presence over Metropolis which accompanied with the use of triangles and pyramids, becomes symbolic of the power, hierarchy and structure of the city. The dehumanisation of the workers is apparent with their plain, black uniforms being juxtaposed to the extravagant, light coloured clothing worn by the upper class. Expressionism is exerted with the expressionistic design of the tunnel with the curved ceiling that entraps the workers, funnelling them through the gateways, accentuating the subjective perspective. The lighting and shadows on the worker’s city buildings accompanied by the non-parallel and broken lines of the architecture, alludes to the broken human spirit of the subservient lower class. Mise-en-scene is seen in the ‘shift change’ scene with the automatised and synchronised movements of the workers. The costumes, doorway structure and lighting create the feeling of oppression and dehumanisation of man with the constant cycle of shifts that dictates their

The oxymoron “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past,” is a reference to the Ministry of Truth re-writing history which links in with the historical context of Joseph Stalin re-writing Soviet history to provide himself a more significant role in the revolution of 1917. Control over the people is exercised through the Thought Police and the Spies who report citizens for ‘thoughtcrime’ as it is illegal. “Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres in your skull” is ironic in foreshadowing the notion that the only place one can truly be themselves was inside their own heads as portraying beliefs and ideologies that went against the Party’s would result in being reported and consequently, vaporised. The control over language with the introduction and development of Newspeak is designed to impose an orthodox reality by removing emotive synonyms and making ‘thoughtcrime’ impossible by abbreviating and culling words from the English language. “[we’re] cutting the language down to the bone… Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year” This notion is contextually linked to the ‘Newspeak’ Orwell was witnessing in the