| Summary: | Metropolis, 20th century apparatus. Dystopia as objectification of urban fear. Metropolis (1927) by Fritz Lang represents the first urban dystopia in the history of 20th-century movies. The archetype of the city comes from cultural exchange between the representations of sci-fi literature and the scientific discoveries of the early 20th century: the vertical city by H. G. Wells Tales of space and time, the second industrial revolution, the so-called machine civilization, the theories of the Bauhaus and the Avant-garde. The osmosis between the hard sciences and the humanities forms a dynamic map, which is constructed by the present reality and which determines the design model of the future. But Metropolis is also a powerful representation of man, the transfiguration of the human microcosm in the urban macrocosm, a metaphor of the uncertain human ontological status. It is the dystopian model that – like Trantor by the sci-fi Foundation series of Isaac Asimov and the urban nightmares of Philip K. Dick, or like the Los Angeles of Blade Runner or the Machine City of Matrix – allows us to reflect on the present world.
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