The relationship between film and architecture can also be used to make
visible the filmmaker's
visions for the future of the city. These can be idealistic visions, but in many cases filmmakers use their medium to express feelings of dystopia and fear, expressing their growing anxieties about our changing world. Our scientific and technological development can be seen to unnecessarily sacrifice our quality of life in the name of progress. Both Fritz Lang's Metropolis and Ridley Scott's Blade Runner present such visions for the future of our
their relative societies. In both of their works, the architectural set works alongside the narrative to present their dystopian visions of the future.
Metropolis
In Fritz Lang's Metropolis an immanent vision of German cities and their architecture is represented. Lang envisions bright dense urban centres with hectic traffic and neon lights, being built on the backs of the enslaved working class. The narrative follows the main character, Freder, who is the son of the ruler of the city, Joh Fredersen. Freder becomes infatuated with Maria, an evangelical figure who takes up the cause of the workers. She has faith in the coming of a “mediator” who will unite the two halves of society. In his search to find Maria, Freder moves from his home in the upper realm, to the underground machine halls, where he becomes aware of the life-threatening conditions that the working class experience. The narrative is essentially a biting social criticism, commenting on the conflict between societal classes. In the film this struggle ends in the catastrophic destruction of the machine halls and the subterranean living quarters of the working class, resulting in the unification of the two classes.
This plot is related to a common theme of that time which involved the social crisis caused by the class segregation of labour and management, which creates a society of oppression and exploitation. Lang worked with three set designers Erich Kettelhut, Otto Hunte, and Karl Vollbrecht to produce a model to represent his vision of the city. To visually represent this class segregation, the city was vertically divided into two worlds– one of the planners and thinkers of the city, who live above the ground plane in luxurious skyscrapers, and another of workers who toil underground, supporting the infrastructure of the city.
The symbolism of this architecture is deeply related to the narrative, for example the subterranean world is represented as a series of layers – the ancient catacombs, caves with the workers quarters, and the “hall of the machines”. Then above-ground there are towering buildings and layers of traffic, with the government centre, entitled the Tower of Babel , overshadowing it all. This symbolic reference gives the tower a massive and threatening form, which is a demonstration of the ruler's unyielding strength. Furthermore, in the “hall of the machines” the main generator is turned into a threatening altar for human sacrifices, which really demonstrates how the workers give up everything for the city.
“Your great glorious, dreadful city of Metropolis roars out, proclaiming that she is hungry for fresh human marrow and human brain and then the living food rolls on, like a stream, into the machine-rooms, which are like temples, and that, just used, is thrown up” - Thea von Harbou[1]
The final scenes of the reconciliation between the workers and Joh Fredersen occurs on the steps of a cathedral, symbolizing a return to a more spiritual and respectful relationship between the two classes.
Blade Runner
The plot of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner centers on advances in genetic technology, which allowed scientists to create biologically-engineered beings called “replicants”. This presents similar class structure to that of Metropolis, where the replicants were used as a disposable working class in Earth's off-world colonies. Following an uprising, the replicants are declared illegal on Earth and “blade runners”, a specialized police unit, hunt down and kill insubordinate replicants. The plot focuses on a group of replicants that hide in Los Angeles and the semi-retired blade runner Deckard, who is hired to deal with them. The underlying message of the plot confronts the moral dilemmas of genetic engineering, while the set design and architecture makes comment on the future of rising pollution and violence in society.
As such Blade Runner makes specific visual and architectural reference to Metropolis. It presents a layered society, where the street has long been abandoned by the wealthy and middle class in favour of living in skyscrapers and off-world settlements. However, there is a significant distinction between Lang's and Scott's visions of our future. In Metropolis society consists of an orderly city-state, which is managed by an authoritarian figure, whereas in Blade Runner the formal hierarchy has dissolved and the city exists in a state of anarchy and decay.
This dystopic vision centres on fears of pollution, urban decay and destructive class segregation in modern day Los Angeles, which have been projected into the not-so-distant future. As Ridley Scott stated in an interview Blade Runner “ depicts a road we're heading down now – class separation, the growing gulf between rich and poor, the population explosion – and it offers no solutions”[2]. The city has been so destroyed by pollution that those who could afford to either moved above the clouds in skyscrapers or escaped off-world. As such, the lower city is presented in a state of urban decay, where it is inhabited with criminals, is constantly in darkness, and being eroded by the constant downpour of acid rain.
The key concept in the design of the city's architecture is the “retrofitting” or “layering” of the old city, which has survived underneath the modern high-rises. As this wealth is drained from the old city it becomes too costly to rebuild, thus older buildings are retrofitted with the infrastructure of the modern city, parasitically growing around it. For example the facades of the iconic Bradbury Building are covered with ducts and pipes of the buildings above (as shown in the image below).
1 Thea von Harbou, Metropolis (1927), reprint (Boston: Gregg Press, 1975), p. 37
2 Interview with Ridley Scott, Publicitiy release from The Ladd Company (1982)
