The gap between those who labor and those who benefit from that labor has existed since the birth of the Industrial Revolution. Even today, service jobs are scorned, those who perform them usually underpaid and invisible. Yet, without the janitors and the nurses's aides and the data processors, the high-powered offices and institutions would not survive.
In 1926, German Expressionist director Fritz Lang and his then-wife, novelist Thea von Harbou, collaborated on a film that looked at this imbalance between those who make and those who use. It's theme, according to the opening quote from von Harbou's novel on which it is based, is that "The mediator between brain and muscle must be the heart." The film is Metropolis.
In the year 2026, a fantastic city filled with lights and swift monorails and luxurious mansions is a playground for the wealthy and the educated. Deep beneath the city, in a starkly utilitarian labyrinth, blank-faced workers march in lock-step to and from the great machines that power the city. They are joyless, spiritless and hopeless automatons barred from the pleasures and luxuries their endless labors produce.
In a lush pleasure garden somewhere in Metropolis, Freder Frederson (Gustav Frõlich), son of the city's director, romps with a scantily clad woman around a rushing fountain. Suddenly, the great double doors to the garden swing open, and a crowd of ragged, gaunt-faced children creep through. In the middle of the group is the beautiful Maria (Brigitte Helm), her face stern and her eyes challenging the attendants to evict her before she has completed her mission.
"Here," she tells the children huddled wide-eyed around her. "This is how your brothers live."
The intruders leave, and Freder follows them down to the workers' level. He is horrified by the way they live and the conditions under which they labor. As he watches, one man collapses at his post, causing an explosion. Yet, replacement workers march in immediately to replace the dead and injured, and Freder envisions the great dynamo as a greedy idol of the god Moloch devouring an endless chain of naked slaves.
Freder hurries to the sprawling, state-of-the-art office high overlooking the city and confronts his father, John Frederson (Alfred Abel), with what he's seen. How, he demands, can his father allow the workers to live as they do when without their hands the city and its wonders could not exist.
"Where do the hands belong in your scheme?" he cries.
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