Fascinating for students of cinema history, religious allegory and set design... as a piece of drama it is less effective, with histrionic acting, a needlessly confusing plot, an overlong running time and general air of dopeyness. I did enjoy the finale when the workers rose up and went nuts but this is no commie treatsie - at the end the workers and management are encouraged to get along for the good of all.
Brigitte Helm is unsurprisingly bland as the good girl, kind of like the St Peter of Metropolis, tending the sick and leading people in prayer. She's lusted after - sorry, loved - by the bosses son, who goes undercover to find out more. Just thinking about it the plot of this is reminiscent of Quo Vadis? with the poor as Christians and the rich as Roman nobility - only this one does throw in a mad scientist who builds a robot for the boss, while secretly planning to double cross said boss. The robot is a slutty version of Helm and a lot more fun to watch.
There's a lot of intense acting, gnashing of brows, kidnappings, attempted rapes, Weimar Republic style decadence at a nightclub, athletics with pasty faced rich kids, masses and masses of poor (mostly kids), floods, rich men in tuxes drooling after trashy women, skanty outfits, rants about the Tower of Babel. Always something going on just not always involving.
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