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Lang, Ufa, 1927. A city split between a club in the clouds and a shift underground. Brigitte Helm is both Maria and the Maschinenmensch. Eugen Schüfftan's mirror process puts actors into miniatures. The 1927 premiere ran longer than the cuts that circulated for decades. The 2010 restoration, using a Buenos Aires print, put most of it back. The handshake at the end is Lang at his most diagrammatic. The factory is not.
In two programmes
The camera is a scale. Schüfftan's mirrors put actors inside miniatures, and the city reads as built, not painted. Watch the workers descend for the shift change, in step, heads down. That is the film's argument before anyone makes a speech.
The Maschinenmensch's transformation is the trick. The shift change, workers moving in step down into the machine, is the film. Watch the second, not the first.
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