----------------------------Original message---------------------------- David Smith writes: "As a sometime student of Weimar culture, I can only cite the political confusion practised by small men like Friedrich Ebert during that dire era, as a possible mitigating factor in Lang's case (in other words, criminal stupidity in political thinking was endemic. Still is.). Lang also evidently suffered a dire cultural confusion of his own, at least in the making of METROPOLIS. The film reflects then recently bygone aesthetic concerns, notably the Futurists' mechanolatry, in a mish- mash of expressionism (the cellar with the crosses is especially painful to watch) and nickleodeon melodrama. If Lang had only set out to make a debauched monster feature and dropped his insane social theories (slaves who rebel only wind-up destroying their own homes, for one), then I think he would have produced an enduring classic. I know there are those who will continue to insist that is exactly what METROPOLIS is (an enduring classic, not a debauched monster movie)." Well, I'd never accuse Lang of being especially politically sophisticated, but a good deal of the socio-political content his silent films has to come from his partner/screenwriter/wife Thea von Harbou. While Lang fled Nazi Germany, von Harbou stayed behind. Does anyone know what kind of career she had? What exactly were her politics? And how did Lang himself feel about all this? --Don Larsson, Mankato State U., MN