Metropolis by Thea von Harbou (Full Text)

by Thea von Harbou

Overview

This is Metropolis, the novel that the film's screenwriter -- Thea von Harbou, who was director Fritz Lang's wife, and a collaborator in the creation of the film -- this is the novel that Harbou wrote from her own notes. It contains bits of the story that got lost on the cutting-room floor; in a very real way it is the only way to understand the film.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940013718173
Publisher:	Maran State Books
Publication date:	01/05/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	454 KB

About the Author

Thea Gabriele von Harbou (December 27, 1888 – July 1, 1954) was
a German actress and author of Prussian aristocratic origin. In
1905, she published her first novel in the Deutsche Roman-Zeitung.
However, she then started to work as an actress, beginning in 1906
in Düsseldorf, then moving to Weimar (1908), Chemnitz (1911) and
Aachen (1913). In Aachen she met her first husband, the actor and
director Rudolf Klein-Rogge, whom she married in 1914. In 1920, she
wrote her first film script Das Indische Grabmal (The Indian Tomb,
Mysteries of India), together with Fritz Lang. Fritz Lang became
her second husband in 1922, and they collaborated in the following
years, writing the screenplays for Metropolis and M together. They
separated in October 1931 and divorced in 1933. In 1932, a year
before Adolf Hitler came to power, she joined the Nazi Party. This
presumably led to the divorce from Lang, who left Germany in 1934
for Paris after his film Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse had been
declared illegal by Nazi officials because of perceived criticism
of Nazi ideology. Harbou wrote the script for Der Herrscher 1937,
directed by Veit Harlan and starring Emil Jannings. The movie
celebrates unconditional submission under absolute authority,
eventually finding reward in total victory. After the war she was
detained by the British military government, and then did unskilled
labor, like cleaning up rubble from the bombing. After receiving a
working permit she did some synchronizing of movies, but also
continued to write scripts. In 1954 she died in Berlin.