Having conceived Babel, yet unable to build it themselves, they hired thousands to build it for them.
But those who toiled knew nothing of the dreams of those who planned it.
And the minds that planned the Tower of Babel cared nothing for the workers that built it.
The hymns of pray of the few became the curses of the many.
-Fritz Lang. Metropolis. 1926-
The imagery of the tower of Babel (the machine center of Metropolis is actually called the New Tower of Babel) relates technology to myth and legend. The biblical myth is used to construct the ideological message about the division of labor into the hands that build and the brains that plan and conceive, a division which, as the film suggests, must be overcome.
Andreas Huyssen. Fritz Lang´s Metropolis. P. 223
Shots from Metropolis´ film by Myriam B. Mahiques
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