Great stuff.
Having seen the original Metropolis, it's interesting to see how this one is different. Certainly… how to put it? More unequivocal. None of that "mediator" stuff,
Thanks! And yes indeed, reading reviews at the time a lot of critics were confused as to why the film’s ending calls for rapprochement given its overriding themes, particularly the workers trying to bury the hatchet with Joh Fredersen after he’d spent the last three hours trying to murder them all.
and the good-bourgeois protagonist appears to have vanished.
Gustav Fröhlich, who played Freder Fredersen, was a UFA contracted actor and as such was forbidden from finishing his scenes ITTL and had to be killed off early on. I kinda imagined him dying from shock after the “MOLOCH!” sequence and his death subsequently making his father even more antagonistic towards the workers.