The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1927-04-16
On the Screen
metropolis"

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Thus the mechanical woman of Me-
tropolis impels the workmen for
ward in their attack on the machine
room. In these and other fiery
words she arouses them, lights the
spark which sets aflame their mar
ticulate, oppressive sense of dissatis-
faction.
Carrying her on their shoulders,
they rushed into the machine rooms
and attacked with blind fury the SYM
bols Of their servitude; tearing, cleav-
ing, distorting those monsters in
whose service they, too, had become
mere mechanisms.
But wait--it was the mechanical
woman who taught the workers there
TO break their chains. The real wonl-
an whose form and features she bore,
lay a prisoner in the chemists labor
atory, agonized at the thoughts of
what the evil impersonator was do
ing among her followers.
She had taught them love, and
trust in Christ, whose religion she
was re-awakening after hundreds of
years of disregard by mankind. For
the moral of this picture is that eff
cheney, to be effective, must be uni
ted with love. The soulless mechani-
cal woman works only havoc, revolu-
ton, destruction and despair.
Yet, when one sees the workers
boxlike homes, deep down under
ground, contrasted with the wonder
city of the owners of wealth equally
far above ground, one is again i'm
PEELED to ask, "Surely this is revolu-
tionary propaganda ?"
In the machine room are the pitt
less machines, each with its human
automatum. These men worked in
two endless, ten hour shifts. Going
to their work, fresh and strong and
coming from it with limp, dead bod
les, herded into the elevators like
cattle, the elevators which connected
the underground machine room with
their homes still further down. This
was their whole ilfe-save for the
Catacombs where once a day they
met in secret to worship Mary, tea
cher of new interest-religion. Up.
above, the sons of the wealthy en-
joyed themselves in stupendous sky
scrapers, with gorgeous roof gardens,
all connected by wide aerial boule-
wards and aeroplane systems. And
the evil genius of all this glory and
all this distress is Masterman, cold,
hard and unfeeling where workers
are concerned.
But the burgeois mind is clever
and can turn even such material to
its own uses. We see the mechanical
woman, complete except for a soul,
and made in the form of Mary be-
cause Of her influence over the work.
ers, turn against her master. Instead
of teaching duty and submission, she
suddenly turns to teaching revolt
destruction, for this is a bourgeois
conception of revolution. Thus we
AAsiA VIC Wo4hNAo dCoLIOyHlk lit ma
chimes, forgetting in their fury that
by so doing they cause their own
homes to be flooded-the houses
whore the children still remain.
1t is the real Mary, escaped, and
Masterman's son, Eric, sympathizer
of the workers, who rescues the chill
dren. Thus they gain forgiveness for
Masterman (thru a peculiar method
of reasoning, which credits the father
with some of the merit for his sons
act) and place Eric in a position to
bring together Worker and Master in
a clasp of love and class collabora-
ton, truly worthy Of President
Green.
"Condescending Savior"
And so the propagandist cleverly