We asked female film and art critics to look at the Goethe-Institut Toronto's exhibition Early UFA Film Posters: Projecting Women with eight visuals from famous as well as rarely seen or lost Berlin UFA films from the 1920s and 30s that portray women as heroines or seductresses, debutantes or harlots. Toronto film critic Linda Barnard reexamined Brigitte Helm's Maria in METROPOLIS:
She is instantly recognizable: the female robot from Metropolis.
Even if people know nothing about Fritz Lang’s 1927 film, they know her face. Credit a visionary director, actress Brigitte Helm and a character named Maria for that. As one of the leading cinematic influencers of popular culture, fashion and film for 90 years, the image most closely associated with Metropolis is the blankly staring metal-clad Maschinenmensch, the robotic woman and sexualized creature created from pure-hearted Maria to bring down a city.
Everything about this compelling poster designed by Werner Graul for UFA to promote Metropolis is unexpected. It shoots up as a narrow, vertical image among traditional rectangles on the wall. A woman’s face fills the frame. Eyes closed, her lips are blood red, yet her skin is blue. Is it a trick of light? Or perhaps she’s not human?
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