Metropolis, page 16
“I can’t possibly take it.”
“What’s your dog’s name?”
“Kaiser.”
Margot brought her hand to Kaiser’s nose. He nudged it at once, throwing it back onto his head for a rub. Margot scratched him behind both ears and tucked the money under his collar. “If you can’t take it, Kaiser can. What do you say to that, Kaiser?”
The veteran looked on, misty-eyed. Margot was already tearing a note out of her notebook. “Here’s my address. Our landlady may have some work for you, if you don’t mind—”
“Of course, not! I can do anything!”
“Just tell her Margot von Steinhoff sent you. I live there. And I’m sure Frau Müller would absolutely welcome a good guard dog. He’s a good guard dog, isn’t he?”
“He’s the best,” the veteran replied with unmistakable pride in his voice.
When she was back into the car, a single look at Max’s face was enough for her to burst out laughing. “Please, don’t tell me you’re thinking what I’m thinking.”
“I don’t care what you say, I’m putting this scene into the play.”
A few days later, all the newspapers went wild about the extended version.
The scene with the dog steals the show!
The public is in tears!
Moving and heartbreaking!
Among them, a few political ones appeared:
Take care of our veterans!
Finally, a truthful glimpse at post-war Germany.
The Reichstag big shots ought to be ashamed!
The sad state of our military.
Veterans aren’t disposable. Open your eyes!
“Well, you certainly know how to stir the pot,” Werner remarked, flicking through the newspaper as they shared morning coffee in the kitchen.
Under the table, Kaiser lay, patiently waiting for the bits of food to be dropped at his paws. August, the veteran, was hired as a maintenance man and a street-sweeper and allowed to live free of charge in Altendorf’s former room as long as everything was taken care of around the building. Never before had anyone seen the sidewalk so immaculately clean.
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You wrote the entire thing. And now, this scene.”
“The scene was Max’s idea.”
“With which you went along. The Reichstag politicians will have your head.”
Margot shrugged. “I merely write down what I see in the streets and take photos of life the way it is. I don’t create any problems; I only document them. If the Reichstag politicians are so offended by it, perhaps they should take charge.”
“You’re such an idealist, Margot.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“No. That’s a very good thing.”
Chapter Seventeen
Summer, 1926
Margot checked her watch. It was ten in the evening. Next to her, Köbner was smoking his fifth cigarette. He had arrived two hours ago to collect her and drive her to Betty’s but Lang, it seemed, was far from finished for the day. A collective groan reverberated through the set when, instead of dismissing the crew for the night, Lang demanded to prepare a set of the Cathedral Square.
“We’ll be filming the scene with robot-Maria’s burning at the stake. Well? Make it snappy, you quivering tramps! Shall I help you find your legs?”
At improvised tables, the exhausted extras were fixing their make-up hastily. An even more exhausted Brigitte Helm patiently waited for a crew member to put another layer of mascara over her eyes and dab more white paste onto her skin to mask the black rings under her eyes. In the artificial brightness of the set, the leading actress’s face had a cadaverous tint to it. The six-tube mercury lamps, several dozens of them, flooded the Cathedral Square with a blinding light despite the late hour. Making use of a small break, Margot sat on top of the box with props and stared at them. Neither the strings nor the wires attached to them were visible. They appeared to float right in the moonless sky on their own, like some fantastic, futuristic suns.
“You’ll burn your eyes out,” Köbner remarked, distracting her from her reverie.
“I imagined that would constitute a suitable excuse for Herr Regisseur to finally release me from this slavery.”
From Köbner, a highly skeptical ha-ha. “What time did you arrive here today?”
“Eight on the dot. I’ve been up since six though. I would kill for a coffee.”
“Is there any left on the set?”
“Would I not be drinking it right now if there was?”
“Don’t take it out on me, I’m just as much of a victim here as you are.”
“That’s an atrociously misguided statement.”
“At any rate,” Köbner continued, amid the chuckles, “I wanted to talk to you about something at Betty’s, but considering the situation…”
He let the unfinished sentence meaningfully hang in the air. By now, Margot was familiar with the impish light dancing in his eyes; Köbner was itching to impart to her some piece of juicy gossip he’d uncovered.
Lang, meanwhile, was already climbing the platform, on which his equipment was. Margot saw Karl Freund wrap his impressive form into a coat and felt a chill run through her as well. Summer, my foot; she rubbed her arms with her hands, warming herself.
“What did you want to talk about?” She asked Köbner, trying to sound interested.
Given a green light, Köbner leaned toward her and broke into excited whispers. Apparently, he had just had coffee, just this very morning, with a UFA insider (whom Köbner positively refused to name not to betray his trust), and according to whom, the UFA had just recently received a very appealing buy offer from a certain Alfred Hugenberg, an influential media entrepreneur and they were seriously considering it.
“And?” Margot wasn’t quite following. Even if the studio changed hands, hardly the new owner would cancel Metropolis. Too much money had already been invested in the project – no one in their right mind would just throw it away.
“And, Hugenberg happens to sympathize with the Nazis.”
Köbner waited for a reaction.
Margot only scowled deeper. “So, he has bad taste when it comes to politics. What does it have to do with Lang?”
“Everything!” Köbner made an exasperated gesture with his hands and threw a quick glance at the set.
Lang was still tormenting his poor leading actress, along with the extras – for even measure:
“Listen, everybody! The scene we’re going to practice is simple. You caught the girl, who is responsible for the flooding of your city and you are going to build a stake around the lamp pole there,” he pointed in the needed direction, “in order to burn her. Understood? I want you to drag the material toward the stake from all four corners, as the camera rolls. Sometime during the outbreak of the rebellion, the cars stopped running. Burn the cars! Tear them apart! They belong to the oppressing class! Tear the wheels away, the upholstery – destroy them all! Ready? Action!”
The crowd threw itself against the cars. Soon, the small, wooden props started moving, crawling toward the stake. Howling, mad-faced women dragged other rubbish to fuel the stake. Even the piano was not spared.
“Stop!” Lang’s shout.
Margot missed what Köbner was saying. “I’m sorry, what was it?”
“I said, if Hugenberg buys the studio, he’ll cancel Metropolis just for the idea.”
“What idea?”
With his eyes rounded, he leaned as close to Margot as he could and whispered, “Lang’s half-Jewish.”
“Rot!” She obliterated him with the gesture of her hand. “He’s as Catholic as the pope himself. All of them, Austrians, are. Just look at all the religious sub-plots his wife Thea and he shoved into this poor story! Maria-the-Virgin vs robot-Maria-the-whore; the Moloch; the Tower of Babel; the burning at the stake, for God’s sake!” she gestured toward the said stake.
“Now it’s getting serious.” Lang’s monocle glimmered ominously in the light of the mercury lamps. “Now the blonde, tender witch is going to get it!” He turned toward the technical crew. “Do we have coal ready? Shovel more in, don’t be shy!”
Instantly alarmed, Margot didn’t hear Köbner’s reply. She rose to her feet and watched Lang like a hawk. He wasn’t mad enough to use authentic flames for the scene, was he? Even Thea, Lang’s wife, was shaking her head, thinking it to be too much.
“He is Jewish though. His mother converted to Catholicism before she married his father, I think,” Köbner kept whispering, oblivious to a catastrophe waiting to happen. “I’m telling you all this on the most reliable authority.”
“Margot!” Lang was motioning her toward the platform from which he’d just climbed off. “Go crank the camera; Freund, you take the other one, the crowd shot.”
“You don’t believe me, do you?” Köbner followed Margot on her heels as she made her way toward the platform. Freund was already holding out his great paw to her, smiling his tired smile.
“Not really. You have an aptitude for gossip which amounts to a true talent. And besides, what difference does it make for Hugenberg anyway?”
“Hugenberg will never put up with his demands. In fact, I won’t be surprised, if he fires him altogether.”
“Just because of Lang’s ancestry? Surely, you’re joking.” Margot climbed a small platform, on which the camera was mounted and began trying out different optics.
In front of the second camera, Freund was now smoking, his face just as reluctant as Brigitte’s and Margot’s. Köbner, however, didn’t seem interested in the slightest in what was going on, on the set, firmly set on driving his point across. Ordinarily afraid of heights, he even clambered onto the platform after Margot, crowding it even more.
“Not just the ancestry.” Hovering over Margot’s shoulder, Köbner once again lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “This entire film is an ode to the good ole Marx, don’t you agree? The glorification of the working class and the damning of the capitalist one doesn’t sound Marxist to you?”
“The message of the film is the unification of the classes. It’s really muddled with all the religion, futuristic stuff, and unnecessary sentimentality if you ask me, but yes,” Margot finally conceded. “A bit Marxist, I’ll give you that much but that’s not its only point. Its other point is to attract American audiences. Why do you think his fictional metropolis looks so much like New York? Pommer insisted on creating that connection for them so that they would feel at home while watching it.”
“Aimed at Americans, pro-Marxist, anti-authoritarian, I can’t think of what else Lang can possibly add to the cocktail, for Nazi-loving Hugenberg to loathe it even more. It already has Negroes and an oddly Semitic-looking professor.”
“Professor is not Semitic.”
“Makes no difference to me, personally. My latest mistress is Jewish.”
“Congratulations. You’re a true man of the world now. Can you shut it for one second? I’m trying to work here.”
Lang had already hoisted Brigitte onto the tremendous pyre and was busy giving the instructions to the extras at the foot of it simultaneously tying the actress’s hands together with his own leather belt.
“Fritz, what are you doing?” Margot shouted at him. They were long past the ceremonious Herr Regisseur/Gräfin nonsense and were long saying du to each other – familiarity, initiated by Lang himself, which still amazed the crew members. Hardly anyone, besides Lang’s wife, could afford it on the despot’s set. “Just let her hold the ties in her hands. Don’t actually tie her up!”
Lang ignored her remark and instead secured the belt even tighter, ensuring that it was holding its hostage firmly in place.
“What I’m doing, my dear Margot,” he drawled, his voice amplified by the echo of a tremendous set even without his using his megaphone, “is creating authenticity. Look at her face. Now, she looks scared.”
“Of course, she does! You tied her to a stake and are planning to set the pyre on fire!”
“Just the very bottom of it,” Lang countered at once and turned to the members of the on-set fire department. “Do we have the hoses ready?”
“Fritz, drop it.” Margot liked the idea less and less. “It’s not safe.”
“It’s authentic, that’s what’s important.”
“Thea!” Getting desperate, Margot turned to Lang’s wife. “Tell him to quit it! Pommer would have never approved of it if he were here!”
“But he’s not, so I’ll do as I please!” Lang raised his voice, growing irritated.
Thea von Harbou conveniently hid behind her secretary, to whom she was dictating a piece of reportage from the set – for publicity purposes. The following day, Margot would bring the notes to the Tageblatt along with her own photos of the set. The novelist’s face was quite telling – contradicting her despotic husband was utterly beyond her desire.
“See what I’m talking about?” Köbner was back to his excited hissing. “Hugenberg will never put up with this. Lang is not listening to anyone. He does as he pleases. His film is thoroughly Marxist and he, himself, is half-Jewish—”
Lang’s megaphone was once again aimed at the two cinematographers. “Freund, Margot, are you ready?”
“Ready,” Margot replied, though with great reluctance.
Freund just waved his hand in the air.
Lang’s familiar shout rang out. “Silence on the set! All ready? Light it up! And… action!”
The cameras buzzed. Inside Margot’s chest, each turn of the crank echoed the beating of her own heart – faster, much faster than usual. The previously-languid, exhausted crowd of extras hurled itself forward, bellowing and pointing fingers at the tied-up robot-Maria. Margot watched her carefully through the lens and inwardly applauded Brigitte’s professionalism. Despite the fire that was taking on much faster than anticipated, she kept laughing carelessly in the faces of the wild crowd, as though she was indeed made of steel and not mortal flesh. Her heavily made-up eyes were smarting with smoke and still, she laughed and twisted her neck sharply from one side to another – a machine, not a human, who cared not that the hem of her dress was already burning. The dress!
“Fritz!” Margot shouted. “Brigitte’s dress!”
Leaping off the platform – to hell with the camera – she grabbed the first blanket in which the extras wrapped themselves to warm themselves up between the scenes and began climbing the pyre from the more or less safe side, praying to all gods that she wouldn’t fall through the flimsy construction right into the flames raging from under it.
Now, Lang saw it too and in an instant, he was charging along the treacherous wooden construction as well, tearing off his own jacket in the process to beat out the flames. The fire department crew were already working their hoses.
Everything was over before Margot knew it. Just a minute ago, she was hitting the flames with the blanket and now, she sat, soaked with water, right on the floor and regarded Lang wrathfully. In his arms, he held an unconscious Brigitte. Thea was inspecting very superficial burns on her legs.
“You’re such an asshole, Fritz,” Margot uttered slowly and with great hatred. “You’re such a fucking asshole.”
At first, he refused to meet her eyes. Only when the on-set medic took Brigitte from his arms, did he look at Margot and didn’t even move away when she raised her hand and slapped him hard across the face. It was his wife, Thea, who reacted with an indignant gasp.
“Just what do you think you’re doing?!”
“Just what do you think you two were doing?!” Margot was on her feet, now thoroughly incensed. “How the fuck do you, Thea, write a book with all of that these are your brothers and sisters bullshit and then go and handle your own actors like they’re mere replaceable props? And you, Fritz, are no better than your villain, Fredersen, with his torturing his workers. No! You know what? You’re worse! Their working day was what? Ten hours? Ours is fourteen and sometimes sixteen! And we get no days off, even the children! We work in sweltering heat and in freezing cold. You take advantage of the most vulnerable class this entire project is about – the workmen, making them work for a few marks only because all of the money is gone due to your own obstinacy and vision. When I first came here, when I first read your book, Thea, I admired you two. I thought, what a marvelous idea and what a wonderful message to send to people! And now, after I saw all this, I don’t want anything to do with this any longer. This entire project is one big joke, so no wonder the UFA wants to cancel it.”
In dead silence, Margot marched toward the exit, Köbner trailing after her.
Much to her surprise, the following morning Frau Müller called her to the phone.
“Some director is calling for you.”
“Reinhardt?”
“No, not Reinhardt. Lange or some such. Sounds Austrian.”
Margot was tempted to ask Müller to tell him the same thing Paul said to the UFA producer Duncker a few years ago. However, her curiosity triumphed at the last moment.
“I sincerely hope they sold you to that sod Hugenberg,” she said poisonously into the phone.
“They’re considering that.”
“Good. That travesty of yours can go to the devil for all I care.”
On the other end, Lang sighed heavily. Apologies were clearly not his forte. “I’m sorry about yesterday.”
“You ought to apologize to Brigitte, not to me. It’s her, whom you almost burned alive.”
“I already begged for her pardon in person. I gave her a few days off to recover and brought flowers and chocolates to her apartment.”
“Do you wish a monument to be erected in your honor now?” Her voice oozed with sarcasm.
Lang ignored it. When he spoke, his tone was full of something Margot never associated with the tyrannical director – genuine humility. “When she returns on Monday… will you come back also?”
