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shots, special attention has to be given to the way the camera is set up and to the lighting of the model sets. The visionary images of the Moloch machine, which were also made with the help of the mirror trick process, were particularly complicated to create.

Otto Hunte (2000: 80-81), who acted as art director, has also identified particular sequences in which the process was employed, and the sizable workload it entailed:

Most of the time and effort was taken up by the construction of the main road of Metropolis, at the end of which the new ‘Tower of Babel’ rises; the tower was meant to be 500 meters high and therefore could in no way be constructed in full size. I had to use a miniature model and represent the traffic passing through the street by means of a trick shot. […] The work took almost six weeks, and the result flits past the eyes of the spectator in twice six seconds.

Such information is of considerable importance because the process itself proved so successful it is no simple task to identify shots where the process has been employed. There are however certain compositional traits of Schüfftan Process shots which grant them a unique aesthetic value. Firstly, Schüfftan Process shots are necessarily static. The careful alignment of the camera, the mirror and the subjects of the shots prevents any possibility of camera movement. This restrictive factor presumably limited the long-term, wide-scale usage of the process in the film industry. Another aesthetic trait is the line of divide between the live action element and the miniature, the point of bisection between the reflective mirror and the clear glass. This line, as we shall see, is not always easily identifiable and does not form a straight divide, but rather can be a complex and intricate line which follows the edge of the miniature. Nevertheless, a division between two scales is present, causing the aesthetic effect of one portion of the frame being dedicated exclusively to set, and the other portion to the subjects. Furthermore, the set in miniature will tend to occupy the upper portions of the frame, as the process is used to create a sense of scale, often in buildings and other large

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structures. Compositionally, obfuscation of the line of bisection is created by building up the lower parts of the set in full-scale, which allows the miniature version to more realistically blend with the set's higher reaches.

I will now illustrate the aesthetic effects of these compositional traits of the Schüfftan Process as it appears in two images from Metropolis: In the ‘Stadium of the Sons’ scene, and in a scene set in the city of the workers. The very nature of the Schüfftan Process is to position live action subjects in relation to space – not to place them within this space but to place them against a necessarily grand backdrop. This functions to communicate certain points about the status of that subject. Metropolis is a film which speaks of class divisions. As I shall demonstrate, the application of the Schüfftan Process, and its inherent divisions within the image, acts to support such a reading.

The Stadium of the Sons is an early example of the use of the Schüfftan Process in

Metropolis. It is a sequence intended to display the privileges enjoyed by the upper classes of the Metropolis. The scene itself has been excised from many versions of the film but was fortunately restored by the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung in 2001. It is also one of the few examples where original photographs exist which demonstrate how the final image was created. These have been reprinted by Minden and Bachmann in their collection on

Metropolis (2000: 70-71). The complete image as it appears in the film shows young men from the upper part of the city, including Freder, on a race track. This comprises the bottom third of the frame and is the full-scale set which was used in the creation of the shot. The two thirds of the frame which exist above it show the high wall of the stadium, topped with athletic statues, and a large building at the end of this wall. This part of the image was created through the use of a miniature set, reflected to combine with the live action segment to result in the final image (see Figure 3).

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Figure 3: The Stadium of the Sons.

Production images identify that the line of the divide between the live action and the miniature, though not evident in the final blended image, exists at the bottom of the columns which run down the wall (part of the wall was present as a full-scale set behind the heads of the actors).

The aesthetic result of the final coherent image functions to comment upon the status of the subjects who are present within the frame. The grandiose nature of the stadium and the ergonomic lines of the architecture suggest the wealth and relative comfort within which the subjects exist. However, the domination of humanity is still apparent through the juxtaposition of this frame, whereby humankind is miniaturized against its environment. The high wall of the stadium atop with statues contains the upper class within a field of play,

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keeping out the workers beyond, but the upper classes are similarly prevented from a role in the city below. The upper classes are at play because technology keeps the working classes at bay. Both classes can therefore be seen to be dominated by the same impersonal power. In describing Herbert Marcuse's dominant argument in One-Dimensional Man, Tom Bottomore (1984: 39) comments that:

What this analysis claims to show is that the two main classes in capitalist society – bourgeoisie and proletariat – have disappeared as effective historical agents; hence there is, on one side, no dominant class, but instead domination by an impersonal power ('scientific-technological rationality') and on the other side, no opposing class, for the working class has been assimilated and pacified, not only through high mass consumption but in the rationalized process of production itself.

Marcuse's argument demonstrates how technology functions to mute class voices from both above and below it, allowing both to conform within institutionalized frameworks. In the stadium image seen above, the dichotomy between apparent freedom and actual sublimation to the institutional order can be seen through the very act of play seen within the stadium walls. Roger Caillois (2001: 58) finds in play, 'simultaneously liberty and invention, fantasy and discipline.' He continues:

All important cultural manifestations are based upon it. It creates and sustains the spirit of enquiry, respect for rules and detachment. In some respects the rules of law, prosody, counterpoint, perspective, stagecraft, liturgy, military tactics, and debate are rules of play. They constitute conventions that must be respected. (2001: 58)

So whilst these members of the upper classes appear to be enjoying freedom through their ability to play, they are also bound by the same social order with which technology governs the lower classes.

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A further example of the Schüfftan Process appears after the Stadium of the Sons sequence, when Freder has been introduced to the horrors of life below his grand portion of the city. The image is Freder's first view of the city of the workers (see Figure 4). The frame is divided into two fairly equal portions, with the upper section again an example of miniature photography. However, in contrast to the previous example of the Schüfftan Process, here both portions of the frame feature movement. The lower portion of the frame, considerably lighter than above the divide, shows a work-room with various platforms, upon which the workers endlessly operate the machinery that keeps the city functioning. Above the divide, where miniatures were employed, the heavy machinery sits with various moving cogs and wheels. Continuity between the two aspects of the process has been achieved by the presence of large scaffolding which passes across the divide, helping to obscure the use of process photography.

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Figure 4: The city of the workers.

In this example, while less dominant in terms of space in the frame than the previous example of the Stadium of the Sons, here the density of the miniature photography appears to weigh down upon the workers beneath. In fact, not only operating this machinery, the workers appear to be physically holding it up, holding up the divided frame. This physical exertion is in stark contrast to the image of physical exertion from the stadium scene. A direct comparison can be made between the statues on the stadium which have their arms raised to the clear sky, and this image, where the raised arms of the workers are weighed down upon by the machinery above. There is also a contrast between the two images in terms of composition of light. The lighting of the workers’ city appears, in many respects, in reverse to the lighting choices for the Stadium of the Sons. In the workers’ city the space above is notably darker, bearing down upon the workers, whereas the lightness of the sky above the

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runners in the stadium creates a sense of freedom and space. There is also much greater depth in the Stadium of the Sons, where the ergonomic lines of the architecture create the sense of grandeur that the stadium requires. In the city of the workers however, the lower portion of the frame features a number of pillars which, as they recede into the distance, function to highlight the scale of the working environment. The upper portion of the frame lacks this same sense of depth, with the whirring cogs and belts all competing for space in the foreground of the image. This functions to construct the metropolis and its infrastructure as a monolithic entity against which individual workers cannot compete.

The theoretical application of the Schüfftan Process

Beyond the undeniable necessity of preserving the Schüfftan Process as an artefact of film history, viewing the application of the effect in Metropolis from the privilege of hindsight allows us to see how both the film and the process are bound up with discourses of Modernism – specifically the industrial-technological Modernism of ‘mass production, mass consumption, and mass annihilation’ (Hansen, 2000: 332). Filmed in Berlin in 1926, the film correlates to the period of German Modernity. Indeed, as Janet Ward (2001: 2) notes, 'Germany of the 1920s offers us a stunning moment in modernity when surface values first ascended to become determinants of taste, activity and occupation.' Berlin was witnessing great economic growth on the back of the world's most technologically advanced war, and artistic styles such as Dadaism and Cubism, and architectural styles such as Bauhaus were emerging. German cinema was similarly feeling the push of Modernity, creating large budget spectacles and constant innovations in film technology. Sociologists too were identifying such trends in Germany, with Siegfried Kracauer (1995) publishing his critique of Modernism, The Mass Ornament in 1927 (the year of Metropolis's release), and Walter

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Benjamin (reprinted 2009) releasing One-Way Street in the following year. Germany in the 1920s also saw the establishment of the Institute for Social Research in 1923, which would later become known as the Frankfurt School, comprising the most influential group of Modernist theorists.

In this respect, Metropolis and the Schüfftan Process can be seen as a product of this period of Modernity, and these Modernist theorists therefore become insightful to an understanding of the text and process. The importance of addressing the use of the Schüfftan Process in the film has been suggested by Andreas Huyssen, (1986: 68) who has noted that 'For his indictment of modern technology as oppressive and destructive, which prevails in most of the narrative, Lang ironically relies on one of the most novel cinematic techniques.' It is a novel cinematic technique. However, it should also be said that paradoxically it relies for its effect on the mirror, not therefore, the cinematic apparatus. For the camera merely provides the means by which this process may be viewed, rather than being fundamental to the creation of the final image. In this sense (contra Huyssen) there is a little irony in the method Lang has employed for his indictment of modern technology. The Schüfftan Process becomes the ideal un-cinematic and non-technological process for critiquing the ideology of technological Modernity.

The critiques which are made by Lang are against mass society and the advancement of technology, and it is precisely these elements of the mise-en-scène which the Schüfftan Process is used to reinforce. The mirrored section of the image captures the enlarged miniature of the city and lacks any human subjects. Individuals of the city are therefore captured in the live-action element of the Schüfftan Process, in the lower portions of the frame. The inherent division within the process means that the live action subjects of the image are not placed within an environment created by the miniature, but against it, creating

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a tension within the shot which aligns to the Modernist reading of the individual and his relationship to mass society. In short, there is a sense that the city as created through this use of miniature is crushing the individual below. Modernist discourses in relationship to city spaces are most readily associated with Siegfired Kracauer and Walter Benjamin, who were both preoccupied with the metropolis in much of their writings. Graeme Gilloch (1996: 1) has identified the inherent paradox that rests at the heart of the individual's relationship to the city, as exemplified in Benjamin's own feelings: 'For Benjamin, the great cities of modern European culture were both beautiful and bestial, a source of exhilaration and hope on the one hand and of revulsion and despair on the other.' With a similar sentiment, in his 1930 essay Screams on the Street, Siegfried Kracauer steps closer to identifying this source of revulsion and despair, as a loss of individualism within the city space and the mass of society. He finds that:

these streets lose themselves in infinity; that buses roar through them, whose occupants during the journey to their distant destinations look down so indifferently upon the landscape of pavements, shop windows and balconies as if upon a river valley or a town in which they would never think of getting off; that a countless human crowd moves in them, constantly new people with unknown aims that intersect like the linear maze of a pattern sheet. (Frisby, 1986: 142)

In these thoughts held by Benjamin and Kracauer, we are witness to a fearful loss of individuality against the rise of mass culture and the drive of Modernity in Weimar Germany, an existence where humanity becomes defined by mass actions, mass trajectories and mass ornaments. The representation of the city and of mass society as created by the Schüfftan Process is similarly bleak. Mass society is represented as technological, grandiose and inhuman, diminishing those who stand against it, across the divide. However, it is this divide that is crucial. It is both the divide between the individual and mass society and the divide

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between two sections of the frame. The divide is the means by which the miniature sets encompass the grandiose nature of mass society and dwarf the individual in its wake. The divide is the mirror.

In discussing the relationship between the individual and mass society, it is necessary to establish how the mirror, the essential element to the creation of the Schüfftan Process, has long been understood in cultural terms in relation to the psyche. The connection between the mirror and the psyche comes to us as early as Greek mythology, in the tale of Narcissus. Upon the birth of Narcissus the seer Teiresias declared, 'Narcissus will live to a ripe old age, provided that he never knows himself' (Graves, 1960: 286). Now fully grown, Narcissus caused the death of Ameinius. This was avenged by the God Artemis, who cursed Narcissus to fall in love with whoever he first set eyes upon, but denied him the consummation of that love. However, before Narcissus was witness to any other living person he came across a spring. Kneeling to the water's edge, ready to quench his thirst, Narcissus cast his gaze into the still water and fell in love with his own reflection. As Robert Graves (1960: 287) explains:

At first he tried to embrace and kiss the beautiful boy who confronted him, but presently recognized himself, and lay gazing enraptured into the pool, hour after hour. How could he endure both to possess and yet not to possess? Grief was destroying him, yet he rejoiced in his torments; knowing at least that his other self would remain true to him, whatever happened.

The tale ends in tragedy when Narcissus kills himself as the only means by which he can consummate the love of his own image.

In light of both the cultural significance which the mirror holds to the psyche, and of Kracauer and Benjamin's writings on the relationship of the individual to the city, the mirror,

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