The movie has a plot that defies common sense, but its very discontinuity is a strength. It makes "Metropolis" hallucinatory--a nightmare without the reassurance of a steadying story line. Few films have ever been more visually exhilarating.

I have recently seen the silliest film. I do not believe it would be possible to make one sillier. It is called Metropolis, it comes from the great Ufa studios in Germany, and the public is given to understand that it has been produced at enormous cost... Capek's Robots have been lifted without apology, and that soulless mechanical monster of Mary Shelley's, who has fathered so many German inventions, breeds once more in this confusion. Originality there is none. Independent thought, none...

There is some rather good swishing about in water, after the best film traditions, some violent and unconvincing machine-breaking and rioting and wreckage, and then, rather confusedly, one gathers that Masterman has learnt a lesson, and that workers and employers are now to be reconciled by 'Love.'... Never for a moment does one believe any of this foolish story; for a moment is there anything amusing or convincing in its dreary series of strained events. It is immensely and strangely dull... Six million marks! The waste of it!