7. False Maria in Metropolis
Artificial intelligence was feared as far back as 1927. Fritz Lang’s German expressionist masterpiece Metropolis depicts a sprawling urban city where aristocrats luxuriate in skyscrapers while workers slave away underground to keep the city’s machines running. The scientist Rotwang (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) abducts an innocent woman, Maria (Brigitte Helm), to create a femme fatale robot that hypnotizes the fat cats up above with her dancing, then convinces the downtrodden masses to destroy the iron beast that enslaves them—even at the risk of their own children drowning. The False Maria is manipulative and violent, and she relishes spreading all this chaos through her feminine wiles.
