Metropolis (1927).
In a towering city split between luxury above and labour below, the ruler's son falls for a workers' preacher while his father plots to replace her with a robot double.
Genre: Science fiction, Drama · The AI: The Maschinenmensch (robot Maria) — humanoid android
Official trailer
Official trailer via Kino Lorber (YouTube), verified 14 Oct 2026.
Watch the full film — free
Full film via the Internet Archive — an original 1927-print copy, streamed from archive.org; we never host the file. Original 1927 print copy (on archive.org since 2014) — not the 2001/2010 restorations, which carry their own rights.
Rights: Public domain in the United States (1927). Still protected in some countries (e.g. Germany/EU until 2047).
Our review
Silent, vast and still startling, Metropolis works because its city feels like a machine that eats people. The robot Maria is cinema's first great artificial person: dazzling, manipulated and manipulative, used to steer a crowd rather than think for herself. That is its sharpest AI idea — a synthetic face trusted more than real voices. The story turns simplistic near the end, but the images never do. Watch it if you want the blueprint for almost every dystopian future that followed.
Entertainment 8/10 — Monumental imagery and scale carry a simple story for viewers willing to accept silent-film pacing.
AI Realism 4/10 — A landmark robot, but she is a manipulated puppet, not a plausible autonomous intelligence.
The AI, explained
Cinema's first great artificial person is not a mind but a tool: a synthetic face built to be trusted, deployed to steer a crowd. Metropolis is really about what happens when a society organised around machines hands its persuasion to one.
Themes: Automation & work · Embodiment
Concepts in the glossary: Embodiment