Writer: Thea von Harbou

Thea von Harbou wrote Metropolis, M, Die Nibelungen and Dr Mabuse, working with Fritz Lang, to whom she was married. Metropolis she also wrote as a novel, and the film’s imagery has been borrowed continuously for a century.

When Lang fled Germany she remained, joined the Nazi party and continued working under the regime, which ended the collaboration and permanently complicated her standing.

The scripts themselves are formally extraordinary, and Metropolis in particular constructs a social allegory in images that need no dialogue at all.