Cinema and Religious World-Perception: The Case of Metropolis (1927)

Abstract

In this article, we argue that cinema—a technical and semiotically hybrid language of the image—interweaves affective and connective anthropological structures with an oneiric-imagistic perception of the world. This symbiotic process is bound up with the magical and mythopoetic conception of the world that underlies religious thought. This overlapping of cinema with the oneiric order of the "inner cinematograph" renders it a virtual space for the creation of the religious and a potentiator of a technical and secular form of religious experience. In other words, cinema is not merely, on occasion, composed of religious themes; under certain technical and psychic conditions, it is also capable of producing perceptions—and, at times, experiences—that we would call religious. We ground this proposal by presenting two aspects of cinematic production and experience that, in our view, render it a facilitator of religious world-perception: a) its semiotic complexity and its capacity for meaning-production, and b) the relation between the cinematic image and the experience of film-viewing, on the one hand, and fundamental anthropological elements, on the other. Finally, we substantiate the proposal by discussing the plot and several scenes of the film Metropolis, directed by Fritz Lang in 1927.