Thea Gabriele von Harbou was a German screenwriter, novelist, film director, and actress. She is remembered as the screenwriter of the science fiction film classic Metropolis (1927) and for the 1925 novel on which it was based. von Harbou collaborated as a screenwriter with film director Fritz Lang, her husband, during the period of transition from silent to sound films.
von Harbou, c. 1928
Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou in their Berlin flat, 1923 or 1924
A monument in her hometown of Tauperlitz
Metropolis is a 1927 German expressionist science-fiction silent film directed by Fritz Lang and written by Thea von Harbou in collaboration with Lang from von Harbou's 1925 novel of the same name. It stars Gustav Fröhlich, Alfred Abel, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, and Brigitte Helm. Erich Pommer produced it in the Babelsberg Studio for Universum Film A.G. (UFA). Metropolis is regarded as a pioneering science-fiction film, being among the first feature-length ones of that genre. Filming took place over 17 months in 1925–26 at a cost of more than five million Reichsmarks, or the equivalent of about €21 million.
Theatrical release poster by Heinz Schulz-Neudamm
Set photograph of the Maschinenmensch from Metropolis
Manhattan skyline in 1912
The Tower of Babel in Maria's recounting of the biblical story was modeled after this 1563 painting by Pieter Brueghel.
