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If 
 Metropolis
 was meant to be an art lm, it would be a shame to overlook using font andtypography artistically. Since Fritz Lang’s 1927lm
 Metropolis
 was a silent lm, the written wordplayed a large role in story comprehension.This article will investigate the use of font andtypography in
 Metropolis
, specically artisticuse. It will specically focus on the design of the intertitles used for dialogue and narrationthroughout the lm but will also briey touchupon in-story writing such as notes, numbers, andlabels.Intertitles are the black screens with white textthat display dialogue or narration in silent lms.Because the technology to attach sound to lm hadnot been developed in 1927, lm was very differentthan it is today. Actors used more extreme gestures and facialexpressions than in movies today. Necessary information was conveyed to the audience throughmeans of the intertitles. As a result, the font andtypography could play a large role in the lm.
Artistic Typography in
Metropolis 
By Callie Leuck 
Figure 1: An intertitle from Metropolis with inverted colorsand lines added by the author to indicate the baseline, x-height,and ascender lineFigure 2: Letters from intertitles
thin transitions that are especially apparent in thefollowing letters:
Figure 3: The workers’ clock 
The thick/thin transitions and the stylizedserifs give the font an artistic feel. Intertitles areimportant in silent lm—
 Metropolis
particularly  would be very difcult to understand withoutthe on-screen narration and dialogue. Therefore,it becomes necessary to give the audienceinformation through text, and that text should be both appealing and readable.It is somewhat curious that the font chosen forthe
 Metropolis
intertitles is so artistically stylized,given that the storyline is about a futuristic city,and not a more straight-lined, austere font;however,
 Metropolis
was not created as a sciencection lm, which is a genre it inspired, but as anart lm, so it makes sense to use the intertitlesartistically as well.It is not only the intertitles that are in an artisticstyle: numbers and text in the lm’s city use thesame—or at least a very similar—stylized font.The font that was chosen or developed for
 Metropolis
has an x-height that is only slightly larger than half the height of the ascenders. Thefont has serifs and the strokes have obvious thick/Figure 3 shows highly stylized numbers onthe clock depicting the 10-hour workday. Thesenumbers are indicative of the style used in numbersthroughout Metropolis.
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