The Mechanical Man (1921) (2025)

Popular reviews

• Review by Lencho of the Apes ★★

  Miserably deteriorated print, incomplete, titles in Italian only, and the robot action is minimal, almost perfunctory. Completists only, pliz.

• Review by Anthony ★★

  The Mechanical Manis notable for one thing, and one thing only: the robot on a darkly comedic rampage. Actually, scratch that - it’s known for two things. Because there are two robots, and in the end, they battle each other in a brawl to the death. Or whatever a robot’s equivalent of death is. Destruction?

  Yes, The Mechanical Man is an Italian silent film about a crime syndicate using an enormous robot to commit crimes and cause havoc, until a good robot is created to defeat it. The robots are big, capable of immense speed and strength, and have terrific designs. The special effects are really impressive for the era, and believe it or not, as clunky as these androids…

• Review by AlienvGrimace ★★★½ 1

  There's only a twenty-six minute extract remaining of the Italian sci-fi silent, but what a bizarre and entertaining fragment it is. A scientist creates a metallic robot that does the bidding of its controller, but after he's killed by a gang of criminals, it comes under the control of a woman named Mato. She uses the mechanical man to wreak havoc on the well to do, including jewelry theft and kidnapping. A brave rapscallion infiltrates Mato's liar and electrocutes her as he sabotages her equipment. Like the majority of silent films, most of this one is lost to the ages. It's a shame, because what's left is bonkers. It's great to watch the mechanical man walk around and fuck things up. Unfortunately, the version on YouTube has Italian intertitles. Even though I don't speak the language, I found most of it easy to understand. The rest of it was translatable using Google.

• Review by Lieke

  Sadly, less than 30 minutes survived so I can't really judge it...but I still think it's enjoyable! It's also pretty impressive considering that sci-fi was not a very common genre back then (I would say horror and dramatic movies ruled!), let alone in Italy. Props to Deed!

• Review by Jaime Grijalba ★★★½

  L'uomo meccanico (1921)

  7/10

  Giant mechanical monsters from Italian origins out of 1921 might be the most strange concept for a film out there, but it exists and it's actually better than any other Transformer film. Here you can see the robots move, not in a fluid motion, but still in a way enough that it makes you feel that they're really there, interacting with people, looking and grabbing them. 26 minutes survive of this movie, and I think I don't need more than what we already have.

• Review by tatooinetv ★★★

  Globalement assez débile, mais à la fois tellement innovant !
  Même si le mechanical man aurait bien besoin d'un peu de WD40, il reste impressionnant pour ces temps là.

• Review by sima

  mi sono imbucata ad una lezione al dams pk mi annoiavo e sono rimasta talmente affasciata da questo film che ho visto la versione di 26 minuti con qualità 144p e senza un accompagnamento musicale alle 2 di notte non ci ho capito niente però ne è valsa la pena comunque x una volta nn voglio dare fuoco al DAMS 🥰💜

• Review by fire list ★★★★

  IMDb review: L'uomo meccanio has always reminded me of that one spongebob episode where that giant robot chases that guy, obviously this film would be seen as cheesy today, but this is one of the very first robot films, ever! So it has a very special place in my life. Who knows, if this film was never made maybe films like I, Robot or even a game along the lines of Five Nights at Freddy’s would have never existed, just because a film seems to outdated doesn’t mean it’s bad, theres a difference between old-school and outdated, old-school is an old thing thats fun to come back to, think Atari! outdated is something you never want to come back to, so if you like silent film, you’ll enjoy this one!

• Review by Oliver Andreasson

  Obviously impossible for me to rate in comparison to other films. Both because it's pretty much in a category of itself (being silent and over 100 years old), but also because it's not the original version of the film. The restored version I saw for this year's Gothenburg Film Festival was about 45 minutes long, in contrast to the original 80, and was far from complete. From Wikipedia:

  "For many years, the original film, about 80 minutes in length, was regarded as lost until some reels of the Portuguese version were discovered at the Cinemateca Brasileira in Brazil. About 26 minutes (740 meters) remains lost. The DVD release by Alpha Video uses the incomplete Brazilian print, with new English intertitles."

  Very, very interesting experience and the oldest film I've seen by a wide margin. Some brilliant slapstick comedy in here.

• Review by Nicholas Hobday ★★★

  Sliced bread: 1928

  Movies where two robots fight: 1921

• Review by Saturnome 🦆

  Cinéma centenaire 1921-2021 : 15/43

  Les miettes qui nous restent aujourd'hui de cette étrange chose donnent plutôt l'impression de voir une très longue bande annonce. On dirait qu'un enfant de 8 ans a pris les bobines de pellicule et y a découpé ses passages favoris de manière maladroite. D'un côté, tant mieux, car on a directement droit à beaucoup de scènes de robots, même des robots qui se battent entre eux, l'intérêt premier du tout. Mais d'un autre côté il n'y a pas vraiment de quoi pouvoir faire sens de tout ça, les scènes sont certainement vaguement dans le mauvais ordre (seule chose sûre, la fin est bel et bien à la fin), énormément de choses se passent et on…

• Review by Michael_Elliott ★★½

  Seven hundred meters of this film are now lost but twenty minutes worth of footage of recently found so that's what this is. A scientist creates a mechanical man but thieves steal it and send it out to kill and destroy a city. The only way to stop the creature is by creating another mechanical man to destroy it. This Italian horror film seems to have had an influence on Fritz Lang's Metropolis, at least in the look of the robots. It's hard to really judge the film since so much of it is missing but they did a good job at taking the current length and adding enough background so that we know what's going on.