The archetype of the mad scientist was Rotwang in Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1926). Played by Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Rotwang had unruly hair, a disabled hand, and obsessive research interests. He worked alone, and although he lived in a modern city that his inventions made function, he was like a 16^th-century alchemist. He dressed in a medieval jerkin and lived in a little Gothic house amid the skyscrapers. The character took age-old myths about scientific knowledge—that it was the magical product of a shuttered monomaniac—and carried them over into a science-fiction epic about the future.