JUST IMAGINE

JUST IMAGINE. David Butler, director. Buddy G. DeSylva, Lew Brown, Ray Henderson, script. Ken Strickfaden, set designer (uncredited). Stephen Goosson, Ralph Hammeras, settings (Film Architecture credits Gooson with sets).[1] USA: Fox Film Corporation (production, US distribution), 1930.[2]

Classified by IMDb as "Comedy | Fantasy | Musical", and, yes, it's a musical, and one we initially omitted.

IMDb Summary:

New York, 1980: airplanes have replaced cars, numbers have replaced names, pills have replaced food, government-arranged marriages have replaced love, and test tube babies have replaced ... well, you get the idea. Scientists revive a man struck by lightning in 1930; he is rechristened "Single O". He is befriended by J-21, who can't marry the girl of his dreams because he isn't "distinguished" enough -- until he is chosen for a 4-month expedition to Mars by a renegade scientist. The Mars J-21, his friend, and stowaway Single O visit is full of scantily clad women doing Busby Berkeley-style dance numbers and worshiping a fat middle-aged man. — Jon Reeves <jreeves@imdb.com>[3]

Film Architecture: From METROPOLIS to BLADE RUNNER notes that

"The film's protagonist, Single O, is reawakened in a laboratory (not unlike Rotwang's chamber for the duplication of Maria [with Robot Maria] in Metropolis) [...]."

"Skyscrapers of up to two hundred stories are placed far enough apart to let light into the deep canyons between them, the different traffic levels seem well ordered, and the buildings gleam with electricity, thus providing images of a healthy, prosperous, and enjoyable future."

"Thus, Depression-plagued America was presented with a confident, very American view of the future. Clearly meant as a response to the much-discussed success of Metropolis (as was sourly noted by the German critics), the film not only aimed at surpassing its predecessor's design extravaganzas [...]; it also clearly attempted to respond to the German films brooding view of future technology and urban life with a cheerful and authentically American answer." (p. 112)

Impressive still of that Rotwangian laboratory of the future appears in Film Architecture: From METROPOLIS to BLADE RUNNER p. [115].

RDE, finishing, 26May23