Slashdot Mirror
Lost Footage of "Metropolis" Found
ram.loss writes "According to a Reuters article, a long version of Metropolis has been found at a cinema museum in Argentina, by a newly appointed archivist. The reels have been authenticated by the Murnau foundation at Germany. 'Although estimates of its original length vary depending on the speed at which it is shown, Possmann said "Metropolis" was conceived as a film lasting just over 2-1/2 hours. Around 20 to 25 minutes of footage that fleshes out secondary characters and sheds light on the plot would be added to the film pending restoration, he added. But around 5 minutes of the original were probably still missing, he said.'"
German newspaper Die Zeit has an article online with a gallery of images from the recovered print.
I read somewhere that Adolf Hitler was really into Metropolis, and that he held it up as an example that all filmmakers should strive for. Food for thought.
I really don't think so. Fritz Lang was Jewish, his films were banned when Hitler came to power in 1933, and Fritz Lang himself emigrated from Germany allready in 1934. There was a rumor that Goebbels gave Fritz Lang the option of making film for the regime. Whether this were true or not is uncertain, but the offer was extremely unrealistic in any case; He would have ended up in a KZ camp sooner or later.
--
Regards
This is partially true, but most modern scholarship on the subject suggests that all but the smallest houses had at least a four-piece ensemble. Large city houses would have entire orchestras, and even hire actors to read the intertitles in character from behind the screen. Metropolis had an entire orchestral score composed, which can be heard on most available DVDs nowadays, and the sheet music sent to most venues would either be the full score or a reduction.
This is the Giorgio Moroder version, alternately ignored and despised; some of the "lost footage" from the original version was present in this cut however, not in its actual form but mocked up with illustrations from the pre-production that were animated on a rostrum camera. Particularly jarring in this version are the extended stadium-rock-inspired lyrics, in English no less.
Hitler and Goebbels personally sought out Lang to ask him to make films for the government, essentially to take the job eventually given the Leni Riefenstahl. Lang caught the first boat out of the country; he could see that it'd be impossible to work outside of the government in the years to come. But his wife, Thea von Harbou, who wrote the original novel of Metropolis, had Nazi sympathies and stayed in Germany to work for the regime.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
I'm not sure how a frosty piss can be redundant, but this is /..
Anyways, a while back I was bemoaning the large amount of footage missing from this masterpiece. 5 minutes being lost is actually pretty good for a film of this vintage to be missing.
I'd still love for the rest of it to be found, but being missing only 5 mins., would put it more or less in line with what you usually see on TV.
The German film makers during the silent era made some pretty amazing films, it's surprising how good they were at conveying mood with just poor footage and a piano in most cases.
There are a few stills on line. The film is badly streaked. It's going to take a lot of cleanup.
Worse, when you run bad old film through modern video compression, the results are awful, as vast amounts of the bandwidth are sucked up following the artifacts.
I really liked the Moroder edit, and it was very Pop 80's Rock, not heavy metal, unless you think Queen, Adam Ant, Bonnie Tyler, Cycle V, etc. are heavy metal bands.
It used subtitles instead of having the dialog cards pop up and was amd much more watchable. The music did well to set the tone.
I'll keep my VHS copy as I doubt I'll ever see a DVD of that edit.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Metropolis was in the public domain, but became copyrighted again in 1998.
However, keep in mind that even if the original film itself were in the public domain today, acquiring a copy of this would be quite difficult. The restored versions are covered under separate copyright, as is the music. Since this particular film has had a lot of (positive) restoration work performed, the value of having its original pre-restoration version in the public domain is pretty minor.
Silent movies were never silent.
The big budget production would be scored for a full theater orchestra.
There would at minimum be suggestions for the piano or organ of a smaller house.
Fritz Lang's credits - simply as a director - are amazing.
Here you'll find the archetypes of Science Fiction - The Spy Thriller - The Technicolor Western - Film Noir
1927 Metropolis
1928 The Spy
1929 Rocket to the Moon
1931 M
1941 Western Union
1941 Man Hunt
1952 Rancho Notorius
1953 The Big Heat
1956 While The City Sleeps
It's not so much that people weren't prudes in the 20s, they very much were. It's just that a large portion of the populace wasn't, and these are a lot of the same people who were involved in and around films. People in art and theater, and wealthy Californians and New Yorkers. This is the same era of jazz nightclubs, a miniature sexual revolution, early feminism, and prohibition.
It's not that there were no prudes, but that early films were so bad by popular standards, that it led to an industrial whitewashing that lasted decades.
Fnord.