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.'"

Comments

I have nothing insightful to add but

[cptnapalm]

Metropolis is an excellent movie and now there will be more of it for me to see. This is pretty damn cool.

Re:I have nothing insightful to add but

[thermian]

Admit it, you're just hoping the new footage has nude shots of Maria.

I mean, she got me hot.....

Re:I have nothing insightful to add but

[hedwards]

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.

Re:I have nothing insightful to add but

[MightyMartian]

It's probably the most influential "futuristic" movie ever made, and not just influencing future movies (like Blade Runner or Star Wars), but likely being a major inspiration of Asimov's Trantor in the Foundation Series. It's a touchstone for that genre of film, and it's a pretty amazing story too. I haven't seen it since the last restoration in the late 1980s (they had recovered a lot of stills and used it to fill out the plot as much as possible), and I'm really keen to see a version that comes so close to Murnau's original vision.

Re:I have nothing insightful to add but

[Dogtanian]

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.

What? You mean Giorgio Moroder's synthpop soundtrack wasn't on the original version? I'm shocked, SHOCKED!

Re:I have nothing insightful to add but

[niktemadur]

Ah yes, Fritz Lang's Metropolis - the banned Director's Cut!

Ever heard of Eveready Harton?
You have been warned, it links to YouTube and the cartoon is Extremely Unsuitable For Work, albeit a fascinating artifact of the same era.
The Roaring Twenties were weirder than we can suppose.

Good lord

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I can sit and be bored even longer at my artsy friend's house.

Re:Good lord

[MightyMartian]

I agree. Boooooriinnng. Most black and white movies suck actually. And if they are silent, you might as well shoot yourself if some pompous "friend" has condemned you to an evening of watching it.

Ah yes, those that deprive themselves of great enjoyment because they don't like black and white films.

A few years ago I rented Rules of the Game from the library. I have to say that I can see why it sits right behind Citizen Kane in most critics lists. What an extraordinary film.

Films like Casablance, Psycho, Treasure of the Sierra Madre and NIght of the Hunter are enthralling films. In fact, I'd say in the case of Night of the Hunter and Psycho, they wouldn't be nearly as effective in color.

Don't give them any ideas...

[ActusReus]

If they include dancing CGI creatures, or replace shotguns with walkie-talkies, I'll be PISSED.

Re:George Lucas-esque...

[ciaohound]

Please, oh please don't tell me that Freder shoots first.

Screencaps

[Chris Pimlott]

German newspaper Die Zeit has an article online with a gallery of images from the recovered print.

Metropolis was distributed with a piano score

[MichaelCrawford]

As was the practice with many silent films: a live pianist would play the music during the film.

The first time I saw it, in a theatre, that piano score was on the soundtrack, and it added a great deal to the whole film. It was very clear that the music was carefully composed to work with Fritz Lang's vision.

Later, a colorized version came out with a modern Heavy Metal score. I didn't care for it at all. It's not that I dislike Heavy Metal, but that the music chosen really didn't work for the film.

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.

Re:Metropolis was distributed with a piano score

[msuarezalvarez]

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.

What kind of thought? The kind that goes evaluates X along the line of ÂY had a good/bad opinion of it, and Y is good/bad?, therefore X is good/bad? for various possible choices of the several alternatives?

Re:Metropolis was distributed with a piano score

[Peter H.S.]

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

Re:Metropolis was distributed with a piano score

[iluvcapra]

As was the practice with many silent films: a live pianist would play the music during the film.

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.

Later, a colorized version came out with a modern Heavy Metal score. I didn't care for it at all. It's not that I dislike Heavy Metal, but that the music chosen really didn't work for the film.

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.

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.

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.

Re:Metropolis was distributed with a piano score

[JoeCommodore]

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.

Re:Metropolis was distributed with a piano score

[westlake]

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

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

fleshes out secondary characters?

[p_quarles]

Given how painfully bad the characterizations in the extant footage are, I can't imagine more minutes of "fleshing out secondary characters" would make it any better. The movie is amazing for its cinematographic innovations, not for its plot or characters. If the restored footage only offers the latter, it will be primarily of academic interest (and I say that as an academic).

Hitler wore khakis.

[johnny cashed]

Food for thought...

Re:Torrent please

[ximenes]

Kino has already stated that they intend to include this footage on their new DVD/BluRay release of the movie in 2009. However, its not totally clear yet if it will be incorporated into the film or as a supplement.

Re:Torrent please

[Eudial]

Bah. It's already been YouTubed: here.

Rick Astley was in Metropolis? Man, that guy is EVERYWHERE!

Metropolis is really good

[fermion]

I really wish the silent film shown more. It really forced the creative team to utilize what is special about film, i.e. the images, rather than make a movie that is radio with images. Nothing wrong with the later, I actually prefer good dialoque to pretty picture, but have great respect for movies that have both good writing and good cinematography. Action does not hurt either.

Metropolis has action, it is what I would consider the original speculative fiction flick. The original action flick would, I think, be Zorro. Both have plots are driven by sequential credibly related events. Character are stylized, but that is what happens in a yarn. This is kind of different from movies that just degenerate into sequences of special effects driven by some arbitrary plot device. This, in my mind, is really p0rn. Again, not bad, but not film. For instance, I saw the preview to Journey to the Center of the Earth. It seemed to be this kind of random movie. Eye candy.

I am glad the found an original cut of Metropolis, and hope they release it on DVD at some point in the near future. Hopefully it will show up for rental. Highly recommended. For those who can't wait, the current release is on DVD.

So exactly how long is it?

[nfk]

A little clarification would be good. IMDB shows lots of different runtimes, depending on the release. I watched the German version a few years ago, and I'm pretty sure it was longer than 2 1/2 hours (I even slept a bit through it, even though I loved the movie). IMDB says that version is 210 minutes long. So is it just because of playing speed, or are there differences between the versions? Has anyone else watched any of the versions referenced in IMDB?

Re:So exactly how long is it?

[ximenes]

The additional footage hasn't been seen by anyone in my lifetime, which is why this discovery is such a big deal.

Its possible that you saw one of the longer versions of the film, as it has had several major restorations over the years after new stock is found. Some of these attempt to pad out the missing scenes with still production photos.

Then there is the question of which intertitles were used. If they were in English, they aren't the original ones, and thus they might be on screen for a different amount of time (or there could be more or less of them than in German).

There is also the problem of the correct speed to play this film back at. While modern films are standardized at 24fps, films of this era were generally not intended to be played at that speed. Although the 'standard' silent speed is 16fps, this could actually vary between films. I've even seen some talk that Metropolis was designed to take advantage of hand cranking and thus was intended to have a variable frame rate at different parts.

Depending on what speed your projectionist used, the movie's runtime could vary wildly.

It's going to take a lot of cleanup.

[Animats]

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.

Hitler ate bread

[woot account]

Food for eating...

Can we donwload?

[leomekenkamp]

It is a bit sad that this is one of the only few movies we can freely share that can give us insight of how society has been looked at from the past and that may even have formed our society. I mean, is the money that goes to all the copyright holders (who had relatively little to do in the creative process of the film, and creativity is important in arts) in a lot of other films really so important that we should not be able to freely share films our parents saw so many years ago?

Why are 30 year old films still protected by copyright? Is there any reason to think that if one company did not make enough money of one single work in 30 years in this fast-pace global market, things will look different after those 30 years? IMHO, no. Great films like Langs Metropolis should, after a time a lot shorter than 70 years, be more freely shared throughout civilization, for the benefit of all, and not for the 2% extra revenue for a few companies.

I downloaded Metropolis from the Pirate Bay. It was a version that was made to be as close to the original as possible, even with markers where it was cut because else the story would be "to difficult" for the viewers. I wish a lot more films would be legally obtainable that way.

Re:Can we donwload?

[John Hasler]

A major function of insanely long copyrights is to prevent material from entering the public domain soon enough to compete with newly-released stuff. If the Dr. No movie was in the public domain where it belongs you might download and watch it instead of spending $20 on the latest piece of crap.

Re:Can we donwload?

[ximenes]

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.

Sign me up for YASE (yet another special edition)

[Kazoo the Clown]

I bought the recently restored version which is far better quality than what was available before, and saw that one locally as well when they came to town to talk about the restoration-- but I'll no doubt be buying a new longer restored version as well when it comes out. Incredibly great movie, and the new restoration provided a far higher quality picture than I'd ever seen. There are so many memorable scenes in the movie it's hard to say what's my favorite, but what first comes to mind is robot-Maria's dance where the eyes are superimposed...

That said, the first time I saw it was at the old Fox Venice theater in the 1970s, and the soundtrack it had was a very interesting Jazz score that I really liked-- the beginning portion where the workers are entering the elevators like lemmings had this piano part that alternated between two low notes and was very stark-- matched the film perfectly I thought. Since then I've always been looking for a copy of it with that soundtrack, but to no avail-- I bought a couple of VHS copies when they were first available, and all were poor quality picture with either an ancient classical track or something else-- when the Giorgio Moroder version came out in the '80s, that's all you could find anywhere, so it really dashed my hopes of finding the obscure jazz version I first saw... Oh well, that's the breaks-- someone obviously spent some time on the version I first remember, but I guess I'll never know who now, and of course it wouldn't match the new lengths of the film since then anyhow...

Re:George Lucas-esque...

[westlake]

And, coincidentally, it had been digitally remastered, with a new soundtrack.

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.

Re:They weren't prudes in the 20's...

[mazarin5]

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.

Irony

[Ranger]

Interesting that something German was found hiding in Argentina.