Lost parts of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis rediscovered!
AHHH! Metropolis is one of my favorite films of all time, whether I want to call it a science fiction or horror flick. Unfortunately a large portion of the film was thought lost after some material was excised to make it shorter, resulting in several abbreviated, adumbrated versions that could only approximate the original. Happily an early print of the film has been rediscovered. (No word yet on how complete it is.) You only get two guesses where…
No, not a library. Good idea. Try again!
An archive!
The archives of the Museo del Cine in Buenos Aires in fact. The reels arrived there in 1992 and happily there aren’t any gaps in the history of their provenance. It was only recently that curator Paula Félix-Didier, at her ex-husband’s suggestion, began to look into whether her museum’s copy was longer than known versions of the film.
The film is damaged – I can’t tell from the German if the mangled screenshot (above) is from the recently rediscovered version of Metropolis – but anything is better than nothing. “Martin Koerber, the restorer of the hitherto longest known version of ‘Metropolis’, who also examined the footage, said to ZEITmagazin: ‘No matter how bad the condition of the material may be, the original intention of the film, including all of its minor characters and subplots, is now once again tangible for the normal viewer. The rhythm of the film has been restored.’” (ZEITmagazin)
Hear hear! It will be interesting to see how the uncovered footage will change, reinforce, or subvert critical interpretations of Lang’s magnum opus.
According to ZEITmagazin “there are several scenes which are essential in order to understand the film: The role played by the actor Fritz Rasp in the film for instance, can finally be understood. Other scenes, such as for instance the saving of the children from the worker’s underworld, are considerably more dramatic.” (ZEITmagazin)
:: Bibliography ::
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Naundorf, Karen. “‘Metropolis’: Key scenes from the famous movie rediscovered.” ZEITmagazin, 2 July 2008. http://www.zeit.de/online/2008/27/metropolis-vorab-englisch (7 July 2008).
Here’s a blog post with a whole mess of links: http://daily.greencine.com/archives/006330.html
I’m hearing that the recovered film will bring the runtime of Metropolis within about 5 minutes of the original. That frame enlargement is from the rediscovered footage and is, I think, representative of the quality of that footage; the F.W. Murnau foundation is going to be working with the archive in Buenos Aires to restore it.
When you say “the original” do you mean, like, before any cuts were made (or the restored version we have now)?
…I figured the quality probably was that poor, but had hoped against hope it wouldn’t be. It will be interesting to see just how far they’ll go to “restore” what they’ve found. Methinks we’ll be getting the new footage spliced into the higher quality old material (now matched in terms of editing to the rediscovered print). Who knows what they’ll be willing to do with computers, though. =\
Thanks for the link, Andy! Also, thanks to Sean PM for bringing the news to my attention.
“Original” meaning the version of the film that premiered in Berlin in 1927.
Excellent!