TRAILER: Kino International’s Restored ‘Metropolis’
The fine fellows over at SfSignal, by way of FirstShowing.net, reveal that the long-lost complete version of Fritz Lang’s METROPOLIS is being released. TRAILER: Kino International’s Restored ‘Metropolis’
For those of you unfamiliar with the backstory, METROPOLIS had been (in my opinion) ruthlessly and awkwardly edited for its release in England and America back in the 1920’s, and the title cards rehashed. The English-language writer (whose name I deservedly forget) was someone not very sympathetic to science fiction, and did not get the point of the sub-plot involving the robot, so he changed it. This was done with the clubfooted hamhandedness and distaste for the original that, for example, Paul Verhoeven brought to the film adaptation of Heinlein’s STARSHIP TROOPERS.
But in the early days, films, like pulp magazines, were not expected to linger. Even the idea of re-releasing them or showing them in re-run had not yet been invented. So the original prints of this, as with many films, were lost, or rotted in their cans.
But a complete version existed, forgotten, in the form of a 16mm duplicate negative at the Buenos Aires Museo del Cine. It contained around 25 minutes of lost footage, comprising a fifth of the film’s original running time.It was found when a clerk noticed a difference between the running time written on the reel can, and the actual size of the reel.
Trailer below the cut
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
