Restoration Redux
Click to play. Reconstructed METROPOLIS at the Berlinale 2010 - DW-TV Frank Strobel, https://youtu.be/RPgi461Jwg4 If YouTube ever disappears this video, download it. Click to play. Fritz Lang’s The Complete Metropolis - Theatrical Trailer KinoInternational, https://youtu.be/9VxgQN2GfMY If YouTube disappears this, download it. Click to play. Fritz Lang’s METROPOLIS 90th Anniversary Trailer Eurekaentertainment, https://youtu.be/rXpKwH2oJkM If YouTube disappears this, download it.
Archivists continue to work on this movie all the time,
and they were universally surprised and delighted to discover that a complete 35mm nitrate copy from 1927 survived in Argentina.
It had been censored a bit (but not by a censor, since Argentina did not have film censors back then,
according to Fernando Martín Peña (p. 68, fn. 42).
It is more likely, Fernando argues (and I agree), that a projectionist souvenired a few sexy bits.
The sole surviving print had been carelessly projected countless times over the next 32 years, by which time it was hammered,
with more dirt and scratches than image.
As recently as 1959, it was probably in good condition, though shrunken and warped.
The scratches must have been imposed later.
Beginnings and endings of reels were faded almost to nothing.
Two scenes were so battered that they were chopped out and tossed away.
In the 1970’s, this unique print was destroyed by burning because “NITRATE IS DANGEROUS!!!!!”
Yes, nitrate is superdangerous, but destroying it is not the proper solution.
Before its owners destroyed it, they
carelessly copied it to b&w 16mm.
Thanks to Fernando Martín Peña’s pamphlet (p. 58),
we learn that the owners sent it to Laboratorios Cinematográficos Tecnofilm, S.A., for preserving on 16mm.
Why Tecnofilm?
Because it was the cheapest lab of all, that’s why.
No cleaning. No protection. No wet gating. Printed through the Academy sound aperture, which is why the top and left went missing.
See? You just can’t win.
“Hey, it’s
Anyway, at least most of the long-missing Metropolis footage still existed, though in terribly compromised form.
After a great deal of digital surgery on the
Algosoft VIVA (brief demonstration),
the bulk of the material was
ported back into a previous restoration,
and so now, at long last, we know what the movie was about.
Better yet, Fritz Rasp is in it! Prominently! Hooray!
I can’t figure that guy out.
He has a face that, especially in profile, nobody could possibly trust.
Maybe he really was a repulsive creep, but I begin to suspect that he was a great clown who was perfect at portraying repulsive creeps.
Whatever the case, his very presence always makes me giggle.
Is the restored edition a better movie?
Yes, certainly.
I was surprised, though, to discover that it added a mere two major plot elements, not more.
The abridgments told essentially the same story, but terribly simplified.
The ending in the abridgments is extremely abrupt, and so I was fully expecting a more complete ending in the original edition.
Nope. Exactly as abrupt.
Anyway, Georgy’s temptation scene is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen
and Fritz Rasp’s comical performance induces ecstasy and bliss.
When I saw this movie in ages past, I thought it was a drama.
Well, I now see that a lot of it was played for laughs.
I hesitated forever to watch this.
Why?
Because I was certain that the cropped 16mm footage would be enlarged to fill the whole screen.
That’s why.
Silly? Maybe.
Once I learned that the 16mm segments had black borders to indicate where image was missing,
then I was okay with it and purchased it on
Someone who calls himself Odo wrote “Metropolis,”
in Movie-Censorship.com, 17 May 2011.
He compared the 2001 restoration with the 2010 restoration and caught errors in both.
Definitely worth a read.
Oh. I just discovered that when the Metropolis restoration was issued in Germany,
Warner Bros. contracted the release.
Did you know that? I would never have even guessed such a thing.
Goes to show how naïve I can be.
Alexander Mercouris has an intelligent analysis of Metropolis, which he sees as basically fascist.
He’s right — mostly.
I noticed a few troubling oddities; I mean, hey,
the movie castigates dissenters and celebrates newfound universal peace in the rapprochement of a dictator and a snitch.
(Assistant director Slatan Dudow,
a Marxist, walked off the production in protest of the message of
class collaboration rather than class struggle.)
The slaves, having burned the witch at the stake, have renounced their desires for revolution or even for reform.
They are pacified when the dictator’s son rescues their children so that they, too, can grow up to become mindless slaves.
We can presume that the slaves now return their dreary existence, at long last perfectly satisfied with their lot in life.
Why people argue that this is progressive is beyond me.
Apart from the obvious ingredients, Mercouris noticed many, many dog whistles to which I was entirely deaf.
He’s right.
You can read his views at
“Metropolis — A Film Review and Analysis of the Restored Classic,” Mercouris, 11 April 2011.
Does that make me dislike the movie?
No. Not at all.
The movie is so ridiculously funny and so inanely silly that any message it tries to get across is entirely defeated.
If you take the story seriously, you’re missing the point.
I suspect that Fritz Lang took it very seriously indeed,
which might be part of the reason why he abjured the film not too long afterwards.
He and his wife had long been sympathetic to fascism,
but I suspect there was nothing well-thought-out about their preference.
Their thinking was muddled at best, I’m sure, no different from our thinking today.
It seems that Fritz began to come to his senses in 1933,
probably when it began to become clear that his ancestry,
with which he in no way identified, was about to cause him immeasurable trouble.
Was he a nationalist?
Yes, in a sense; he was steeped in and enamoured of Teutonic mythology and folklore.
Yet he was more of an internationalist, working for the ideal that film could communicate
to all cultures of the world and bring us all together, convincing us to forego our ancient hostilities.
As for being a racist, he was absolutely not, not at all.
His viewpoint might have been one of the many ingredients that led to his divorce.
If my intuition here is correct, then Fritz’s fascism was conditioned, not sincere, though he thought it was sincere.
If it were sincere, he would not have made such a ludicrous joke about it.
Something inside him was telling him that fascism was ridiculous,
and that subconscious insight blossomed forth in one of the most stupid motion pictures ever created.
Maybe that’s why I love this movie so much.
Truly, though, I really don’t have enough insight to understand why I love this idiotic movie.
I just love it, and that’s that.
Here is a viewpoint the reverse of Alexander Mercouris’s interpretation:
Michael Organ, “Berlin Babylon:
Apocalyptic Visions in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.”
I just received the late Thomas Elsaesser’s BFI guide to Metropolis and he makes a telling observation.
I am surprised I never noticed this before, but, I confess, I never noticed it before.
He argues that the various interpretations are all off the mark.
Fascists condemned it as Communist.
Communists condemned it as fascist.
People of various ideologies either championed it or lashed out against it for whatever Rorschach readings they projected upon it.
The arguments continued for decades and continue still.
Elsaesser argues that the story should be seen as a fairy tale, and he goes into quite some detail to make his case.
If one takes it as a fairy tale, a lot of the other interpretations fall away.
The odd thing about being a bit in love with this dreadful movie
is that I was often too embarrassed to watch it, even in the privacy of my own abode.
I would want to see it, but I just couldn’t bring myself to plop in the disc.
Too painful.
Face it, Metropolis is about as intellectually stimulating as Romper Room.
I’m finally over that, though.
Maybe because of Huppertz’s score?
Maybe because of the glorious Fritz Rasp?
Maybe because I can now see beyond the lame nonsense and contemplate some of the context?
I don’t know. I really don’t.
Well, maybe I do, but just a little.
Now that I’ve been watching it and studying it more and more, I’m catching the subtleties and nuances to which I was blind before.
In the chopped-down version we all saw in decades past,
Metropolis is not merely a simplistic fairy tale, but a dark one, very dark.
Its arguments are incoherent and contradictory,
its parable of Babel is a drastic distortion of the original and is extremely puerile,
but, putting that aside, the movie has a nightmare quality that builds and builds and builds,
and perhaps that is what resonates.
Many of us, I suppose, have had similar nightmares of a completely irrational and alienating society
ruled by completely irrational people who dominate unpredictably violent irrational subjects.
It is significant that so many scenes take place in darkened spaces, in a gloomy house,
in a catacomb, and at night.
The similarities to fairy tales and nightmares,
the uncomfortable depiction of rulers and ruled as unpredictably murderous maniacs
who knowingly make the worst possible decisions even (especially?) at their own peril, is quite evocative.
Many commentators from 1927 through to the present day express disappointment or even disgust at the overacting.
The overacting was necessary.
Realistic acting would have clashed with the preposterous nature of the narrative and would have rendered the result unwatchable.
Exaggerated, unrealistic acting, on the other hand, fits right in and allows us to suspend our disbelief.
If you don’t try to make sense out of the movie,
but just let the unthinking dreamlike nature of the story and the visuals wash over you and get under your skin,
you will be in the right frame of mind to be receptive to this film,
which is, I should say, unlike anything else I know of.
Now, in the expanded edition, which is tantalizingly close to complete, it is even better.
At long last, we know what Channing Pollock chopped out.
He chopped out the important scenes of heartbreak, jealousy, treachery, temptation,
intimidation, bullying, fear, intrigue, combined with marvelously comical bits of surrealism.
Now that most of that has been put back in, the movie is infinitely more satisfying.
What Channing chopped out were the scenes that held the story together and enriched the experience exponentially.
He chopped out the scenes that gave the movie its flavor and texture.
I know nothing about Channing, but I assume, based only upon his butchery of Metropolis,
that he disliked comedy and surrealism and flavor and texture and atmosphere,
and that he did not appreciate subtexts, and probably didn’t even understand them.
He preferred to concentrate only on plot, reduced to its most basic throughline, devoid of complexity or ambiguity of any sort.
It seems to me that when Channing studied the movie, all he latched onto was
“capital — labor — mad scientist — robot,”
and that he entirely misunderstood even those elements.
Why Paramount chose Channing, of all people, to abridge the movie is beyond me.
There was no reason to shorten the film, no reason at all,
and there was no reason to eliminate the most attractive elements,
unless, as I surmised above, the goal was simply to render the film less effective and therefore less competitive,
so that it could never reveal itself as superior to run-of-the-mill Hollywood product.
As mentioned above, Hollywood studios were intentionally crippling German competition.
Ah! Insight. I still don’t have insight, but here is a fascinating review,
easily the best review Metropolis I have read:
Chris Scott Edwards,
“Metropolis (Newly Restored) (1927),”
Silent Volume, Saturday, 13 November 2010.
I have a few insignificant quibbles with it — very few and very insignificant.
(For instance, Maria intones “These are your brothers” not to Freder, but to the children.
And she is most definitely wearing barely sufficient clothes when strapped to the table in the lab.)
Chris captures the mood and the feel, as well as some of the unexamined, unstated assumptions that underlie the story.
He captures the key to the mystery: What this overblown city tells us about human nature.
And that’s it, maybe that’s what hooked me on this movie. Maybe.
I really don’t know.
My ideal
Just discovered that the out-of-print
Eureka “Masters of Cinema” box set included a splendid documentary called
Metropolis Refound,
and so, thanks to the wonders of eBay, I have a copy on order.
One thing leads to another.
There’s a new book by
Fernando Martín Peña.
The price is 2,290.00 Argentine pesos, which is about US$12.37, not bad at all.
I must get it somehow, even though I’m blocked because I do not have an Argentine D.N.I.
After all, why would I? Fiddlesticks!
Ah. A colleague shipped it to me, and I see that it is not a book.
It is a pamphlet.
It has some fascinating material.
I started reading it, which is a bit of a challenge since I don’t speak Spanish.
Kevin Brownlow wrote a heart-rending introduction.
Fernando bases his background story on Klaus Kreimeier’s The Ufa Story,
which in turn based its background story on press releases,
and no press release should ever be believed.
In looking ahead, I see that the next two chapters are about The Adventures of Metropolis
in the Land of the Argentine, and that is what I am looking forward to.
Each page gets a bit easier for me, but still, it’s a lengthy struggle.
The pamphlet also has some more charcoal display ads by Lionel S. Reiss!
That is how we learn that some of the ads submitted to the NYC newspapers in March/April 1927
were not the entire pieces, but just details,
which would explain why the artist’s name was sometimes cropped out.
About that Metropolis Refound documentary,
something about it puzzles me, though it does not surprise me.
We have some comments from staff at the Buenos Aires Film Museum.
Paula
Despite all that, I would really love to chat with Paula
We should not close without mentioning the opinion expressed by several people
that the standard release editions — by which I presume they mean the Kino VHS edition from 1989 (aka Nordwestdeutscher 1965 edition)
or the MoMA edition or perhaps the earlier 1963 Nordwestdeutscher Filmverleih edition —
were
perfectly fine, and that the 2010 restoration, which brought back nearly an hour of footage
that had long been suppressed, was a terrible
disappointment and even a total waste of effort.
Yes, there are the contrarians among them, contrarians who are contrary for no reason other than the sheer joy of being contrary
and who get their greatest kicks from ruffling people’s feathers,
but there are also
perfectly sincere movie buffs
who simply think that the abridgments play better and make more sense than the fuller and more authentic edition.
That’s to be expected.
As for me, I am of two minds on this matter, or, rather, one and a half minds.
The fuller version is, in my opinion, infinitely superior to what I had seen before;
it makes far more sense and is far more satisfying than the abridgments;
though longer, it feels shorter.
On the other hand,
I don’t want the abridgments to be forgotten,
and I don’t want them to go out of print or to be pulled from release.
Personally, I am quite fond of the BBC2 edition as well as of the prior Janus edition,
and I long to get good copies of both.
The abridgments are all a part of the historical record and they should all be preserved and made available.
They should all be represented in future
For your amusement, here are some items on the Internet.
We can start with a printed document,
Metropolis: A Study Guide.
Interesting, I guess, but a lot of it is wrong.
Here’s a sweet little
musing that I find quite touching.
Some of the videos below are modern experiments inspired by Metropolis.
Some are background information on filming techniques, on unit photos, on special effects, and so forth.
Others are intros and outros and editorials and reviews and analyses, and some of them are okay, as far as they go,
though they all insist that the film is a work of futuristic science fiction, which I think is a ridiculous interpretation.
Some of the commentaries are hopelessly inaccurate.
A few are works of delusional lunacy.
I found some others, too, but they are so bloody awful that I could not in good conscience even make a reference to them.
There is little with which I agree in the reviews and analyses.
I am fully, painfully, agonizingly aware that I am not the brightest bulb in the ceiling,
and I am frequently intimidated by those who are
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Melanie76Mo, Metropolis_special effects Uploaded on Sun, 02 Nov 2008 |
Durendal1, Recycled Movies - Metropolis 1927-2010 Uploaded on Sat, 31 Jul 2010 |
University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Frame by Frame: Metropolis Uploaded on Mon, 27 Sep 2010 |
Holly Webster, Metropolis, TCM première, Sun, 07 Nov 2010 Uploaded on Mon, 07 Mar 2011 |
vipmagazin, METROPOLIS | Trailer deutsch german [HD] Uploaded on Tue, 05 Apr 2011 |
Jesse Stommel, Metropolis Analysis Uploaded on Fri, 20 May 2011 |
William Forsche, “The Metropolis Case” (2003) part 1 Uploaded on Sun, 09 Oct 2011 |
William Forsche, “The Metropolis Case” (2003) part 2 Uploaded on Sun, 09 Oct 2011 |
William Forsche, “The Metropolis Case” (2003) part 3 Uploaded on Sun, 09 Oct 2011 |
EurekaEntertainment, Giorgio Moroder presents: Metropolis Uploaded on Sun, 10 Jun 2012 |
24fpsfan, TCM Comments on Metropolis Transmitted on Fri, 06 Sep 2013 |
Max Malone, The Occult Symbolism Of The 1927 Movie Metropolis Uploaded on Sun, 08 Jun 2014 |
SonOfASpaceApe, TCM Salute to Fritz Lang 1 of 3 The Essentials - Metropolis (Intro) Transmitted on Sat, 10 Jan 2015 |
sfdebris, A Look at the Background of Metropolis Uploaded on Wed, 11 May 2016 |
Digital Borax, METROPOLIS REMIX Uploaded on Fri, 13 May 2016 |
PremiereFR, Metropolis PremiereFR Uploaded Fri, 12 Aug 2016 |
jpsmart59, The Silent Movie Metropolis Revealed The Coming NWO (Part I) by Jairo Parra Uploaded on Tue, 06 Sep 2016 |
jpsmart59, The Silent Movie Metropolis Revealed the Coming NWO (Part II) by Jairo Parra Uploaded on Tue, 11 Oct 2016 |
One Hundred Years of Cinema, 1927: Metropolis - How Cinema Changed the Way We See the Future Uploaded on Wed, 21 Sep 2016 |
The Godfather of Cinema Movie Reviews and More, METROPOLIS REVIEW (1929)--THE USE OF THEMATIC MOTIFS TO TELL STORY! Uploaded on Tue, 15 Aug 2017 |
Retro Nerd Girl, Metropolis 1927 Movie Review - Analysis w/ Spoilers - Retro Nerd Girl Uploaded on Tue, 19 Sep 2017 |
Junkles, Metropolis Analysis - Loss of Humanity Conveyed Through Color Contrast & Shot Composition Uploaded on Mon, 27 Nov 2017 |
BFI, Mark Kermode reviews Metropolis (1927) | BFI Player Uploaded on Fri, 03 Aug 2018 |
Renegade Cut, Metropolis - Marxist Theory | Renegade Cut Uploaded on Fri, 28 Dec 2018 |
Rodrigo Rodrigues, METROPOLIS Uploaded on Fri, 25 Jan 2019 |
Siskel and Ebert Movie Reviews, Uploaded on Sat, 2 Feb 2019 At the Movies, S2.E51, aired on Sat, 18 Aug 1984. |
The Unapologetic Geek, Sci-Fi Classic Review: METROPOLIS (1927) Uploaded on Sun, 24 Mar 2019 |
24fpsfan, TCM Comments on Metropolis Transmitted on Sun, 30 Jun 2019 |
MikeMedia, Behind The Scenes Rare Photo's From the Set of - Metropolis (1927) Uploaded on Mon, 30 Sep 2019 |
Minty Comedic Arts, 10 Things You Didn't Know About Metropolis Uploaded on Wed, 01 Jan 2020 |
Undergrowth Productionss, METROPOLIS LIVE CINEMA teaser Uploaded on Sat, 18 Jan 2020 |
Learning about Movies, Metropolis -- What Makes This Movie Great? (Episode 29) Uploaded on Fri, 10 Apr 2020 |
HIntsaa, The Legacy of German Expressionism and Mise en scène Uploaded on Wed, 20 May 2020 |
Ruggero Dalla Santa, Great Acting in Metropolis by Fritz Lang - actress Brigitte Helm Uploaded on Mon, 06 Jul 2020 |
Jeddle, What is Metropolis about? Uploaded on Wed, 06 May 2020 |
Jeddle, The Expressionist Form of Fritz Lang's Metropolis EXPLAINED Uploaded on Tue, 25 Aug 2020 |
Jeddle, What is Expressionism? Uploaded on Thu, 05 Nov 2020 |
Jeddie, The Ending of Metropolis EXPLAINED Uploaded on Mon, 07 Dec 2020 |
Jeddie, The Context of Metropolis (Part 1) Uploaded on Mon, 14 Dec 2020 |
Jeddie, The Context of Metropolis (Part 2) Uploaded on Mon, 14 Dec 2020 |
Jeddie, The Context of Metropolis (Part 3) Uploaded on Thu, 14 Dec 2020 |
JA, Metropolis 1927 Film with Color, Dialogue and Full Sound Effects Uploaded on Mon, 17 Sep 2020 |
Catholic Culture, The Machine-Whore of Babylon: Metropolis (1927) | Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast Uploaded on Wed, 09 Dec 2020 |
Not Good At Normal, How is this 1927 silent film, Metropolis still as relevant today? Great classic movie reviewed. Uploaded on Wed, 21 Apr 2021 |
CineFix - IGN Movies and TV, There Was A Trippier Book Version of Metropolis | What’s the Difference? Uploaded on Fri, 24 Sep 2021 |
The LM Movie Channel, Behind the Scenes of Metropolis (1927) Uploaded on Thu, 07 Oct 2021 |
L.R. Smith, Ahead Of It's Time - Metropolis (1927) 25/31 Uploaded on Sat, 25 Dec 2021 |
Fatima Garcia Gonzalez, Metropolis (1927) & German Expressionism - Video Essay Uploaded on Wed, 04 May 2022 |
Hollywood Star Dead, 8 Actors From METROPOLIS 1927 Who Have Sadly Died Uploaded on Fri, 05 Aug 2022 |
Learning about Movies, Metropolis -- What I Think This Movie is About -- A Professor's Perspective Uploaded on Thu, 29 Sep 2022 |
OddityArchive, Oddity Archive: Episode 247 — The Warped Afterlives of Metropolis & Phantom of the Opera Uploaded on Sep 29, 2022 |
24fpsfan, TCM Comments on Metropolis Transmitted on Sat, 01 Oct 2022 |
Props To History, Metropolis (1927) Surviving Props and other stories Uploaded on Mon, 17 Oct 2022 |
HOW TO: Save The World (humans included), Capitalism v Socialism: Metropolis Edition/ FASTER Uploaded on Thu, 02 Mar 2023 |
Random Joke, Why Metropolis is the best German Film ever Uploaded on Fri, 03 Mar 2023 |
Joshua Ellingson, Uploaded on Sun, 02 Apr 2023 |
Sci-Fi Zone, Why you need to watch Metropolis (1927) Uploaded on Jun 25, 2023 |
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James VS Cinema, Filmmaker reacts to Metropolis (1927) for the FIRST TIME! Uploaded on Jan 26, 2024 |
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You read down this far? Congratulations! I don’t think most readers would ever make it down this far. So, now that you’ve made it down this far, I think you deserve a laugh. By now you know that the commonly believed rumors about the astronomical budget and the 36,000 extras and the production bankrupting the studio and the Clueless. Oh. Here it is: https://www.discogs.com/release/9928324-Metavari-Metropolis-An-Original-Re-Score. Not my cup o’ tea.
EXPLANATION: Back in March 2002, I decided to write essays about the movies that puzzled me.
I began with the films of Tinto Brass, then moved on to The General and some of Charlie Chaplin’s movies,
and then more Buster and more Charlie, and added in some Fellini as well as King of Hearts and Where Does It Hurt?
and The Ruling Class and Rocky Horror and a few other things.
Metropolis was on my list, but I saved it for last because I didn’t have the resources to investigate it until recently
and because I knew it would be so doggoned difficult, which it was, and is.
So this is it, the final essay, with a little postscript about Pandora’s Box below, for good measure.
But this is it. I’m done.
I’ll continue to revise what I’ve written, but I won’t write about any more movies. Done. Finally.
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The placard reads: “Fröhliche Weinachten wünscht das Aufnahmepersonal / Merry Christmas from the Reception Staff.”
When was this photograph taken?
It could not have been taken in 1925, since principal photography had not yet begun
and since probably nobody had been cast in any of the lead rôles yet.
So, this was taken shortly before Christmas 1926, by which time filming and editing had been completed.
Alfred Abel (Joh) is there, possibly because he was working on another film that day.
Rudolf
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