Building on the earlier 1987 restoration work of Enno Patalas and the Munich Filmmuseum, the Bundesarchiv Filmarchiv and the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung set about recontructing the wrecked remains of Metropolis.
Then, the 2002 restoration of Metropolis came the closest to a seemingly unattainable ideal - to create a version of the film that had all of the surviving footage in the clearest photographic quality possible. Many people were forced to watch Metropolis for the first time ever in these home video editions that did little to make positive modern impressions of the film. Next came the DVD home video editions that started sprouting in 1998, still transferred from awful 16mm reduction prints, and still an effort to view. Out-of-print home video copies of the Moroder version on videotape and laserdisc commanded top prices - when collectors found them. The downside was that some shots were altered to add animation of clouds, eyes, etc., intertitles were optically printed as subtitles over the bottom of the picture image (like a foreign language film), portions of some scenes that have survived elsewhere were not to be found in Moroder’s version and that he utilized a modern rock music score that was barely serviceable (and is, ultimately, an embarrassment). The upside was that Metropolis was available to be seen in the clearest picture quality in many years and added some film stills and new intertitles to clarify the plot. In the early 1980s, techno-disco maven Giorgio Moroder acquired a duplicate negative made from a wonderful 35mm positive print of the American release version held by the Museum of Modern Art to create his modernized and shortened version that was released in theaters in 1985. They looked horrible, but here was Metropolis, viewable at any time - one of the tantilizing films from the pages of Famous Monsters of Filmland.
Then came the VHS videocassette and the hard-to-find, poorly-transferred home video editions from low-quality 16mm reduction prints. However, despite its Frankensteinian state, the film that remained was intriguing and filled with compelling images.įor many years after, Metropolis enthusiasts had to see the film at cinema clubs or at a collector’s home in contrasty 16mm reduction prints or, if lucky, view a 35mm print shown in a repertory film theater or museum. Some intertitles were badly translated into English and often intentionally took liberties with the storyline to disguise its choppy, shortened form. In its truncated form, Metropolis was more than a little confusing, which is not a surprise since an estimated one-quarter of the original Berlin release of the film was now missing. Over the years, Metropolis was shortened further and the editing continuity shuffled as each successive version was duplicated from increasingly degenerated source materials. Metropolis would gain the reputation as the film that crippled the once mighty UFA film studio. The shortened German version and the American and European releases of the film did not recoup UFA’s investment in its production. By the time of the film’s German general release on 5 August 1927, Metropolis had been cut to 3241 metres or approximately 11 reels. When the film was released in America by Paramount Pictures Corporation, it was edited to a severely truncated ten reels and premiered in New York, New York, on 6 March 1927. The film was not critically well received, nor was it embraced by film audiences. Metropolis premiered 10 January 1927 at Ufa-Palast am Zoo in Berlin, Germany, in a massive version that ran more than two-and-one-half hours. With so much money invested in its production, UFA was committed to completing the film by its premier director and counted on the success Metropolis to rescue the studio from economic disaster. The massive scope of Lang’s film production cost its studio, Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft (UFA), millions at a time of German economic instability and spiraling inflation. Production on Metropolis began on 22 March 1926, with principal cinematography taken 22 May through 30 October 1926. It remains among the top ten best-known and respected films of the silent era.įresh from the success of the epic Die Nibelungen (1924), director Fritz Lang undertook for his next film an even larger production based on an original screenplay by Thea von Harbou - a dystopian view of the future.
#Metropolis dolby surround 5.1 full
Despite its shortened form, the film is full of striking visuals and special optical effects. Little needs to be said about the influence that Metropolis (1927) has had on filmmakers and cinephiles throughout the years.