Lost Metropolis footage found
2008-07-04 17:08
Berlin - Film historians had doubted
they would ever find the missing parts of Metropolis - until
three reels of the science fiction movie made in Germany a long
time ago, were discovered in a country far, far away.
Two film fans in Argentina uncovered the fragile footage in
a small museum, earlier this year - over eight decades after
Fritz Lang's dystopian classic first began to shed scenes.
With its cold, monumental vision of mechanised society,
Metropolis forged a template for generations of science
fiction cinema, and its enduring influence has been cited on
films from Blade Runner to Fahrenheit 451 and Star Wars.
"We were overjoyed when we heard about the find," Helmut
Possmann, head of the foundation which owns the rights to the
film, the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung, told Reuters.
"We no longer believed we'd see this. Time and again we had
had calls about supposed footage but were disappointed."
Tumultuous class struggle
Metropolis, which depicts a tumultuous class struggle in a
vast, urban society, was the first film to be entered into
Unesco's Memory of the World Register - which aims to preserve
cultural achievements of outstanding significance.
Released in 1927, set a century later, the silent film was
not a commercial success and nearly ruined the studio behind it
- according to some estimates, it still ranks as one of the
most expensive movies ever made once inflation is factored in.
Soon after its premiere, the movie was heavily cut to make
it more accessible, and several new versions emerged.
A series
of efforts were made to restore the film over the years but
roughly a quarter of the film was believed to be lost.
However, there were those in Argentina who knew better.
According to the magazine of German weekly newspaper Die
Zeit, Buenos Aires film distributor Adolfo Z Wilson acquired a
long version of Metropolis in 1928 which survived as a copy,
and finally ended up in the archive of a local film museum.
In Germany for analysis
Having heard tell of the Wilson reels, a couple of cinema
aficionados - one of whom had just taken charge of the archive
- discovered the canisters containing them earlier this year
and brought a DVD of the contents to Germany for analysis.
Possmann at the Murnau foundation said the experts had no
doubts about the authenticity of the reels.
"We're not being fooled," he said. "The film can now be
shown more or less as Lang originally intended it. In terms of
understanding what it's about, we'll be seeing a new film."
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.
Due to the poor condition of the film stock, it was too
early to say how long restoration would take, Possmann said.
"It's taken several years with similar films," he added.