Kino International is proud to announce the much-anticipated DVD and Blu-ray releases of the new restoration of Fritz Lang’s 1927 science fiction masterpiece METROPOLIS, now with 25 minutes of previously lost footage and the original Gottfried Huppertz score.
Only six minutes short of the film Fritz Lang premiered in January of 1927 (in Berlin), THE COMPLETE METROPOLIS was made possible due to an essentially complete 16mm dupe negative (struck decades ago, from a now-destroyed nitrate print) discovered by the curator of the Buenos Aires Museo del Cine in 2008.
Such a rare discovery demanded another restoration of this classic film, and the Murnau Stiftung (Foundation), under the supervision of Film Restorer Anke Wilkening, embraced the challenge of putting together the most historically accurate version of this German masterpiece. Also returning was Martin Koerber, Film Department Curator of the Deutsche Kinimathek, who had supervised the 2001 restoration.
THE COMPLETE METROPOLIS will become available with a SRP of $29.95 on DVD and $39.95 on Blu-ray. This new restoration hits the stores on November 16, 2010.
As special features, THE COMPLETE METROPOLIS makes available (both on DVD and Blu-ray) a never-before-seen 50-minute documentary on the making and restoration of Metropolis – as well as an interview with Paula Felix-Didier, curator of the Museo del Cine, in Buenos Aires, and the Trailer to the 2010 restoration. This new 147-minute version (being released as THE COMPLETE METROPOLIS), opened theatrically in April of 2010 and has broken box office records in many of the 100-plus markets it has played in.
Metropolis takes place in 2026, when the populace is divided between workers who must live in the dark underground and the rich who enjoy a futuristic city of splendor. The tense balance of these two societies is realized through images that are among the most famous of the 20th century, many of which presage such sci-fi landmarks as 2001: A Space Odysseyand Blade Runner. Lavish and spectacular, with elaborate sets and modern science fiction style, Metropolis stands today as the crowning achievement of the German silent cinema.
When it was first screened in Berlin on January 10, 1927, the sci-fi epic ran an estimated 153 minutes. After its premiere engagement, in an effort to maximize the film’s commercial potential, the film’s distributors (UFA in Germany, Paramount in the U.S.) drastically shortened METROPOLIS, which had been a major disappointment at the German box office. By the time it debuted in the United States later that year, the film ran approximately 90 minutes (exact running times are difficult to determine because silent films were not always projected at a standardized speed).
Testament to its enduring popularity, the film has undergone restorations in 1984 and again in 1987. The 2001 restoration combined footage from four archives and ran at a triumphant 124 minutes. At the time, it was widely believed that this would be the most complete version of Lang’s film that contemporary audiences could ever hope to see.
Since the Buenos Aires negative provided a definitive blueprint to the cutting of Metropolis – which in the past had been a matter of conjecture – the order of some of the existing shots seen in the previous restoration has been altered in the 2010 edition. Furthermore, the original 1927 music score by Gottfried Huppertz, now performed by the Rundfunk Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Frank Strobel, is also accompanying Kino’s THE COMPLETE METROPOLIS, bringing one of the most important films of all time as close as possible to its original format.
In viewing THE COMPLETE METROPOLIS, the Argentine footage is clearly identifiable, mostly because this new footage comes from a 16mm dupe negative, unlike the rest of the film – restored from 35mm negatives and prints. The unntended benefit is that it provides convenient earmarks to the recently reintegrated scenes. “The work on the restoration teaches us once more that no restoration is ever definitive,” says Wilkening. “Even if we are allowed for the first time to come as close to the first release as ever before, the new version will still remain an approach. The rediscovered sections which change the film’s composition, and at the same time always be recognizable through their damages as those parts that had been lost for 80 years.”