Metropolis: The Complete (not merely Restored) Version

A year or two ago, I first heard about the discovery of lost footage from Fritz Lang's 1927 silent film classic Metropolis. I think it was over on the old TheAuteurs.com website (way before any of us knew they'd be changing the name to MUBI.) Then several months ago the story broke that the missing bits were being restored and would soon be released, first in theaters and eventually on Bluray and DVD. This news intrigued me because I've been interested in Metropolis for quite a long time, going way back to the 1980s or maybe even earlier when I first heard about this futuristic vision from the last years of the silent film era. The movie inspired Kraftwerk's Man-Machine album, an old favorite of mine, and the image of the strange mechanical woman is among several that have taken root in the cultural memory of many people who have never even seen the film. Several years ago, before I started seriously watching Criterion Collection films or even much of any kind of art house stuff, I requested and received the Kino "Restored" version of Metropolis as a gift, and I've watched the DVD several times since. That edition presents what was considered to be the last authoritative release that would be made of the film, utilizing all of the best surviving elements and reassembling what had been a badly mistreated and mangled film into the form closest resembling Lang's original intentions. Anyone who's seen it knows that the action is frequently broken up by text inserts that describe what the still-missing segments contained, according to surviving screenplays and the original film score. The improvised narrative fill-in does tie up some loose ends and helps with the coherence, but it injects a sense of laborious tedium that may turn off viewers who'd otherwise enjoy this look at a pivotal early example of cinematic science fiction. 


So when this semi-miraculous discovery of a nearly complete version of the film in Buenos Aires, Argentina was announced not as wishful thinking or overblown hype, but actual fact, of course a lot of Metropolis and Fritz Lang fans were really happy. Not just pleased to know that we'd finally see the "real" Metropolis but also greatly encouraged to know that a great work of art was finally getting a measure of justice more than 80 years after some very poor decisions were made to chop it up and throw away the bits that were no longer deemed necessary. It's nice when things turn out that way every once in awhile.


I never imagined I'd  be able to see the new presentation on the big screen, especially after I read about the film's premier in Berlin and initial screenings in New York, Los Angeles, the usual places. Eventually I figured Metropolis would play in Chicago, but that's still a long three-hour drive from my home and I doubted that I could justify the time and expense to drive all that way just to see a movie. But just last week I found out that Metropolis would make its third US appearance in the little port town of Muskegon, MI, just around 30 miles or so from my house, at some event called (appropriately enough) the Lakeside Film Festival. I had no choice but to go, and I'm happy to provide this report on what I saw!


First, I want to remark at how puzzled and impressed I still am that this particular town, theater and festival lined up the rights to Metropolis. The Harbor Theater is about as funky and small time as I imagine a movie palace can be nowadays and still stay in business. It's just across the street from Lake Michigan, with just a few docks sitting between it and the vast expanse of water. Despite the presence of some nice and presumably expensive boats, it's not a particularly classy or upscale area either - unlike the environs where West Michigan's more famous regional film festival, the Waterfront, will be held in Saugatuck next month. This Lakeside Film Festival didn't get much publicity in my local paper either. I think I had the good fortune of finding a link on Twitter, or else I might have never known that Metropolis was scheduled to show in my vicinity, for a one-time only 2 p.m. Sunday matinee.


So enough about all that, I'm sure most readers are just interested in learning about the new/old version of Metropolis. My overall impression: highly positive, very grateful for the work that was done to put the pieces together - but realistic to know that the restored scenes don't make such a big difference as to dramatically change anyone's opinion of the film. Not that I know of any big detractors - Metropolis is fairly beloved, though most would say that it ranks behind M in Lang's body of work. No great shame in that, M is brilliant and highly influential. Really, those are two powerhouse films that alone establish Fritz Lang as a top-notch director.


The restored scenes are very obvious whenever they appear on the screen, with many vertical lines across the entire picture and slight but noticeable cropping along the top of the frame. Some of the insertions are very brief, just a few seconds or so, reaction shots or short extensions that don't disrupt anything but the timing of the musical score after they're removed. But there are a few scenes that are clearly enhanced. One, involving a subplot about the Thin Man sent by Joh Fredersen (the powerful industrial overlord) to harrass Josaphat, ally and co-conspirator with his son Freder, injected a welcome note of menace and villainy into the plot as we see the old man resorting to raw intimidation to get his way. Another sequence depicting the statue of Hel, Fredersen's late wife and the object of obsession cherished by Rotwang, the archetypal mad scientist, also supplied clarifying motivations for each of those characters as we see the twisted sense of devotion and mourning that fuels each of their crazed power grabs. A pair of cathedral scenes bring Lang's biblical allusions even more to the forefront as we see a preacher ranting about the Whore of Babylon (illustrated in an engraving that the false Maria subsequently re-enacts in her wild dance at the Yoshiwara nightclub.) And the final escape and rescue sequence of the children escaping the flooding subterranean workers city was made much more dramatic and exciting with several minutes of extended tension. 


One deletion that still has not been remedied involves what I consider a critical segment, in which the real Maria, who'd been taken captive by Rotwang so that he could use her as the prototype for his fiendish humanization of the Man-Machine, escapes her captivity when Fredersen bursts into Rotwang's old fashioned house. Why that scene was ever cut makes no sense to me at all, without the benefit of watching the edited versions of Metropolis anyway. How do they account for Maria's transition from being Rotwang's test subject to her eventual reunion with Freder without actually depicting her release? Maybe somebody reading this would care to fill me in.


Seeing all the stuff that was cut, and comparing it with what was still retained, left me wondering who was responsible for those decisions. I'm not enough of a student of Metropolis lore to provide good answers here, but I've already learned a bit more about the censorship and commercial reasons behind them. It's really a shame that such a powerful and stunningly crafted film had to endure such indignities, and that an intact master copy couldn't have been stored somewhere. Metropolis was a magnificent production for its times and still packs a punch, despite some of the dated acting techniques, heavy-handed moralism and stilted character development. The crowd scenes, set designs and that sense of free-wheeling experimentation and grasping for new visual possibilities provided much for any cinephile to love, whether you're coming at it from a highbrow art house perspective or just a fan of the early days of sci-fi and special effects on film. The show I saw, like all the others that will be touring around the USA (and elsewhere) this summer, is a Bluray projection, so you won't get quite the same filmic experience that I was kind of hoping for, but setting aside the salvaged Argentina footage, the rest of Metropolis was crystal clear and magnificent to behold. The disc has already moved on to some other town so I'm glad I got to take advantage of this unique opportunity. I think I'll be adding the home edition Bluray to my library later this year!