METROPOLIS FOUND! (Missing footage discovered)
What a way to start my weekend! I'm still picking my jaw off from the floor!
http://www.zeit.de/online/2008/27/metropolis-vorab-englisch
When I was a kid, I owned a little paperback book which detailed what were considered the greatest and/or most famous horror and science-fiction movies. I knew a lot of them of course, Bride of Frankenstein, Lugosi's Dracula, Lon Chaney in The Wolfman, and science-fiction classics like The Thing.
But then I read about three movies I'd never heard of before, all German. One was The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Another was Nosferatu. The last was called the "first" science-fiction movie: Metropolis, and the chapter was set up by telling the legendary story of director Fritz Lang coming to America and seeing the glowing lights of the New York City skyline. It was allegedly his inspiration for Metropolis. I later saw all three as I was growing up: mangled versions, poorly edited ones, and some with footage so badly deteriorated, you could barely see the action, which was already almost indecipherable. Of all of them, I liked Metropolis best, even if it didn't make sense. All I knew was there were two worlds -- the workers and the aristocracy; a girl named Maria, and some mad scientist that made a Evil Maria Robot. At some point I probably saw all of those same plots in a couple of Star Trek episodes LOL (Good Kirk, Evil Kirk in The Enemy Within; a bad Robot Kirk in What Are Little Girls Made Of?, and an ep with a workers world and an aristocracy (third season episode I think).
Anyway, over the years I saw other Fritz Lang movies on VHS, then DVD came along and you started seeing many of these old flicks hitting that format. And in the early part of this decade, along came what was considered the most definitive version of the movie http://www.amazon.com/Metropolis-Restored-Authorized-Brigitte-Helm/dp/B00007L4MJ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1215132926&sr=1-1. And I finally saw it the way I figured we would always see it: this would be the closest thing to Lang's vision, and we'd just sit around and talk about all those missing scenes and how it might make the movie mesh entirely.
Looks like that time is here! And I'm going to be on pins and needles -- as both a Metropolis fan and a silent movie fan -- until the Authorized Completely Restored is finally out for the public and I can rent it and see it!
Color me...STOKED!
http://www.zeit.de/online/2008/27/metropolis-vorab-englisch
When I was a kid, I owned a little paperback book which detailed what were considered the greatest and/or most famous horror and science-fiction movies. I knew a lot of them of course, Bride of Frankenstein, Lugosi's Dracula, Lon Chaney in The Wolfman, and science-fiction classics like The Thing.
But then I read about three movies I'd never heard of before, all German. One was The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Another was Nosferatu. The last was called the "first" science-fiction movie: Metropolis, and the chapter was set up by telling the legendary story of director Fritz Lang coming to America and seeing the glowing lights of the New York City skyline. It was allegedly his inspiration for Metropolis. I later saw all three as I was growing up: mangled versions, poorly edited ones, and some with footage so badly deteriorated, you could barely see the action, which was already almost indecipherable. Of all of them, I liked Metropolis best, even if it didn't make sense. All I knew was there were two worlds -- the workers and the aristocracy; a girl named Maria, and some mad scientist that made a Evil Maria Robot. At some point I probably saw all of those same plots in a couple of Star Trek episodes LOL (Good Kirk, Evil Kirk in The Enemy Within; a bad Robot Kirk in What Are Little Girls Made Of?, and an ep with a workers world and an aristocracy (third season episode I think).
Anyway, over the years I saw other Fritz Lang movies on VHS, then DVD came along and you started seeing many of these old flicks hitting that format. And in the early part of this decade, along came what was considered the most definitive version of the movie http://www.amazon.com/Metropolis-Restored-Authorized-Brigitte-Helm/dp/B00007L4MJ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1215132926&sr=1-1. And I finally saw it the way I figured we would always see it: this would be the closest thing to Lang's vision, and we'd just sit around and talk about all those missing scenes and how it might make the movie mesh entirely.
Looks like that time is here! And I'm going to be on pins and needles -- as both a Metropolis fan and a silent movie fan -- until the Authorized Completely Restored is finally out for the public and I can rent it and see it!
Color me...STOKED!