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Movies Forum Index » Silent Movies Forum » AFP: Long-lost scenes from Fritz Lang's...
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| Bruce Calvert... |
 Posted: Sun Jul 06, 2008 4:05 am |
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http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jvdX-dyfyMFmNKJeUMeMGPwNfvCQ
Long-lost scenes from Fritz Lang's 'Metropolis' found
2 days ago
BERLIN (AFP) — A near complete version of German-Austrian director
Fritz Lang's masterpiece "Metropolis" has been found in Argentina
after a quarter of the film was believed lost for 80 years, a German
film foundation said Thursday.
The Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau Foundation in Wiesbaden told AFP reels
containing all but one scene of the original of the classic German
silent film have been discovered by the curator of the Cinema Museum
in Buenos Aires.
"Almost everything that had been missing had been found, including two
key scenes," said Anke Wilkening, who is in charge of film restoration
at the foundation.
Lang presented his science fiction epic in Berlin in January 1927 and
it was screened in the original version here only for a few months,
proving a flop with critics and audiences alike.
Afterwards, the US distributor Paramount simplified the labyrinthine
plot and cut the film by nearly half an hour. The edited scenes were
believed lost forever.
Foundation said in fact a copy, missing only a scene where a monk
predicts that the inhabitants of Metropolis are heading for
apocalypse, had been bought by the head of the Argentinian film
distribution company, Terra Film.
It was taken to Buenos Aires to be screened in 1928.
The copy survived and was unearthed by Paula Felix-Didier, the curator
of the Buenos Aires film museum, who has now brought it back to
Germany.
"Even if the quality is poor, the Argentinian material means that the
decades-old dream of putting together a full version of 'Metropolis'
has come true," the foundation said.
"Metropolis" is set in a futuristic, divided city of the same name,
where the elite live in luxury and workers slave underground.
A bitter conflict erupts after the son of the city's ruler falls in
love with a worker striving to unite the two classes.
Battle scenes and chunks of subplot that ended on the US editor's
floor can now be seen in the rediscovered version, which is about 25
minutes longer than the one known to film buffs.
According to Die Zeit newspaper, the version found in Argentina had
been bought by a film critic shortly after it was screened there. He
kept it for decades and only sold the reels in the 1960s.
The weekly said German film historians had used still pictures and
bits of footage obtained from private collectors to try to recreate
the original, but with limited success.
"We can now complete the task," the foundation said.
Bruce Calvert
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