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Fritz Langs Metropolis rediscovered in FULL!

metropolis01.jpgmetropolis02.jpgEveryone who loves movies and loves science fiction knows that the most important film in the early history of cinema was of course Fritz Langs Metropolis. Everyone who watched a "remastered" version of that film also knows that considerably parts of the film are missing - with some parts having been filled in with typographic plates explaining the missing scenes. That leaves the viewer with an uncomplete, lacking and sometimes misunderstood overall picture of the film.
The reason is that there just has never been found a complete copy of the film, because most copies disappeared in WWII in the burning cinemas of Berlin. The current watchable version is a patchwork of multiple partial reels found all over the world. Everyone agreed that this iconic science fiction film that set the pretext of visual science fiction to come - in production scale and "out there" story - will never be shown how it was supposed to be meant. Until now...
The german Zeit magazine found a complete full length copy of this film in Argentina - in a museum that somehow never knew it had such a treasure. The magazine has already some pictures up. The film is in dire condition and in the need of a LOT of retouching and cleaning but the prospect to see this film in full and maybe understand some confusing scenes and have some more drama incorporated will fill science fiction fans, silent movie fans, cinema fans and fans of a doomed machine world with joy for sure.

The Zeit article on the find

The Zeits gallery

The "old" patched 1/3rd of the film on the internet archive

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Comments

Last thursday at the BFI the newly restored Fritz Lang's Metropolis reminded me of several movies it has influenced such as The Bride of Frankenstein, Blade Runner, and Dark City. It's importance to later films is quite clear and all things considered I rate it one of the best films I've ever seen.

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