Germany,
1926, 147 min
Shown in 2001
CREDITS
- dir
-
Fritz Lang
- prod
-
Erich Pommer
- scr
-
Thea von Harbou
- cam
-
Karl Freund, Günther Rittau
- editor
-
(Restoration Editor) Martin Koerber
- mus
-
Gottfried Huppertz
- cast
-
Birgitte Helm, Alfred Abel, Gustav Frölich, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Fritz Rasp
- source
-
Transit Film GmbH, Dachauer Strasse 55, 80335 Munich, Germany. FAX: 49-89-59-98-85-20. EMAIL: transitfilm@compuserve.com
- premiere
-
International Revival Premiere
-
COMMENTS
The restoration was accomplished on behalf of the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung in Wiesbaden and the Federal Archive/Film Archive, Berlin, in collaboration with the Munich Film Museum and the Cinemathek-association partners: Deutsches Filminstitut (DIF); Filmmuseum Berlin–Deutsche Kinemathek, Berlin; Deutsches Filmmuseum, Frankfurt am Main; Filmmuseum der Landeshaupstadt, Düsseldorf; Museum of Modern Art, New York.
OTHER
In February of this year, the Berlin Film Festival presented a complete retrospective of Fritz Lang’s work, capped by this stunning new digital restoration of his pioneering science fiction masterpiece. Running 147 minutes at its proper projection speed of 20 frames per second, this new version is made directly from the original negative, and finally restores the full visual grandeur that has been missing from this masterpiece for over seven decades. At the Castro Theatre’s Mighty Wurlitzer, Dennis James will play his organ adaptation of Gottfried Huppertz’s original score. Few classics have been more mutilated than Metropolis. Its commercial failure in 1926 led to its being licensed to Paramount, who hired a hack dramatist to cut it nearly in half, junking entire episodes and rewriting its “communistically tinged” intertitles. For decades this was the only version available, though generations of film historians have searched the world for scraps of the missing scenes. Enno Patalas of the Munich Film Museum labored for years at this painstaking reconstruction. This version is the closest we’re ever likely to get to Lang’s original monumental vision.
—Peter Scarlet
FACTOID #191
The first screenwriter to receive a Festival tribute was Truman Capote in 1974. At the tribute he confessed that, in his opinion, Audrey Hepburn was too chic for the role of Holly Golightly. He would have preferred the then unknown Tammy Grimes for the role.
