Lost scenes from Fritz Lang’s METROPOLIS found!
Posted by Lawrence French on 02 Jul 2008 at 11:41 pm | Tagged as: Supernal Dreams, News & Views, Movies

Here is some astounding news. Although METROPOLIS has recently been restored by the Munich Film Museum, many of the lost scenes from the 3 hour version that premiered in Berlin in 1927 were still missing. Now, even more of the missing scenes have been found in South America.

A report from the German newspaper Die Zeit outlining the details of this sensational discovery (along with some unrestored shots from the missing scenes), can be read here.


Here is some additional background on the cutting of METROPOLIS , taken from the catalogue for the wonderful Fritz Lang retrospective that was organized by the Berlin Film Museum, that was on view at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences Beverly Hills headquarters in the fall of 2001:



THE MISSING SCENES

A few weeks after the premiere of METROPOLIS , in the spring of 1927, Ufa had the film recut according to Channing Pollock’s reworked version for Paramount and shortened by approximately 1000 meters. The material cut from the film has been lost ever since, and METROPOLIS now only exists in a version which distorts Fritz Lang’s and Thea von Harbou’s original intentions. Compared to the premiered version, the content has been changed in places beyond recognition. Central characters were simply cut from the film or their roles considerably shortened. The motivations of the main protagonists were changed and certain backdrops disappeared.

The original form of the film can, however, be deduced from the script, as well as the censorship notes for the first version and the surviving original score by Gottfried Huppertz. Reconstructed versions of the film, such as the one put together by the Munich Film Museum, are based on these sources. Recently the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation reorganized the existing film material by referring to the surviving documents, so that the original sequence of scenes have been re-established as far as possible. Moreover, there are over 800 stills of scenes from the production by Horst von Harbou which document the making of the film and convey an impression - albeit a static one - of some of the lost sequences.

Click here to view a gallery of six photos from the missing footage discovered in Buenos Aires.

Source

It is indeed - this is one of my favourite films. I certainly hope we see a restored print soon.

Sounds really promising. I detected this today in a German newspaper.
So I'm waiting for the "Remastered Extended Director's Cut" on dvd!   

Quoting Skywatcher:

Quote:
They also said that the 3 film rolls recovered in Argentina are in quite bad shape, meaning the restoration will be extensive. Similar restorations have taken years on other films, so, don't just hold your breath for the DVD.

But anyway... YAAAAY, Great news! 

Actually, if you read The Digital Bits and look at the last story of the day, Kino said the new footage will be on the DVD and Blu-ray coming in 2009.

Quoting kahless:

Quote:
Sounds really promising. I detected this today in a German newspaper.
So I'm waiting for the "Remastered Extended Director's Cut" on dvd!   

Great news and I, waiting for this new edition   

I hve both the Madacy version and the Kino version. Triple-dipping...? Well, maybe.

Fantastic news!