Still from the Fritz Lang film, Metropolis Photograph: PR
Film buffs from around the world have gathered in Berlin to catch the first glimpse of a restored, full-length "director's cut" of the sci-fi epic Metropolis that has not been seen for 83 years.
The resurrection of Fritz Lang's 1927 silent futuristic thriller follows the discovery in Buenos Aires two years ago of key scenes that were thought lost forever on the cutting room floor. The homecoming is being celebrated with simultaneous, orchestra-accompanied screenings tomorrow evening across Germany.
Evoking the glamour and decadence of the Weimar era in which the film celebrated its original premiere, a gala screening will be held at Berlin's Friedrichstadtpalast, a revue theatre best known for its 1930s style female chorus lines and cabaret. Berlin's Radio Symphony Orchestra will play Gottfried Huppertz's original score and several Hollywood stars, including Leonardo DiCaprio, are expected to be among the guests at the premiere, which critics have hailed the highlight of this year's Berlin film festival, the Berlinale.
In keeping with the festival's ethos, that it is not the reserve of VIPs, Metropolis will be beamed onto a huge screen at the Brandenburg Gate. Thousands are expected to brave the cold for a chance to see the historic 150-minute screening.
Film historians say the restored version gives more depth and new meaning to the cult movie, set in a futuristic city-state where the ruling class amuse themselves in pleasure parlours while the poor slave away underground.
The film cost 5m Reichsmarks, making it the most expensive picture of its day. It had a cast of 36,000 and was shot over 17 months. But it flopped in Germany after both audiences and critics panned it. The science fiction writer HG Wells said "in one eddying concentration" it gave "almost every possible foolishness, cliché, platitude and muddlement about mechanical progress ... served up with a sauce of sentimentality that is all its own".
But Metropolis is now seen as the mother of sci-fi movies, an inspiration for film-makers like George Lucas and Ridley Scott.
Key scenes were cut from the original picture because its distributor, Paramount, considered it too unwieldy for the American market. Protagonists were given new, American names, the insert titles were rewritten and scenes re-edited to keep the action comprehensible after the 30-minute cuts.
The tampering appalled Fritz Lang, who described Paramount's intervention as "mindless and dictatorial".
The cut footage was thought to have been lost, until 2008 when an Argentinian film historian began to search for it. In the archives of the Museo del Cine, Fernando Martin Pena tracked down a 16mm dupe negative copy of the original 35mm export version. It had been sent to Buenos Aires before Paramount made the chop.
Today's cinephiles will be able to see the version that experts have spent months restoring. But it still shows the cuts and mutiliations the missing parts have suffered over the past eight decades.
"We cleaned the film so that you can recognise the pictures but you can't get rid of all the scratches and marks," said Martin Koerber, the lead restorer.
Metropolis aficionados will be concentrating less on the streaky screen that in parts resembles a heavy downpour and more on the unfamiliar way the film now unfolds as Lang intended. The new version restores characters who had been sidelined or removed and elucidates parts of the hitherto dizzying plot, such as why Maria, the workers' insurrectionist leader. is mistaken for a female robot. A spy has been reintroduced, a character who helps the idealistic Freder gain access to the underworld has been expanded, and a scene in which children are saved from slavery is much more violent and dramatic.
(download)
