Metropolis Director's Cut

[Arne Herl�v Petersen]

The rock version of Metropolis with music by Moroder was cut to only 70
minutes in some versions. (87 min. on the laser disc). The Madacy DVD
version is 115 minutes. Other versions on video and TV have been 90
min., 120 min. and 139 minutes. The best version existing today is the
newly restored one shown by the Franco-German cultural channel Arte in
June 2002. It is 148 minutes, including some stills used in sequences
that have otherwise been lost.

Arne


Monica Belevan wrote:
> 
> I never knew ´´ Metropolis´´ had been castrated like this. It reminds me of
> what was done to Orson Welles´ ´´ The Magnificent Ambersons´´. Does anyone
> know if there is a released uncut version for this film at all? It has been
> in a thorn on my side for a while now...
> 
> --Monica
> 
> >From: "Otto" <ottosell at yahoo.de>
> >To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> >Subject: Metropolis Director's Cut
> >Date: Fri, 12 Jul 2002 09:33:17 +0200
> >
> >"On Jan. 10, 1927, Fritz Lang's "Metropolis," a wildly ambitious, hugely
> >expensive science fiction allegory of filial revolt, romantic love,
> >alienated labor and dehumanizing technology opened at the Ufa Palast
> >theater
> >in Berlin. Lang's film, of course, went on to become one of the touchstones
> >of 20th-century cinema, exhaustively studied and endlessly imitated, but
> >apart from its brief theatrical run in Berlin and Nuremberg 75 years ago,
> >the movie as Lang made it has never really been seen. (...)
> >
> >A few weeks after the premiere, Ufa, the studio that had produced the film,
> >pulled it from theaters and cut out 7 of the original 12 reels. (...)
> >Paramount, the American distributor, went even further, engaging a
> >playwright, Channing Pollock, to compose English title cards and to reshape
> >the story to fit his own tastes. "I have given it my meaning," Pollock
> >boasted. (...)
> >
> >Pollock complained that, in Lang's version, "symbolism ran such riot that
> >people who saw it couldn't tell what the picture was all about." He was not
> >altogether wrong: Christianity, German romanticism, modernism and Marxism
> >stampede through the movie like the crowds of angry workers and bourgeois
> >revelers in the apocalyptic climax, but the confusion that results
> >ultimately resolves into hallucinatory, visionary clarity. Only by pushing
> >himself to the very edge of coherence was Lang able to transcend the
> >schematic moralizing that keeps so much science fiction tethered,
> >ultimately, to the mundane. (...)
> >
> >The story of the scientist Rotwang (Rudolf Klein-Rogge), a modern Pygmalion
> >designing a female robot to replace his lost love, stands between
> >"Frankenstein" and "A.I." as an expression of the defining modern
> >preoccupation with machines that blur the boundary between the human and
> >the
> >mechanical."
> >http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/12/movies/12METR.html?8hpib
> >
> >
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