Metropolis Director's Cut

Fri Jul 12 11:45:45 CDT 2002

isn't ARTE great...
:)

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

AHP> Arne

AHP> 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
>> >
>> >
>> >_________________________________________________________
>> >Do You Yahoo!?
>> >Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
>> 
>> _________________________________________________________________
>> Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com

-- 
Best regards,
 alfredjprufrock                            mailto:alfredjprufrock at club-internet.fr