Jul 3, 2008 8:01 AM

Dead Media Beat: Missing Chunks of METROPOLIS unearthed

http://io9.com/5021531/the-first-ever-gynoid-is-now-complete-at-last

(((What terrific news! The greatest work of "architecture fiction" ever.)))

Link: Metropolis: The First Ever Gynoid Is Now Complete At Last!.

"The science fiction movie Holy Grail has appeared: the missing sections of Fritz Lang's Metropolis turned up in Buenos Aires. We can finally see what the classic gynoid-led worker uprising movie is really about. Up to a quarter of the movie has been missing since it was butchered for its early screenings in 1927, leaving huge gaps in the movie's storyline and logical jumps that make no sense.
"The Museo del Cine Pablo C. Ducros Hicken in Buenos Aires found the 16 mm negatives, which include the character of Georgy in his "reduced" state, a character named Slim and his transformation into an apocalypse-preaching monk, and a car journey through the city of Metropolis. Just in time for the no-doubt-ridiculous remake to start work, we can finally see what the original Metropolis was about...."

http://www.zeit.de/online/2008/27/metropolis-vorab-englisch

Key scenes rediscovered

Key scenes from Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” have been rediscovered

Last Tuesday Paula Félix-Didier travelled on a secret mission to Berlin in order to meet with three film experts and editors from ZEITmagazin. The museum director from Buenos Aires had something special in her luggage: a copy of a long version of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, including scenes believed lost for almost 80 years. After examining the film the three experts are certain: The find from Buenos Aires is a real treasure, a worldwide sensation. Metropolis, the most important silent film in German history, can from this day on be considered to have been rediscovered.

Fritz Lang presented the original version of Metropolis in Berlin in January 1927. The film is set in the futuristic city of Metropolis, ruled by Joh Fredersen, whose workers live underground. His son falls in love with a young woman from the worker’s underworld – the conflict takes its course. At the time it was the most expensive German film ever made. It was intended to be a major offensive against Hollywood. However the film flopped with critics and audiences alike. (((It was ever thus.)))

Representatives of the American firm Paramount considerably shortened and re-edited the film. They oversimplified the plot, even cutting key scenes. The original version could only be seen in Berlin until May 1927 – from then on it was considered to have been lost forever. Those recently viewing a restored version of the film first read the following insert: “More than a quarter of the film is believed to be lost forever.”

ZEITmagazin has now reconstructed the story of how the film nevertheless managed to survive. Adolfo Z. Wilson, a man from Buenos Aires and head of the Terra film distribution company, arranged for a copy of the long version of “Metropolis” to be sent to Argentina in 1928 to show it in cinemas there. Shortly afterwards a film critic called Manuel Peña Rodríguez came into possession of the reels and added them to his private collection. In the 1960s Peña Rodríguez sold the film reels to Argentina’s National Art Fund – clearly nobody had yet realised the value of the reels. A copy of these reels passed into the collection of the Museo del Cine (Cinema Museum) in Buenos Aires in 1992, the curatorship of which was taken over by Paula Félix-Didier in January this year. Her ex-husband, director of the film department of the Museum of Latin American Art, first entertained the decisive suspicion: He had heard from the manager of a cinema club, who years before had been surprised by how long a screening of this film had taken. Together, Paula Félix-Didier and her ex-husband took a look at the film in her archive – and discovered the missing scenes.

Paula Félix-Didier remembered having dinner with the German journalist Karen Naundorf and confided the secret to her. Félix-Didier wanted the news to be announced in Germany where Fritz Lang had worked – and she hoped that it would attract a greater level of attention in Germany than in Argentina...