Directed by Fritz Lang
Written by Thea von Harbou
Germany
153 min.
1927
Not Rated
In 2008, the curator of the Buenos Aires Museo del Cine discovered a 16mm dupe negative of Fritz Lang's classic 1927 film Metropolis, a version that included 25 minutes of footage not seen since the movie's original Berlin premiere, footage believed lost forever. The found footage resulted in a new restoration, which clarified Lang's original editing, as well as character relationships, and even entire subplots that had been excised from the version that has been circulating for more than 80 years.
Metropolis is widely considered one of the first science-fiction films; in a dystopian future, humans are divided into two groups that never interact with each other: the thinkers, who make plans but don't know how anything works, and the workers, who get things done but don't see "the big picture." One of the thinkers deigns to visit the underground where the workers toil, and is astonished by what he sees....
"Few films have been so enjoyed by generations of film buffs and pored over by scholars. Few films, too, have had such a fraught history or existed in so many versions. Now, 83 years after its Berlin premiere, Metropolis can finally be seen as Lang originally intended it." --Wall Street Journal
