BERLIN.- The Pablo Ducrós Hicken Film Museum in Buenos Aires, Argentina has found in its archives a copy of the movie “Metropolis” directed in 1927 by Fritz Lang, with lost footage. The silent film was one of the most expensive ones (around $200 million dollars) and was cut heavily to make it more accessible. It was initially thought as a movie that would last two and a half hours. The footage that was found will add around 25 minutes to the film, but there will still be around five minutes missing.

Helmut Possmann, head of the foundation that holds the rights to the film said, "We were overjoyed when we heard about the find."

Adolfo Z. Wilson, a Buenos Aires film distributor and head of the Terra film distribution company, obtained a long version of the “Metropolis” film in 1928 to show it in movie theatres in Argentina. Film critic Manuel Peña Rodríguez acquired the film shortly after that and kept it in his private collection. He sold the film reels to the National Art Fund of Argentina in the 1960’s. In 1992 the Film Museum in Buenos Aires received a copy of these reels. Paula Félix-Didier became curator of the collection on January this year. Her former husband, director of the film department of the Museum of Latin American Art, had heard about a long screening of the film and both of them took a look at the archive and found the missing scenes.

Helmut Possmann further stated, "We're not being fooled. The film can now be shown more or less as Lang originally intended it. In terms of understanding what it's about, we'll be seeing a new film."

The film stock is in poor condition and will have to be restored, which could take several years.

Metropolis is a science fiction film created by the Austrian-German director Fritz Lang. It was produced in Germany in the Babelsberg Studios and released in 1927. The screenplay was written in 1924 by Lang and his then wife, Thea von Harbou, and novelized by von Harbou in 1926. It is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and examines a common science fiction theme of the day: the social crisis between workers and owners in capitalism.

The film is set in the year 2026, in the extraordinary Gothic skyscrapers of a corporate city-state, the Metropolis of the title. Society has been divided into two rigid groups: one of planners or thinkers, who live high above the earth in luxury, and another of workers who live underground toiling to sustain the lives of the privileged. The city is run by Johann 'Joh' Fredersen (Alfred Abel).

in Artdaily.org


Tags Metropolis Fritz+Lang footage Argentina Pablo Ducrós Hicken Buenoa+Aires von+Harbou Helmut+Possmann Germany