19 October 2011 - 29 January 2012
In 1927, the German studio Universum Film A.G. (UFA) premiered Metropolis, Fritz Lang’s machine-driven parable of a dystopian future where the demand for new technology and goods literally sacrifices the working classes for the benefit of executives oblivious to the human cost of their own greed. Plus ça change, eh?
While heavy-handed in the symbolism department and somewhat plodding plot-wise, the film is a technical and artistic marvel that has influenced filmmakers from Kurosawa to Kubrick, Burton to Besson, and has become the most iconic science fiction film ever made. The film reached a whole new generation when music producer Giorgio Moroder tinted and re-cut the footage to a rock soundtrack, and David Bowie and Queen’s “Under Pressure” played over choice scenes, encapsulating in music video the changes that swept the world with Tianamen Square, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the collapse of the USSR.
Recently restored to its original 153-minute length, La Cinémathèque Française opens its exhibition of Metropolis this week, with original stills, equipment, props and costumes, script pages and musical score to tell an even more incredible story behind Metropolis and its restoration – where National Treasure meets Bladerunner, with a little bit of Sherlock Holmes thrown in.
The original 153-minute version of Metropolis was sold to Paramount who promptly cut it down to 89 minutes and, for good measure, revamped the story from an examination of class struggle into a futuristic version of Romeo and Juliet in an effort to make the film more commercial. Their efforts not only succeeded, it is this truncated version that lived on in the popular consciousness for many years. But by the 1980s, technology finally caught up with film historians’ curiosity, and the long, arduous efforts at restoring the film to its original version began.
I say long and arduous because, at the time of its production, the technology to produce multiple negatives of film for multi-country distribution simply didn’t exist. Lang and his crew got around this obstacle by shooting every single scene on 4 cameras set side by side to, in effect, create four original negatives of Metropolis. One negative—and the best preserved—was sold to Paramount who, as mentioned, hacked it up to suit their own vision. The edited footage and the remaining negatives were long thought to be lost or too corrupted to restore, although multiple efforts have been made over the years.
In addition, having only the Paramount version to go by, the order of shots and sequences, music cues, and title cards have been in dispute for years. In essence, no one really knew what Metropolis was supposed to look like. Fritz Lang wasn’t any help: he died in 1976, long before any true restoration efforts were possible, but had distanced himself from the film during his lifetime anyway, citing the film as “silly and stupid.”
The 1984 version, while popular with disaffected teens already suffering from Reagan, Thatcher and yuppies, horrified historians both within and outside of the film world, and raised debate about the validity of repackaging the past to suit the present versus preserving the integrity of a work of art.
In 2001, a 125-minute version of the film was reconstructed using still photographs and title cards where original footage was missing. Screened at that year’s Berlin Film Festival, this was thought to be the definitive version of Metropolis, the only one in existence closest to the original 153-minute film.
But as it turns out, that day in 1927 when the 153-minute negative was offered up for sale, there was another buyer in the room – one that UFA, Fritz Lang and all of history completely forgot about. An Argentinean distributor purchased one of the negatives, took it back to Buenos Aires and… stuck it in a drawer and forgot all about it.
Until 2008, when it was rediscovered by the curator of Buenos Aires Museo del Cine. Although in some places terribly corrupted, the Argentine negative was the sole remaining, complete version of Metropolis in the world, and served as a blueprint to end the questions of sequences, shots, music cues and, ultimately, the actual plot and storyline. Spearheaded by the Murnau Foundation, the restoration took about one year and was completed through digital technology specially designed for the project. Not only have shots been restored (including a breathtaking bird’s eye shot of the Tower of Babel), but entire subplots and characters. Metropolis is finally complete.
The exhibit at La Cinémathèque Française takes an in-depth look at the making of Metropolis, as well as the incredible story of the film’s restoration as a cultural and historical event, in a multi-media presentation that combines film footage, production stills and a recreation of the birth of the iconic Machine (of which I was delightfully reminded of my favorite sideshow at New York’s Coney Island). Not just for film buffs, the exhibit is a fantastic look at technology, German Expressionism, and of course the historical context and prescience of Metropolis, where progress both destroys and restores.
The fully restored version of Metropolis is being screened at MK2 cinemas beginning 19 October.
Metropolis: L’Exposition runs from 19 October through 29 January 2012 at La Cinémathèque Française, and includes discussions, live events and an accompanying retrospective of Fritz Lang’s body of work.
October 2011, Vingt Paris Magazine