The opening shots of the restored “Metropolis” are so crisp and clear that they come as a jolt. This poor mistreated masterpiece has been seen until now mostly in battered prints missing footage that was, we now learn, essential.
Because of a 16mm print discovered in 2008 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, it stands before us as more or less the film Fritz Lang originally made in 1927. It is, says David Bordwell, “one of the great sacred monsters of the cinema.” Lang tells of a towering city of the future.
Above ground, it has spires and towers, elevated highways, an Olympian stadium and Pleasure Gardens. Below is a workers city where the clocks show 10 hours to squeeze out more time, the workers live in tenement housing, and work consists of unrelenting service to a machine. This vision of plutocracy versus labor would have been powerful at a time when the assembly line had been invented and Marx had encouraged class warfare.
Lang created one of the unforgettable original places in the cinema. “Metropolis” fixed for countless later films the image of a futuristic city as a hell of material progress and human despair. From this film, in various ways, descended not only “Dark City” but also “Blade Runner,” “The Fifth Element,” “Alphaville,” “Escape From L.A.,” “Gattaca” and Batman’s Gotham City.
The laboratory of its evil genius, Rotwang, created the visual look of mad scientists for decades to come, especially after it was so closely mirrored in “The Bride of Frankenstein” (1935). The device of the “false Maria,” the robot that looks like a human being, inspired the Replicants of “Blade Runner.”
The missing footage restored in this version comes to about 30 minutes, bringing it to 150 minutes. Bordwell, informed by the chief restorer, Martin Koerber of the German Cinematheque, observes that while the cuts simplified “Metropolis” into a science fiction film, the restoration emphasizes subplots involving mistaken identities.
We all remember the “two Marias” the good, saintly human and her malevolent robot copy, both played by Brigitte Helm. We now learn that the hero, Freder, also changes places with the worker Georgy, in an attempt to identify with the working class. Freder’s father, Fredersen, is the ruler of Metropolis.
“Metropolis” employed vast sets, thousands of extras and special effects to create its two worlds.
Lang’s film is the summit of German Expressionism, the combination of stylized sets, dramatic camera angles, bold shadows and frankly artificial theatrics.
Much of what we see in “Metropolis” doesn’t exist except in visual trickery. The special effects were the work of Eugene Schuefftan, who later worked in Hollywood as the cinematographer of “Lilith.” According to “Magill’s Survey of Cinema,” his photographic system “allowed people and miniature sets to be combined in a single shot, through the use of mirrors.” Other effects were created in the camera by cinematographer Karl Freund.
The result was astonishing for its time. Without today’s digital tricks, “Metropolis” fills the imagination.
The restoration is not pristine. Some shots retain the scratches picked up by the original 35mm print from which the 16mm Buenos Aires copy was made; these are insignificant compared with the rediscovered footage they represent. There are still a few gaps, but because the original screenplay exists, they’re represented by title cards. In general, this is a “Metropolis” we have never seen, in both length and quality.
“Metropolis” does what many great films do, creating a time, place and characters so striking that they become part of our arsenal of images for imagining the world.
(This review is based in part on my 1998 “Great Movies” review.)
“METROPOLIS”
Not rated. 2 hours, 30 minutes. Starring Brigitte Helm, Alfred Abel, Gustav Froehlich, Rudolf Klein-Rogge. Directed by Fritz Lang. Written by Lang and Thea von Harbou, based on her novel. Photographed by Karl Freund and Gunther Rittau. Opens today at the Mayan.
