John O
Joined Jun 2002
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John O's rating
I could babble on about how great this movie is, but maybe I can help everyone with a lot of details.
Robert Bloch (author of "Psycho") once met Fritz Lang and raved on about "Metropolis". Lang's reply, "Why are you carrying on about a movie which does not exist?" (He had rather strong views on the butchering.)
The best version is the 138 minute (at 20 frames /second) or 153 minute (at 18 f/s- there even a debate here) restoration/ reconstruction by Enno Patalas for the Filmmuseum, Munich, using the 1936 FPA negative at the MOMA archive in NY, found by Morodor, and the basis for his version, and adding newly found scenes, and reconstructing others from stills. I'm not sure what the musical track is; the original score Lang commissioned for 1926 still exists, but is owned by a musician in Germany.
The US rights to this print are owned by a company called Transit Films, which wants "a lot" for them.
The Morodor version is still owned by Vestron Video (Santa Monica, Ca. 90405) which issued it on VHS and Laser. It's 80 minutes (a "shorter" version it seems) because he put all the titles on the bottom of the screen, and not as separate title cards, and it runs faster (He's a music producer, and that may be to sync the music better. Mebbe if everyone wrote Vestron... (Morodor found a 1st or 2nd gen. nitrate negative from FPA at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC, and financed the striking of copies on "safety" film.)(Nitrate film stock is notoriously unstable.) It contains the important stadium scene missing on most other prints, showing the elite of Metropolis playing in contrast to the workers.
And then there's a version, still shown on German TV, of a restoration done in East Germany in the sixties, with some additional scenes with Rotwag and Hel, also found in the Filmmuseum copy.
The Kino version has the best print quality of currently available ones, but is missing the stadium scene, and has a mediocre, at best, music score. The Kino International version, for whatever reason, is 7 minutes longer than the US Kino.
Robert Bloch (author of "Psycho") once met Fritz Lang and raved on about "Metropolis". Lang's reply, "Why are you carrying on about a movie which does not exist?" (He had rather strong views on the butchering.)
The best version is the 138 minute (at 20 frames /second) or 153 minute (at 18 f/s- there even a debate here) restoration/ reconstruction by Enno Patalas for the Filmmuseum, Munich, using the 1936 FPA negative at the MOMA archive in NY, found by Morodor, and the basis for his version, and adding newly found scenes, and reconstructing others from stills. I'm not sure what the musical track is; the original score Lang commissioned for 1926 still exists, but is owned by a musician in Germany.
The US rights to this print are owned by a company called Transit Films, which wants "a lot" for them.
The Morodor version is still owned by Vestron Video (Santa Monica, Ca. 90405) which issued it on VHS and Laser. It's 80 minutes (a "shorter" version it seems) because he put all the titles on the bottom of the screen, and not as separate title cards, and it runs faster (He's a music producer, and that may be to sync the music better. Mebbe if everyone wrote Vestron... (Morodor found a 1st or 2nd gen. nitrate negative from FPA at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC, and financed the striking of copies on "safety" film.)(Nitrate film stock is notoriously unstable.) It contains the important stadium scene missing on most other prints, showing the elite of Metropolis playing in contrast to the workers.
And then there's a version, still shown on German TV, of a restoration done in East Germany in the sixties, with some additional scenes with Rotwag and Hel, also found in the Filmmuseum copy.
The Kino version has the best print quality of currently available ones, but is missing the stadium scene, and has a mediocre, at best, music score. The Kino International version, for whatever reason, is 7 minutes longer than the US Kino.
Actually went to see "Attack of the Crab Monsters" but this was much better. The entire movie had a dark quality to it, like you were looking thru Paul birch's very cool wraparound shades (or maybe the theater needed a new projection bulb/ carbon arc light- no, "Crab Monsters" was OK..) The bat creature, as I remember it, was like a small webbed-between-it's-tentacles octopus that did an amazing skull crush. I was usually inured to a lot of those creatures, but I had nightmares for days after that thing. Beverly Garland always added to any movie, and I think from her output of films, she just lived on the sets. So where is it, Roger!!! We want to see it, and I don't think it's ever been on tape or dvd