With elements of 1984, a sci-fi fantasy robot and even echoes of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Joan of Arc, director Fritz Lang's monumental German production of Metropolis was unlike any movie seen before its release in January 1927.
In truth, after its first few weeks of release in Berlin and Nuremberg, Lang's colossal film, which originally ran a little over 2 1/2 hours, was never seen that way again. Nearly an hour of footage was cut for subsequent bookings.
The revamped version, which opens a week-long run at the Avon tonight, is the most complete revision of Metropolis to date. Running at just a touch over two hours, it has a digitally restored negative, newly translated English intertitles, Gottfried Huppertz's original score re-recorded by a 60-piece orchestra and much more footage than has been seen anywhere since 1927. It was culled from various versions of the film found throughout the world's film archives and pasted together.
There are still vast stretches of missing sequences, although extensive intertitles describe what once existed and has been lost, probably forever. At least those explanations now give a reason for the film's central conflict which revolves around a mad inventor, Rotwang (Rudolf Klein-Rogge), and the industrialist Joh Fredersen (Alfred Abel), who rules over Metropolis.
Their long-standing feud is where that robot enters the picture. At one time both men loved the same woman, Hel. Fredersen eventually won her, but she died giving birth to his son, Freder (Gustav Frohlich). Still distaught at all of this, Rotwang has created a robot replacement for Hel. But eventually he decides to use the metal creature to drive a wedge between Fredersen and his son. In previous versions, much of this narrative had been discarded in favor of a shorter, but inexplicable storyline.
Metropolis is played out on gigantic-looking sets that were either built lifesize or in miniature on the UFA Studio lot in Germany, something that nearly bankrupted the company.
Because of cost and production problems that had Metropolis in front of the cameras for a year and a half, as well as the disappearance of several key scenes over the years, Metropolis has become as much a piece of movie legend as it is a valuable piece of movie history. Fortunately, thanks to exhaustive research, audiences today can have a better idea of what Lang and his army of technicians created.
Happily, Metropolis holds up breathlessly well. Its spectacular sets mirror what's being done by computers in the Star Wars franchise. More important, the story of a young man who defies his father's greed in order to follow and eventually save a woman whose heart is pure, makes for captivating entertainment which at times echoes today's headline horrors of big business and globalization.
Metropolis is an odd marriage between the world of science and the world of the occult, revolving around the clash between the elite and the downtrodden. It's played out in a futuristic city whose monumental skyscrapers and rushing freeways sit atop an underground city populated by grim-faced anonymous workers toiling exhaustedly to create the power supply that lights the glittering landscape above.
Its most famous character is the robot, a glistening metal machine which, halfway through the film, is given the lifelike likeness of a saintly social activist named Maria (Brigitte Helm).
Probably its most famous sequence is the finale in which the Lower City is flooded by millions of gallons of water as the workers rally to destroy the enormous machines that have controlled and ruined their lives, then press on to burn Maria at the stake.
Some of this proved way too much for audiences and critics of its day. Some saw it as a communist screed. Just as many others viewed it as a fascist diatribe. Because of that, there were few cries when Metropolis was drastically edited to make it more audience -- and running-time -- friendly, especially for showings in the United States where it was hoped it could successfully compete with glossier, star-driven Hollywood films.
It didn't turn out that way. By the time Metropolis arrived in America, it was overshadowed by the arrival of sound in The Jazz Singer, a talking picture that people flocked to see.
But The Jazz Singer merely had sound, a novelty at the time. Metropolis has spectacle and an eerie plot, something that today's audiences are certainly more in tune with.
*****
Metropolis
Starring: Gustav Frohlich, Brigitte Helm, Alfred Abel, Rudolf Klein-Rogge.
Rated: Not rated, contains violence.
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