Product Details

• Actors: Gustav Fröhlich, Alfred Abel, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Brigitte Helm
• Directors: Fritz Lang
• Writers: Thea von Harbou
• Format: Black & White, Silent, NTSC
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Timeless Multimedia
• VHS Release Date: December 1, 1999
• Run Time: 118 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (375 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6305827435
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #368,726 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Fritz Lang's Expressionistic masterwork continues to exert its influence today, from Chaplin's Modern Times to Dr.  Strangelove, and into the late 1990s with Dark City. In the stratified society of the future (Y2K no less), the son of a capitalist discovers the atrocious conditions of the factory slaves, falling in love with the charismatic Maria in the bargain, who preaches nonviolence to the workers. But even the benevolent leadership of Maria is a challenge to the privileged class, so they have the mad-scientist Rotwang concoct a robot double to take her place and incite the workers to riot. The story is melodrama, but it's the powerful imagery that is so memorable, with one of the most arresting images being legions of cowed workers filing listlessly into the great maw of the all-consuming machine-god Moloch. --Jim Gay

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

482 of 511 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars At Last, May 24, 2003

By 

Gary F. Taylor "GFT" (Biloxi, MS USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Metropolis (Restored Authorized Edition) (DVD)

Fritz Lang's METROPOLIS was very successful with both critics and audiences when it debuted in 1927 Berlin--but it was thereafter edited for distribution by Channing Pollock, who disliked it and removed great chunks of the film and substantially altered the storyline. The resulting film was admired for its visual style, but it proved a critical and box office disappointment. Neglected in the wake of sound, surviving prints of the film were left to corrode and decay--and when it began to reach the home market via VHS and DVD the results were very hit or miss; Blackhawk released a fairly credible version of the truncated film to home video, but for the most part the quality of these releases varied from barely mediocre to downright unwatchable.

Until now.

A great chunk of METROPOLIS--perhaps as much a quarter of more--has been forever lost, but this Kino Video DVD release offers the single best version of the film available. The previously cut footage that still exists has been restored; gaps in the film have been bridged by the occasional use of stills and explanatory title cards; the film itself has been painstakingly and digitally restored; and the soundtrack is the Gottfried Huppertz original created for the film's 1927 Berlin debut. In seeing this version of METROPOLIS, I was struck by how very differently it reads from the previously available truncated version. The visual style and the story itself are much more exciting and cohesive, and in the wake of this restoration it becomes impossible to deny the film status as landmark of international cinema.

Freder Fredersen (Gustav Frohlich) is the son of Joh Fredersen (Alfred Able), who reigns over the great city of Metropolis. Freder is surprised to discover his lifestyle has been built on the unseen but backbreaking labor of an entire class of unseen workers who tend the machines that make the city run--and he descends to the subterranean levels of Metropolis in an effort to understand their lives... and, not incidentally, to find the mysterious but beautiful woman Maria (Brigitta Helm) who has inspired his interest in the workers' plight. But his father is concerned by both Freder's interest and Maria's activities among the workers, and he turns to scientist C.A. Rotwang (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) for aid. Rotwang has created a robot, and he agrees to give it the likeness of Maria in order to undermine both Freder's love for the girl and her own activities. But Rotwang has a hidden agenda of his own: once the robot has been unleashed, he will use her to destroy Metropolis and thereby exact revenge on Joh Fredersen for past transgressions against him.

In many respects the story is simplistic, but the film's visual style and connotations are anything but. Deeply influenced by such art movements as Expressionism, Objectivism, Art Deco, and Bauhaus, the film is visually fascinating--not only in its scenic designs, but in director Lang's famous skill at creating the powerful crowd scenes that dominate the film and building the pace and tension of the film as it moves toward an intense climax. But while one can--and many do--admire the film purely at this level, there is quite a lot going on in terms of philosophical content as well: while it offers few viable solutions, the film raises such issues as the relationship between capital and labor, the place of religion in modern society, human reaction to overwhelming technology, and (perhaps most interestingly) the drift of government into a class-conscious corporate entity. And religious motifs abound in the film: a largely deserted cathedral; Moloch; the Tower of Babel; and crosses--intriguingly juxtaposed with a repeating motif of the pentagram-like designs associated with the robot. It is fascinating stuff.

There has been complaint that this restoration runs at incorrect speed and the performances are therefore unnecessarily jerky. I did not find this to be the case. In certain instances the movement is deliberately jerky and mechanical--the workers are a case in point--but beyond this there is nothing for which the difference between silent acting and modern acting techniques cannot account. There has also been some complaint that the title cards should have been left in their original German and translated via subtitle. There is a certain validity to this, but it seems a minor quibble; title cards were typically translated in the silent era itself. The DVD includes a number of extras, including still photographs, biographies of the major figures involved in the film, and two interesting documentaries-one on the restoration process and one on the creation of the film itself. Both are interesting; the audio commentary track by film historian Enno Patalas, however, is mildly disappointing. But when all is said and done, it is the film that counts. And this restoration is a remarkable achievement, to say the least, a project which brings a great landmark of world cinema back from the edge of the abyss. Indispensible; a must-own.

--GFT (Amazon Reviewer)--

162 of 173 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Review of 2010 Kino Blu-ray, 2003 Kino DVD, brief notes on 2010 Region-B Eureka Blu-ray, February 24, 2003

By 

keviny01 - See all my reviews

This review is from: Metropolis (Restored Authorized Edition) (DVD)

** 1/17/12 NOTE: **

Amazon has recently moved all the reviews of the Blu-ray "The Complete Metropolis" to its own product page (finally). My Blu-ray review below was written while the Blu-ray and the old DVD still shared the same page. I'm leaving the review as is for now. But if you want to order the Blu-ray "The Complete Metropolis", be sure to go to its own separate product page.

**EDIT 12/9/10: ADDED REVIEW OF 2010 KINO BLU-RAY**

Released in 1927, amid the golden age of the silent film era, Fritz Lang's METROPOLIS is a stylistic tour-de-force that has remained influential for the rest of the century, inspiring films from "Frankenstein" in 1931, "Bladerunner" in 1982, to "Dark City" in 1997. With its imaginative set design, elaborate photography, bold editing, and its then groundbreaking special effects, this German sci-fi silent classic exemplifies the highly inventive period of German Expressionism, which also include such film masterworks as "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligaru", "Nosferatu", "The Last Laugh", and Lang's "Die Nibelungen".

The 2010 Kino Region-A Blu-ray edition (and its corresponding Region-1 DVD edition) is titled "The Complete Metropolis" to avoid confusion with earlier DVD editions. It contains, to date, the most complete, two-and-a-half-hour cut of the film, combining the two-hour version from the monumental 2001 restoration effort by Germany's F.W. Murnau Foundation (previously released as the 2003 Kino DVD), and about half-hour of footage discovered at Museo del Cine in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 2008 that had been unseen for decades. This previously lost footage has been edited back into the film to create this new "Complete Metropolis" edition. The added scenes are sprinkled all over the film, improving continuity, clarifying storytelling, and thus heightening the impact and yielding a result that is greater than the sum of its parts, as they finally restore Lang's full vision to its near complete form.

The HD picture quality of the Blu-ray ranges from sparklingly clear in some footage, slightly softer in others (especially the special fx shots), to severely battered and damaged as in those newly-discovered shots. All the "good-looking" footage came from the 2001 restoration. With the upgrade to HD, the sharpness and the clarity over the DVD counterpart is readily apparent, and therefore this Blu-ray represents the best that the film has ever looked on home video. Unfortunately, the half hour of new-found footage, originated from 16mm film, looks severely damaged and sometimes barely watchable, and it doesn't benefit much from the HD picture. As the new footage is sprinkled all over the film, the picture quality oscillates between good and bad, normally an uncomfortable experience but a small price to pay for finally watching the most complete version yet of the classic.

The Blu-ray disc contains a lossless DTS 5.1 audio track of the original orchestral score by Gottfried Huppertz, performed by Berlin's Rundfunk Symphony Orchestra. Many people would have preferred the score performed by the Alloy Orchestra (who is currently touring North America with their excellent live accompaniment of "Metropolis"). I contacted Alloy Orchestra and they said the German distributors would not allow Kino to use their score on the new edition. Thus, Alloy Orchestra is selling their score on a CD disc, albeit in lossy MP3 format with only a 192 kbps bit rate. Google "alloy metropolis order" to order it.

The intertitles for the 2010 Kino edition, just like in the 2003 edition, are in English only. Whenever there is on-screen German text, English subtitles are provided and not removable. (On the British Region-B blu-ray edition by Eureka, titled "Metropolis", intertitles are in German only and supported by optional English subtitles.)

Supplements on Kino's 2010 edition do not contain any from the 2003 edition (so save that disc). Instead, we have a pretty good 50-minute documentary titled "Voyage to Metropolis", shown in HD on the Blu-ray and narrated in German with optional English subtitles, about the dramatic history of "Metropolis" up to its re-discovery in Argentina. (The same documentary is also on the Region-B disc. TCM has also broadcast another 50-min documentary on the same subject titled "Metropolis Refound", which is equally excellent but is not on home video.)

(I mentioned the Region-B Blu-ray earlier so I might as well do a comparison with the Kino edition. The HD picture quality is virtually identical on the Kino edition and the Eureka "Master of Cinema" edition from Britain. Both have the same Rundfunk Symphony Orchestra score in lossless DTS. Both have the "Voyage to Metropolis" documentary (shown in HD on Blu-ray). The Eureka disc also contains an excellent full-length audio commentary by David Kalat and Jonathan Rosenbaum, while the Kino disc has a 9-minute interview with Paula Felix-Didier, curator of the Museo del Cine in Buenos Aires. The Eureka disc also comes with a 56-page booklet of essays, interviews, and restoration notes. So in terms of supplements, the Eureka edition seems a better offer -- to those who can play Region-B discs.)

**BELOW IS MY REVIEW OF THE KINO 2003 DVD EDITION, originally posted Feb-24-2003**

This Kino Region 1-only DVD offers an almost pristine-looking video transfer of the film. The untinted, black-and-white image is clean and sharp throughout, the result of a mostly manual frame-by-frame restoration started in 1998 by Germany's F.W. Murnau Foundation. The included jacket essay gives a brief account of its efforts, as well as the work of other restorationists in the past, notably Munich Filmmuseum and film historian Enno Patalas. The DVD supplements also include an excellent mini-documentary that explains some of the technical details in the restoration.

The film's running time on this DVD is 118 minutes (not 124 as printed on the case). It is shown at the speed of 24 frames per second, an unusual frame rate for a silent film. But according to F.W. Murnau Foundation, this was the projection speed used at the film's premiere in 1927. Some viewers may find the motion a bit too fast at times due to the high frame rate. But some believe this was director Fritz Lang's way to intensify some of the action. (For those who want to watch METROPOLIS at a slower speed, there is a PC DVD player called WinDVD 4.0, which lets you extend or shorten a DVD's running time without affecting the pitch of the audio.)

This DVD only has English intertitles (supported by French and Spanish subtitles). The style, typeface, and the occasional animation in the intertitles were all re-created according to the original film. The original score by Gottfried Huppertz was also "adapted" from its 153-minute original length to the current, shorter length. This is the first time I have a chance to listen to Huppertz's elaborately orchestrated score, and it sounds terrific.

This latest restoration, unfortunately, did not recover a lot of film footage that had been missing over the years. Major sequences that were lost, such as Maria's escape from Rotwang, are still lost. To make up for this, and to make the film's plot more coherent, new intertitles were inserted to summarize the story lines of the missing footage. These intertitles are frequently seen in this restored version, a constant reminder of the large amount (a quarter of the film) of lost footage.

I did a brief side-by-side comparison between the Kino DVD and a few old video versions, and discovered the DVD actually has "alternate scenes" that were utilized for this restoration. In other words, Lang apparently shot some of the scenes *twice* (probably for domestic theaters and abroad), resulting in two versions of a scene looking slightly different. For instance, in the running competition early in the film, the winner wins by a bigger distance in all older video versions that I have seen than he does on the Kino DVD.

The DVD's audio commentary by Enno Patalas is mild disappointment. As in the Kino DVD of THE BLUE ANGEL, the comments are too sparse and not too in-depth. And long stretches of silence are frequent. The commentary is largely analytical, and it points out some of the key themes and visual motifs of the film.

The other DVD supplements include an involving 45-minute documentary that covers the making of the film, the German Expressionist period, the "unmaking" of METROPOLIS by censors and Hollywood, and a few interview segments of Lang. The still gallery contains about 90 production photos and design sketches, including about 27 photos taken from missing scenes.

34 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars WAIT! No Longer the Most Complete Version!, July 12, 2008

By 

shaxper (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Metropolis (Restored Authorized Edition) (DVD)

Kino's Restored Authorized Edition of Metropolis is undoubtedly the most superb restoration of a film ever executed. However, as of July 1st, 2008, this is no longer the most complete version of the film available. Metropolis was originally a 210 minute film which was mercilessly chopped down to an overly simplified 80 minutes. Archivists across Europe worked tirelessly to restore Metropolis to the best of their ability, producing this 124 minute version as a result -- the longest version of Metropolis to date, containing scenes and subplots that don't appear in any other version.

However, it's now been twice verified that a complete 210 minute version of the film (which wasn't supposed to exist) has been discovered in Buenos Aires and is the real thing. This Holy Grail of classic film is in poor condition and will, no doubt, take time to restore, but you can bet that restoration will begin immediately.

The point of all this: If you want to watch Metropolis NOW, then this is the version to get. However, if you're willing to wait, a perfect "Ultimate Edition" will eventually be on the way.