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301 of 309 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
At Last, May 24, 2003
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)--
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239 of 265 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
this tinted version is NOT Moroder's version, February 14, 1999
This is the 139 minute, tinted version, with the disjointed music, distributed by "JEF films" and labeled "Aikman Archive" in yellow on the box. The sound is bad and the video quality is poor. For superior video quality, get the version produced by Kino Video instead. although the Kino version has a bad sound track, at least the video quality is very good. For superior sound, get the Moroder version of Metropolis.This review assumes that you have already seen Metropolis. For those unfamiliar with Metropolis, it is considered "the" first SciFi movie -- the robot, the cool visual effects of future cities, and a few mad scientist lab scenes. But it is only a great movie IF you see the right version. Sadly, there are more then 6 versions of the film floating around -- Black/white, bad music, slow playback B/W, bad music, fast playback tinted, bad music, slow playback tinted, good music, fast playback plus a few versions with terrible video quality (the DVD version is such a case) and other versions with missing scenes, a non-logical flow to the story line due to bad editing, etc. Unfortunately, the situation with prints of Metropolis is a bit of a mess. Those looking for the tinted Girogio Moroder sound track should NOT get this tape. Although the run time of this version of the movie is 139 minutes, it is actually missing scenes that are in the 90 minute Kino Video and Moroder versions of the tape. The reason is that this 139 minute tape is run at a SLOWER speed than the Kino tape is. Also, the music is totally out of sync and unrelated to the action. Unfortunately, Moroder's copy is not available from anywhere. At $24.95, I'd hoped that the folks at Amazon.com had found a copy but this is not the case. Someone should find a good copy of the Moroder tape, sell that, and burn all of the other versions. Although some people object to Moroder's rock soundtrack, at least it follows the story line and is an excellent sound track on its own. I was fortunate enough to have seen Moroder's copy the first time I saw Metropolis and I am very glad that I did. To add further insult to injury, the CD of Moroder's soundtrack is not the same as the music that appearred in the movie. The CD has some additional songs and is missing some others. So you can't redub a video from the CD. So don't get the "Moroder CD" and expect to remix your own copy of the video. OK, having provided all of the background info, there is the review: 139-minute B&W version published by JEF films. The cover says it is a "newly restored version", but image quality is so bad that I would rather call it "newly destroyed version". It has actually more missing scenes than both Kino's and Moroder's versions, but runs longer because of slower frame speed.
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41 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Review of the Kino DVD, February 24, 2003
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 like 1931's FRANKENSTEIN as well as 1997's DARK CITY. With its imaginative set design, elaborate photography, bold editing, and its then groundbreaking special effects, this German silent classic exemplifies the highly inventive period of German Expressionism, which also include such film masterworks as THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI, NOSFERATU, THE LAST LAUGH, and DIE NIBELUNGEN (which Lang made prior to METROPOLIS).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 big margin in all older video versions that I had seen. But on the Kino DVD, the winner only wins by a hair. 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.
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