![Metropolis [Combo Blu-Ray + DVD]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51pgipqwwaL._SX300_SY300_QL70_ML2_.jpg)
![Giorgio Moroder Presents Metropolis: Special Edition [Blu-ray] by Kino Lorber films by Giorgio Moroder Fritz Lang](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51Wp3LJXQSL._AC_UL160_SR160,160_.jpg)
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**12/9/10: ADDED REVIEW OF 2010 KINO "THE COMPLETE METROPOLIS" BLU-RAY (ASIN: B0040QYROK) AND DVD (ASIN: B0040QYROA)**
**12/9/10: ADDED REVIEW OF 2010 REGION-B EUREKA "METROPOLIS" BLU-RAY (Amazon UK ASIN: B0041SMF50)**
**2/24/03: REVIEW OF 2003 KINO "METROPOLIS" DVD (ASIN: B00007L4MJ)
I'm lumping my reviews together, just like what Amazon is doing! The above 4 video editions of the German silent classic will be covered in this review. Also, see my video clip on the left to see disc covers, film clip comparisons, etc. (Those who can't see my video clip, especially iOS users who can't see flash video, please go to Amazon's FULL site and look under my review for the comment section, where I posted an external link to the video.)
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".
In 2011, Kino released the 1984 "Giorgio Moroder" version of the classic on Blu-ray and DVD. This version controversially contains a rock score accompaniment which, to many people, myself included, is quite inappropriate for the film. Moroder, a record producer and an Oscar-winning songwriter ("Take My Breath Away", "Flashdance... What a Feeling"), deserves credit for restoring the previously butchered film to a presentable 82-minute version, but he added a few butcherings of his own. Intertitles were replaced with subtitles. Additional special effects were added. And instead of a traditional score, Moroder naturally used what he knew best: a pop rock score with pop rhythm and beats that don't really mesh with the images. His score is not just intrumental, but it comprises of fully-written songs sung by Pat Benatar, Freddie Mercury, and others, essentially turning the film into one big music video. What Moroder didn't understand was that in a music video, the song is the centerpiece; but in a film, the IMAGE has to be the center. A piece of film has its own rhythm and beats too. Every cut, motion, close-up, etc, gives the image its rhythm, which Moroder has to understand is not always four-quarter time. There are a few instrumental passages in the score, and they fare better and are less detrimental to the flow of the images. But most of the score are songs. The chapter listing shows the song titles and artists' names, but no subtitles are offered for the lyrics. The quality of the songs vary, with Benatar's "Here's My Heart" seemingly the most effective, showing that Moroder at least paid attention to the movie's theme about the heart being the mediator in any struggle. The picture quality is presentable, but Kino makes it clear on the back cover that this is an unrestored, straight transfer from an old print. The Blu-ray does not look as good as other Blu-ray editions. There are a fair amount of print damages and the picture looks a bit dark at times. But the details of the high-def 1080p picture does come through, making this Blu-ray the best-looking edition of Moroder's Metropolis. The score is offered in lossless DTS 5.1 on the Blu-ray (Dolby 5.1 on the DVD) and it sounds fine. The Blu-ray also offers a lossless LPCM stereo track for those with legacy equipments. Bonus features include a 17-minute documentary (in English with no subtitles) that provides a cursory coverage of the German silent film history, the history of "Metroplis", and Moroder's restoration. Two trailers and 11 high-quality scans of publicity stills are also included.
Currently, the "go-to" version of the Lang classic is the 2010 Kino Region-A Blu-ray edition and its corresponding Region-1 DVD edition. They are titled "The Complete Metropolis" to avoid confusion with other editions. They contain, 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 newly-composed score by the Alloy Orchestra, who have actually toured North America with their excellent live accompaniment of the complete "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.
If you are a purist who wants to see original German intertitles, the same thing German audiences saw back in 1927, you need to get the British Region-B "Masters of Cinema" Blu-ray or its corresponding Region-2 DVD edition by Eureka, titled "Metropolis". They can be ordered at Amazon UK. North American viewers would need a multi-region player to play Region-B or 2 discs, however. The intertitles on these discs 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 TCM channel has also broadcast another excellent, 50-min documentary on the same subject titled "Metropolis Refound", but it is not available on any home video.
The Eureka Region-B Blu-ray's HD picture quality is virtually identical to the Kino Blu-ray edition. Both editions 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.
**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.
