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Lost Masterpiece Fragments Found in Argentina

In a Buenos Aires museum, on July 3, cuts from the 1927 Fritz Lang movie classic Metropolis were shown for the first time since it was cut by its original distributors. The find has astonished film historians and fans of the German sci-fi masterpiece.

metrop 2

The director of the Museum of Cinema in Buenos Aires, Paula Felix-Didier told a press conference on July 3, that this is now part of the only complete copy of the influential movie. Writen by Fritz Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou, the movie shows a 21st century world which divides people into underworld and ruling thinkers.

It was originally three and a half hours long and in Germany's Weimar Republic, it was cut for public showing. However a collector managed to take a complete copy to Argentina. Film historian Fernando Pena in the 1980s persuaded the archives to check for a fuller version than the one in circulation. In April, the three reels the search turned up were opened and Felix-Didier flew to the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Institute in Wiesbaden, Germany to verify the find.

For Kino International, the company in the US that has been distributing the title, a re-version and re-release is being considered. For the moment the film is staying with the Museum in Argentina however.

Released in 1927, Metropolis is set a century later. metrop 1With its cold epic vision of a mechanised society, Metropolis forged a model for generations of science fiction cinema; its influence extends from Blade Runner to Fahrenheit 451 and Star Wars. In depicting a tumultuous class struggle in a vast, urban society, the title was a shoo-in as the first film to be entered into UNESCO's Memory of the World Register which aims to preserve cultural achievements of outstanding significance.metrop 3

However, the silent film was not a commercial success and nearly ruined the studio behind it. According to some estimates, it still ranks as one of the most expensive movies ever. In every sense these additional reels lend the title the air of a rediscovered masterpiece. "This is the version Fritz Lang intended," said Martin Koerber, a curator at the Deutsche Kinemathek film museum in Berlin, Germany.

Posted:  July 11, 2008 at 15:33

Filed under: General

Author: Steve Bergson

Last edit: July 11, 2008 - 16:04

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