MuseumOfCinema

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  • Metropolis gets twenty-five minutes of lost footage, please don't tell Giorgio Moroder

    by 
    Joseph L. Flatley
    Joseph L. Flatley
    08.27.2010

    Metropolis, Fritz Lang's 1927 epic, predated many of our own cinematic obsessions by decades. At over two and a half hours this heady mix of dystopian science fiction and German Expressionism divided critics upon its initial release, even as it is now universally praised. Indeed, as a result of its length (not to mention the squeamishness of American distributors) the thing has been variously edited (cannibalized) over the years, to the point where it was doubtful that we would ever get to see it the way that the director intended. That's why we were psyched when we came across this clip from BBC's Newsnight detailing the discovery of what is presumed to be a copy of the original director's print, which was taken to Argentina by a private collector in 1928, where it sat until discovered in an archive of the Museum of Cinema in Buenos Aires in June, 2008. Wild, huh? Hit the source link to watch the clip.