Metropolis Refound (2010)

The Worst Film Ever

Please don't spend money on this.

Excellent adaptation.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Metropolis Refound (2010) **** (out of 4) This terrific documentary covers the history of Fritz Lang's METROPOLIS and how it was eventually discovered in an nearly uncut form in 2008. The documentary by directors Evangelina Loguercio, Laura Tusi, Sebastian Yablon and Diego Panich is pretty remarkable in its own right because they took cameras to all the major events surround the film's discovery. This includes them showing it to a film buff who would know it was uncut, showing it to the Murnau Foundation who were the people who had the money to restore it and they even have cameras going during a session where the clips are shown to the press. The funniest moment happens during one of these press screenings where someone complains about the sound missing but the person obviously didn't realize it was a silent movie. The documentary runs just under 40-minutes and it's pretty funny to see how much suspense the filmmakers build up because it becomes rather obvious that this print should have been discovered during the late 80s and again in the 90s and again a few years later but a variety of reasons kept it from being found. Hearing from those who finally found the uncut version was pretty neat as well because they are now pretty much a part of film history and certainly heroes to many people. Another great thing is that the documentary goes over the history of the film itself and how it was sold, re-edited and eventually lost. A lot of detail is given about this history including how the uncut print was saved after all these years. We also get a great education on this Argentinian print, which not only is uncut but it also features a lot of alternate takes and alternate footage. One can only hope that someone releases this version of the movie in its complete form. Watching this documentary makes you aware that miracles can happen when it comes to finding lost movies and it also makes you aware that there are probably many lost films out there waiting to be discovered yet for a variety of reasons it's just not possible to get to them. Hopefully with all the press surrounding METROPOLIS being discovered this will get various foundations to work together better.

Not a great piece of non fiction film, talking head interviews spaced by scratchy shots from the DVD off the sixteen millimeter dupe neg, but particularly interesting for film freaks. The Argies were ignored, when they wrote Germany to say they had the film complete with missing material. However someone gets to see their DVD and there is dropping of jaws. Enno Patalas, was gratified that he had just about put his reconstruction back the way it was meant to go. One of the One of the Argentinians adds that it was all right to extend the German version (which is much better quality) but Argentinian one was a work in itself, made from a second negative, having different paced versions of the same scenes and shots with different details,The most winning subject is the girl who grins into the camera at the end and says "I found Metropolis. I found Metropolis!"