It has been a little over 10 years since a battered 16mm print of the original version of METROPOLIS was discovered in a museum archive in Argentina. That coupled with the recovery of the original German censorship records from 1927 which contained a complete listing of all the intertitles, has finally made it possible to reconstruct the movie the way Fritz Lang wanted it to be. What a huge difference between what we had before and what we have now.
The most notable difference aside from the running time (2 1/2 hours as opposed to 2) is in the movie’s scenario which is now clarified to where it actually makes sense and expanded to where the film is so much more than just a science-fiction saga of a dystopian future. In addition to the sci-fi there are elements of social commentary, religious allegory, a revenge motive, and not one but two love stories. One is of a love that was lost and the other of a love that was gained.
The story of love lost was removed right after the film’s premiere to make the the running time shorter. As this was a key element, it was this removal that has made METROPOLIS so confusing for all these years. Rotwang the inventor didn’t originally create the robot Maria to provide mechanical workers, he was trying to replace his true love whom he lost to the Master of Metropolis and who died giving birth to their son, Freder, the film’s protagonist. Only later does Rotwang conceive of using the robot as an instrument of revenge. The fact that the lost love’s name was Hel ( a goddess in Norse mythology) is why that part of the plot was removed for English speaking audiences. Three guesses as to why.
Like many other reviewers, when i first saw the completed version, I was disappointed by the quality of the missing scenes. There’s no mistaking where they have been inserted as they are, even after restoration, grainy 16mm as opposed to pristine 35mm and at first it was very distracting. But after watching the movie a second time, I was used to them and realized that they provided a perfect visual record of what had been cut from the film. It became a textbook example of post-release tampering in action. How often does a movie watcher get to see that?
In addition to the so-called “Hel” scenes, most of the missing material centers around the character of the Thin Man, a surrogate who serves the Master of Metropolis as his eyes and ears. Sometimes he uses bribes, other times physical force to get what he wants. He is played by Fritz Rasp, a Lang regular whose rodent like features made him one of Weimar Cinema’s most celebrated bad guys. His part is critical in Freder’s fever dream as a monk who pronounces doom on the city. A prophecy which is fulfilled by the robot Maria lookalike who turns friend against friend. Some of those scenes were also censored.
METROPOLIS is a complex, multi-layered film that reveals more of itself with each viewing. This is primarily due to the often maligned story by Fritz Lang’s wife Thea von Harbou. There is much more there than the “mediator between the head and hands must be the heart” final title card. That is especially true in the complete version that we now have. Watch it a few times and you’ll discover that once you get past Fritz Lang’s astonishing visuals, there is a wealth of thematic material within the supposedly simple screenplay to process. Of all the many versions of METROPOLIS out there, this is the only one that allows you to do that.
The Capsule Critic 