#metropolis

Movie of the Day: Giorgio Moroder's Metropolis

I know this version of the movie gets a lot of flack, but it's actually an important step on the road to having a complete restoration of Fritz Lang's masterwork.

Metropolis originally premiered in Munich on January 10, 1927 with a running time of 153 minutes, but over time, the premiere cut was lost. Even though cinematographer Karl Freund followed the usual practice of the time and struck three negatives, all three were cut into and partially destroyed; two by Paramount Pictures when they edited it for release in the US and the UK, and the third by original studio UFA itself to shorten the running time for general release in April 1927.

Enter music producer Giorgio Moroder. He admired the film and paid $200,000 for the rights (outbidding David Bowie), intending to create a new soundtrack for the film. What surprised him is that there was no definitive print of the movie available, and expanded his project into a major restoration. Working with the Munich Film Archive, he found elements of the film that had gone missing. Though he tinted scenes and replaced the intertitles with subtitles and sped up the frame rate (and added the controversial soundtrack), and it only ran 83 minutes, until 2001 (and 2010, when the complete version was finally found), Moroder's restoration of Metropolis was the most complete version available.

When the film was released on August 10, 1984, reviews were overwhelmingly negative. The soundtrack was the biggest stick point for critics. Moroder created an electronic musical score, but also filled the soundtrack with new songs he had written that were performed by Adam Ant, Pat Benatar, Billy Squier, Jon Anderson, Cycle V, Loverboy, Freddie Mercury and Bonnie Tyler (who earned a Grammy nomination). Moroder was especially angry about critics who lambasted him for not being faithful to the original, saying "I didn't touch the original because there is no original."

I saw this version in my high school science fiction lit class. It was the first time I'd ever seen Metropolis outside of clips used in things like Muppet Babies or weird comedy shows and movies. I think Moroder deserves credit for making not just an enjoyable experience, but for his restoration work.

You know where this is going...

Album of the Day: Metropolis (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Fritz Lang probably didn't expect that his film would one day carry an electro synthpop soundtrack, but here it is. I honestly think the soundtrack is great as just a standalone album. I don't think it "ruins" the movie; it's not everyone's cup of tea, sure, but the histrionics of the negative reviews are just foolish. Given the state of what remains of the Silent Era, we should happy this movie survived in any form. To paraphrase Roger Ebert, the movie survived the Nazis and the censors, it can survive Adam Ant and Pat Benatar, too.