Metropolis

This is a great bit of news for a classic film geek like me. The Germans were one of the first to really take advantage of film when it came out, and produced several great movies. One of them is Fritz Lang's Metropolis. The problem was, American audiences were used to 90 minute films already, and Metropolis was 210 minutes long. It got chopped up and sped up to fit the normal showing time, which made the film disjointed and difficult to follow. Still, it's considered one of the classics of early film. Sadly, the original German print had been lost, and all we had was the edited American version… until now.

The original version of Metropolis has been found! Apparently, a museum in Buenos Aires had recieved a copy of the film in 1992 from a private collection. One of the curators wondered why the showings of this print were taking so long, and sat down with their film expert, where they realized this was the original German print. It's scratched, so it will need careful restoration, but we can finally see the film as it was originally intended.