CineSavant Column
Hello! More Metropolis madness!
It’s a wave of Metropolis items today, cued when correspondent Ian Whittle sent along an image of the cover graphic for an old Australian VHS release — where somebody made a rather creative photo choice. → It goes into the hopper labeled ‘what’s wrong with this picture?’
The source is an older blog called The Buffalo Report. The blog is an interesting catch-all, and its writer (R.J. Buffalo?) doesn’t date things consistently. At first glance, we wonder if his intention is to slam the famed Fritz Lang movie. His initial quote is “Metropolis is an embarrassingly dreadful movie that is strangely addictive.” But he then goes on to prove his obsession with the film.
His initial blog appears to be When Metropolis Was on PBS. We saw it here in Los Angeles on our local PBS station late in 1978, touted as a UK restoration. But Buffalo then continues with a long string of pages devoted to the Fritz Lang movie — 48 lengthy blog entries on the subject. They’re loaded with interesting observations and images, and scans of vintage newspaper articles. Metropolis received heavy editorial coverage wherever it played.
The first numbered entry is titled Where It All Started. Included in the second posting are numerous newspaper articles reporting on and debating the merit of Channing Pollock’s notorious cut-down re-edit, that became the film’s (incoherent) international release version — and that was still deemed a masterpiece. But none of the 1927 editorials ask if Fritz Lang’s original is being retained.
Buffalo also links to the heavily researched and annotated posts of Michael Organ, an Australian. I see one string of his Metropolis- themed blogs beginning at this link — it seems to be fairly recent. An example is a page from 2022 entitled ‘Film Censor Cards and Lengths … which has an entire glossary of the film’s original German intertitles, with English translations. It’s claimed to be complete.
We see cards that correspond to scenes only in the ‘Complete’ version … which is very interesting. Will this intertitle resource include titles from pieces of scenes still missing, and perhaps clear up some of the film’s remaining mysteries? Even the Complete Version feels abridged, continuity-wise.
We’re still floored by Aitam Bar-Sagi’s post for his The Film Music Museum page, entitled Metropolis Around the World. He updates the page as new information arrives. The long article gathers hard data, all documented, on where the film was shown and its exact length in different releases. Most are accompanied by original ads. It appears that Argentina received an uncut Metropolis premiere print because an exhibitor there made an early deal with UfA. His copy was struck and shipped to Buenos Aires before the Americans hired Channing Pollock to cut the movie down by half.
Aitam was a DVD Savant / CineSavant correspondent for quite a while back when the first pre-Argentina Murnau Stiftung restoration was done. Our screening at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Bing Theater (since demolished) was a big deal, right after 9/11. The beautiful print was screened at 20 fps and Robert Israel provided a full music accompaniment. Mr. Bar-Sagi became a noted research contributor on subsequent restoration work.
I’m saving these links for further study … all this key source information is really fascinating. We plan to use one of the censor intertitle logs to read along with the video’s German inter-titles, and hopefully discover some new ones not in the ‘Complete’ video version.
(Note: all of the graphics enlarge.)
Plus, a couple of extra announcements: the esteemed Alan K. Rode wants to spread the word that his Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival is having its 25th annual meet in May, out in the desert of Palm Springs, California. →
The screenings run from May 9-12 … they’re showing Body and Soul, No Man of Her Own, Across the Bridge and others; several screenings have special guests. The full info is at
← And Tom Weaver is spreading the word that the Ed Wood-written monster opus The Bride and the Beast, with Tom’s fun audio commentary, can now be watched on Youtube.
The movie is funny by itself, but Tom’s commentary (from 2005?) enlists the film’s star Charlotte Austin, actor Slick Slavin and movie gorilla expert (and a lot more) Bob Burns.
CineSavant was tickled to learn that Ms. Austin interrupts the commentary because she wanted to read a funny excerpt from a review she found online … and it’s the old DVD Savant review. The comment begins at 50:40.
The Bride and the Beast Commentary Version
Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson