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http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=5036
Kino Lorber has announced that it will release Metropolis on Blu-ray on November 16. Fritz Lang's 1927 science-fiction masterpiece will be presented with 25 minutes of lost footage and the original Gottfried Huppertz score, performed by the Rundfunk Symphony Orchestra, Berlin, conducted by Frank Strobel, in DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1.
When it was first screened in Berlin on January 10, 1927, Metropolis ran an estimated 153 minutes. After its premiere engagement, in an effort to maximize the film's commercial potential, the film's distributors (UFA in Germany, Paramount in the US) drastically shortened the film, which had been a major disappointment at the German box office. By the time it debuted in the United States later that year, the film ran approximately 90 minutes (exact running times are difficult to determine because silent films were not always projected at a standardized speed).
The most recent restoration of the film (that of 2001) combined footage from four archives and ran at 124 minutes; at the time, it was widely believed to be the most complete version of Metropolis possible.
However, in 2008, the curator of the Buenos Aires Museo del Cine discovered a 16mm dupe negative that was considerably longer than any existing print: it included no less than 25 minutes of "lost" footage never seen since its 1927 Berlin debut. This called for a new restoration, executed by Anke Wilkening of the Murnau Stiftung (Foundation) -the German institution that is the caretaker of virtually all pre-1945 German films-, Martin Koerber, Film Department Curator of the Deutsche Kinemateque and on the music side, by Frank Stoebel.
This new 147-minute version (being released as The Complete Metropolis) premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, and then opened theatrically in April 2010 earning over $350,000 at the box office. Since its original restoration, Metropolis has gone on to earn $1,000,000 in theatrical ticket sales.
It has been noted that the integration rediscovered footage in the movie cannot be seamless: "The rediscovered sections which change the film's composition," said Ms Wilkening, "and at the same time always be recognizable through their damages as those parts that had been lost for 80 years."
The special features of the Blu-ray include:
Voyage to Metropolis, a 50-minute documentary on the making and restoration of the film (in HD)
Interview with Paula Felix-Didier, curator of the Museo del Cine, Buenos Aires, where the missing footage was discovered
2010 re-release trailer
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