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Only the Heart can Mediate between the Head and the Hands

It may not seem like much to you, but A COMPLETE PRINT OF THE LONG-LOST FRITZ LANG’S METROPOLIS HAS BEEN FOUND!

Here is the link. It had been thought lost forever. A full 210 minute reel of the film, containing the lost scenes, was found in a museum in Argentina.

I just spent an evening, not to long ago, hunched over my television watching a reconstruction of the original, painstakingly restored. These people did things like compare the original title cards to the notes on the music score to try to figure out what had been in the missing scenes. Even so, the missing scenes were still missing, so I got to see card saying: “Rotwang discovers Fredersen in the temple facing the larger-than-life statue of his dead wife, Hel,” or what have you.

It seems someone has a print, a full print. The missing scenes are no longer missing.

Editors butchered the scenes in this silent masterpiece of Science Fiction, ripping out whole plotlines, and making certain remaining scenes simply senseless. (In the original, the mad scientist Rotwang hates Joh Freder, the master of the city, and seeks to destroy him: in the cut version, Rotwang is helping Freder, and the robot is allegedly meant to replace the workingmen, rather than replace the dead wife both men loved, and the betrayal of Freder is left unexplained.)

By the beard of Saint James Matamoros, I’d love to see an uncut, restored, complete version.

About

John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.

July 3, 2008 @ 11:43 am
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