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Front cover of the Pathéscope 'house' magazine


METROPOLIS



The Pathéscope 9.5mm film boxes - prints all still made in France in 1931


SB.745 - 5 reel UK 9.5mm silent film release by Pathéscope in Dec1931 as "METROPOLIS";
  (also released as 5 reel silent by Pathé-Baby in France as SB.745 "METROPOLIS"
   and on 9.5mm also in Spain, Italy & Germany as 5 reel silent SB.745 "METROPOLIS")
  
"METROPOLIS"    GER 10Jan1927     Dir: Fritz Lang
--------------                       A U.F.A. Production
153mins (at 16fps) B/W          Produced by: Erich Pommer
(Approx 60mins on 9.5mm)        Distributed by: Parufamet
Produced at Ufa-Atelier, Neubabelsberg, Brandenburg, Germany
Assistant Director: Otto Hunte
Screenplay by: Thea von Harbou amd Fritz Lang
 from the novel Metropolis by Thea von Harbou
Photography by: Karl Freund & Günther Rittau
Special effects: Eugene Schüfftan
Art direction: Otto Hunte & Erich Kettelhut
Costumes: Aenne Willkomm
 
                    
               Original German release poster                 Another poster used on DVD release                
Cast:  
    Brigitte Helm ............  Maria (and robot double)
    Gustav Frohlich ........... Freder
    Alfred Abel ............... Joh Fredersen
    Rudolf Klein-Rogge ........ Rotwang (a scientist)
    Theodor Loos .............. Josophat
    Fritz Rasp ................ The Thin Man (Fredersen's spy) 
    Heinrich George ........... Grof
    Erwin Biswanger ........... Georgy (or 11811, a worker)
    Glaf Storm
    Hans Leo Reich
    Heinrich Gotho
    Margarete Lanner
    

Drama - The Future - In the grand city of Metropolis the rich live an idle life of pleasure on the surface, whilst underground armies of workers slave away on vast machines. Freder, son of the city's owner Joh Fredersen, wanders into the cavern, encounters the poverty and misery below and meets the saintly Maria. Rotwang, the fanatical inventor of the complex, creates a robot identical to Maria which incites the workers to revolt. The machines are destroyed but a flood endangers the underground city. The real Maria rescues the children of the workers, the robot is destroyed, Rotwang dies and reconciliation begins between Fredersen and the workers. (Description from Maurice Trace's fantastic "Guide to Pathéscope Silent 9.5mm Dramas, Thrillers, Adventures and Western Films")

This influential German science-fiction film presents a highly stylized futuristic city where a beautiful and cultured utopia exists above a bleak underworld populated by mistreated workers. When the privileged youth Freder (Gustav Fröhlich) discovers the grim scene under the city, he becomes intent on helping the workers. He befriends the rebellious teacher Maria (Brigitte Helm), but this puts him at odds with his authoritative father, leading to greater conflict. (Wikipedia)


Notes for the January 2018 showing of the rare tinted 9.5mm print at Group 9.5 London section Pinlico meeting


Directed by Fritz Lang, this acclaimed vision of a 21st century city is widely held to be one of the greatest films of the silent era. In the year 2000, industrialist John Frederson rules over a giant city where the workers exist only as an underclass. They call for rebellion, but their leader Maria urges them to wait for a mediator. When Frederson kidnaps Maria and replaces her with a robot replica, the workers are incited to revolt. Many different versions of Lang's masterpiece have been distributed over the years; this one clocks in at 118 minutes and features the original Gottfried Huppertz musical score.

If you think you know Fritz Lang's Metropolis backwards, this special edition will come as a revelation. Shortly after its premiere, the expensive epic--originally well over two hours--was pulled from distribution and re-edited against Lang's wishes, and this truncated, simplified form is what we have known ever since 1926. Though not quite as fully restored as the strapline claims, this 118-minute version is the closest we are likely to get to Lang's original vision, complete with tactful linking titles to fill in the scenes that are irretrievably missing. Not only does this version add many scenes unseen for decades, but it restores their order in the original version.

Until now, Metropolis has usually been rated as a spectacular but simplistic science fiction film, but this version reveals that the futuristic setting is not so much prophetic as mythical, with elements of 1920s architecture, industry, design and politics mingled with the mediaeval and the Biblical to produce images of striking strangeness: a futuristic robot burned at the stake, a steel-handed mad scientist who is also a 15th Century alchemist, the trudging workers of a vast factory plodding into the jaws of a machine that is also the ancient God Moloch. Gustav Frohlich's performance as the hero who represents the heart is still wildly overdone, but Rudolf Klein-Rogge's engineer Rotwang, Alfred Abel's Master of Metropolis and, especially, Brigitte Helm in the dual role of saintly saviour and metal femme fatale are astonishing. By restoring a great deal of story delving into the mixed motivations of the characters, the wild plot now makes more sense, and we can see that it is as much a twisted family drama as epic of repression, revolution and reconciliation. A masterpiece, and an essential purchase.

On the DVD: Metropolis has been saddled with all manner of scores over the years, ranging from jazz through electronica to prog-rock, but here it is sensibly accompanied by the orchestral music Gottfried Huppertz wrote for it in the first place. An enormous amount of work has been done with damaged or incomplete elements to spruce the image up digitally, and so even the scenes that were in the film all along shine with a wealth of new detail and afford a far greater appreciation for the brilliance of art direction, special effects and Helm's clockwork sexbomb.

A commentary written but not delivered by historian Ennio Patalas covers the symbolism of the film and annotates its images, but the production information is left to a measured but unchallenging 45-minute documentary on the second disc (little is made of the astounding parallel between the screen story in which Klein-Rogge's character tries to destroy the city because the Master stole his wife and the fact that Lang married the actor's wife Thea von Harbou, authoress of the Metropolis novel and screenplay!). There are galleries of production photographs and sketches; biographies of all the principals; and an illustrated lecture on the restoration process which uses before and after clips to reveal just how huge a task has been accomplished in this important work. - Kim Newman - Amazon.co.uk


  
 
  
December 1931 Pathéscope Monthly 

 
  Watch the full restored version of "Metropolis" on YouTube   
  Watch the modern trailer for the restored version of "Metropolis" on YouTube   
  Watch photographed frames from the 9.5mm 5 reel SB.745 release  "Metropolis" on YouTube

Notes:

 1. "Metropolis" had dissapeared from the Pathéscope Film Catalogue by 1936.
 2. Production (mainly at UFA's Neubabelsberg Studio in Berlin) took
    seventeen months and cost six million marks. Publicity unbelievably
    claimed that working on the film were 26,000 male extras, 11,000 female
    extras, 750 children and 100 barbers. 
 3. Parufamet was a company set up in Europe by Paramount, UFA and Metro.
 4. This film marked the screen debuts of Gustav Frolich and Brigitte Helm,
    who was only 18 and with no professional acting experience.
    
 5. After its premiere run, the film was withdrawn by the distributors
    and reappeared six months later, cut by almost a quarter to 10,630ft.
    There have been more re-issues in different versions - notably the 
    1984 edition from Giorgio Morodor which included restored footage but
    also a rock music score by Morodor and songs from the likes of Queen.
    In 2003 there was a selected cinema release of an updated print - but
    some quarters claimed that this was 20% short of the original footage.  
 6. The 'Schufftan Process' was a brilliant complex optical matte
    developed by Eugene Schufftan. It combined miniature sets and
    full size action in a single shot with the aid of mirrors.
    Eugene later moved to Hollywood where he left his mark on "Film
    Noir" lighting of the forties. His career included an Academy 
    Award for the photography of "The Hustler" (1961).
 7. Fritz Lang married Thea von Harbou in 1932 after her divorce
    from Rudolph Klein-Rogge. The pair divorced in 1933 after Lang
    emigrated to America - von Harbou, a Nazi sympathiser, remained
    in Germany and worked for UFA until its demise in 1945.
    (Goebbels had a meeting with Lang and offered him on Hitler's
    behalf the "leading position in the German film industry". The
    director, who was half-Jewish, immediately jumped on a train to 
    Paris and later to Hollywood, where he built up a substantial
    career of anti-fascist movies, Westerns and Film Noir).
 8. Brief clips appear in SB.758 "Extracts From The Pathéscope 9.5mm Catalogue" 
 (Extra Info gratefully added from 9.5 historian extraordinaire Maurice Trace)       

A superb restoration of the
film has been released on
DVD in the UK by Eureka
(including a booklet)

(try Amazon etc).


Return to: 9.5MM PATHESCOPE SILENT FILM CATALOGUE ........... ALPHA .......... NUMERIC


Created 09Mar2018 ...... Last updated: 18 March 2018 ...... 95flmcatsb745.htm ......©MMXV111 Grahame L. Newnham