Derek Scallyreports on the discovery in an archive in Buenos Aires of a lost complete version of a masterpiece of German cinema.
GERMAN CINEPHILES are rejoicing at the sensational discovery of a long-lost complete copy of Fritz Lang's 1927 masterpiece Metropolis.
The film is considered one of Germany's greatest cinematic achievements, even though it only existed in a truncated form.
Now a scratchy, full-length copy of the film has turned up in an archive in Argentina.
"The discovery of the material thought to be lost forever leads to a new understanding of Fritz Lang's masterpiece," said Helmut Possmann, of the Murnau Foundation, which holds the rights to the film.
Metropolis, written and directed by Lang, was an epic treatment of class struggle set in 2026 and told with the aid of striking images, more than 37,000 extras, 200,000 costumes and perhaps cinema's most famous robot.
After giving Lang two years and five million marks ($200 million) to make the film, UFA studio faced ruin after Metropolisopened to mixed reviews.
UFA gave in to the demands of US distributors who complained that the film was too long and excised a quarter of the footage, including scenes key to the plot.
No original complete negative was preserved and, after combing film libraries around the world, a 2001 "restored" version used film stills to fill in the blanks.
Unknown until now, an Argentinian film distributor bought a copy of the complete film in 1928.
After changing hands several times, the copy, with its precious extra 25 minutes of footage landed, unremarked upon, in the archive of the Museo del Cine in Buenos Aires.
Its existence only came to light through a remark heard by chance 20 years ago by Fernando Pena, now a Buenos Aires film museum curator. "I remembered an elderly projectionist at a cinema club complaining, 'It's bad enough I have to show such a poor quality copy of Metropolis, but it's getting hard at my age to stand at the projector for two hours, holding the film to make sure it doesn't spring out.'"
Knowing that only the original version of the film was that long, he told his then wife, Paula Félix-Didier, and then forgot about it.
When Ms Félix-Didier became head of the Buenos Aires Museo del Cine in January, she went straight to the archive to check its print.
"It only took 20 minutes," said Ms Félix-Didier to Germany's Die Zeitnewspaper yesterday.
"We looked in the index, the archivist got the reels. Fernando held one to the light and said 'Está todo' - it's all there."
The film is a 16mm copy of the original, highly combustible negative.
Although the copy is very badly scratched, the Murnau Foundation is considering making of it a new complete version of the epic.
"Even if the footage is of inferior quality I think most people would rather see the film with it than without it," said Peter Walsh, cinema manager and programmer at the Irish Film Institute. "It's one of the few films from that era that still really excites people, so the excitement about this discovery will not be restricted to archivists and film buffs."