BERLIN (AFP) — A near complete version of German-Austrian director Fritz Lang's masterpiece "Metropolis" has been found in Argentina after a quarter of the film was believed lost for 80 years, a German film foundation said Thursday.
The Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau Foundation in Wiesbaden told AFP reels containing all but one scene of the original of the classic German silent film have been discovered by the curator of the Cinema Museum in Buenos Aires.
"Almost everything that had been missing had been found, including two key scenes," said Anke Wilkening, who is in charge of film restoration at the foundation.
Lang presented his science fiction epic in Berlin in January 1927 and it was screened in the original version here only for a few months, proving a flop with critics and audiences alike.
Afterwards, the US distributor Paramount simplified the labyrinthine plot and cut the film by nearly half an hour. The edited scenes were believed lost forever.
Foundation said in fact a copy, missing only a scene where a monk predicts that the inhabitants of Metropolis are heading for apocalypse, had been bought by the head of the Argentinian film distribution company, Terra Film.
It was taken to Buenos Aires to be screened in 1928.
The copy survived and was unearthed by Paula Felix-Didier, the curator of the Buenos Aires film museum, who has now brought it back to Germany.
"Even if the quality is poor, the Argentinian material means that the decades-old dream of putting together a full version of 'Metropolis' has come true," the foundation said.
"Metropolis" is set in a futuristic, divided city of the same name, where the elite live in luxury and workers slave underground.
A bitter conflict erupts after the son of the city's ruler falls in love with a worker striving to unite the two classes.
Battle scenes and chunks of subplot that ended on the US editor's floor can now be seen in the rediscovered version, which is about 25 minutes longer than the one known to film buffs.
According to Die Zeit newspaper, the version found in Argentina had been bought by a film critic shortly after it was screened there. He kept it for decades and only sold the reels in the 1960s.
The weekly said German film historians had used still pictures and bits of footage obtained from private collectors to try to recreate the original, but with limited success.
"We can now complete the task," the foundation said.
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