Metropolis Background Information

Austrian Director Fritz Lang made what is arguably the first true science fiction movie in 1926. The film was released in 1927 and like modern day movies featuring special effects, cost a whopping cost 7 million Reichmarks.

Written by Frit'z wife, Thea von Harbou, Metropolis has a moral tale on the human condition. The head plans, while the hands build and a mediator is need between them both. Set in the year 2026, it features a future dysopia in which the workers are exploited and oppressed by the ruling elite.

Thea (Frit's wife) wrote the screenplay in 1924 and it was published as a novel in 1925. When the movie was released in Germany it was a flop and so the re-editing began. There are now many different version of the 'original movie' from a brief 63 minutes to a more substantial 139.

In particular, the US version of the film was almost completely re-edited to provide a simpler story line. As the Nazi's destroyed the original negatives and prints, it was the US version that many people were familiar with. It seemed that Metropolis might remain an interesting, but sadly lost, milestone in cinema.

In 1984, suitable enough, Georgio Moroder released a restored version of the film. Georgio is a fan of Metropolis and not only attempted to re-create the original movie as much as possible (including adding some montages and newly-shot film element) but added a modern elements such as colour, spot SFX and a contemporary music score. Although not widely popular - and in some cases quite scorned - Giorgio's version re-introduced Metropolis to a whole new generation in the most extended form available since it's initial release.

Robot Transformation and Reveal clips

The following clips are available on YouTube. The quality has been reduced by YouTube unfortunately, but it sill looks nice.

If you jump over to YouTube, you can actually request the higher quality version.

Note at the end of the clip, when the robot face transforms into Maria's features, I have re-built it so that the Robot and Maria's eyes and mouth match up. I just had to fix this as the miss-match in the original was driving me nuts!

Here another clip showing the robot being revealed for the first time. There's ton of details in this version that simply cant be seen in the original Moroder release.

Not quite done - of course

Yup, once I viewed the final compressed MPEG version of Metropolis, I saw an error in the pre-titles which needed fixing. Great. So another 8 hours will be needed to re-compress the whole darn thing.

I thought I'd show some examples of the improvement in the video quality using the restored footage on some iconic scenes from the film. It was this improvement that started me on this whole adventure.

I've got several versions of Giorgio Moroder's edit - all of varying quality. One is from laser disc, so the images are fairly sharp but the colour quality is poor. Another seems to be a DVD rip from VHS (although I was assured that it was the only commercial DVD pressing) , so the quality isn't great but the colour fidelity is better. 

The examples below compare my red-edited versions on the left, with the corresponding frame (as close as I could get it) from the DVD-VHS rip on the right. These images are un-retouched, except for matching the image size and scaling to fit this page.

It's immediately clear that the restored footage has a much larger frame size and includes much more edge detail. The contrast is much smoother in the restored footage - even though it looks a little bit more washed out. The high contrast in the original Moroder version simply hides so much detail.

This shot also shows the detail lost in the original Moroder version. If I hadn't known there was a building right in the background, I never would have noticed it in the right half. There are also planes in the sky on the right but they're barely visible.

Look at the pentagram in the background, which is completely invisible on the right! It's also possible to make out in the restored footage that the robot is lit under spotlights but impossible to tell in the Moroder footage. There's a lot more detail of the machinery in the restored footage too.

Here's another classic shot (sorry I couldn't match up the 'light ovals' exactly). Not only do you see more of the frame but all that extra detail just jumps right out.

Here are a couple of clips showing comparisons from two of the same scenes as above. The quality have been reduced by YouTube unfortunately, but you get the idea.

The re-edit is complete! (I hope)

Finally I think the re-edit of Giorgio Moroder's 1984 version of Ftiz Lang's classic Metropolis is complete. I'm now doing a final high quality DVD compress - which should take another 7 hours, according to my compressor. I told you it was high quality.

For this re-edit I've taken the latest restored black and white footage of Fritz Lang's 1927 classic and done a complete shot-for-shot re-edit to remake Giorgio Moroder's 1984 version of the film with the latest visuals.

Why would I do such a thing?

I love the film. I first saw it on TV in the 80s and video taped it then. I thought it was great for a movie made in the 1920s but the film quality wasn't great (nor was my video recording).

Then I saw the 2002 Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau Foundation version in the cinema at a film festival and was blown away by the visual quality! There was so much detail that I'd never seen before.

So when this came out on DVD, I decided to re-edit the footage to re-create Giorgio Moroder's version but with clean visuals, new colour, fresh subtitles & inter-titles, new SFX and restored digital sound. Sounds really easy if you say it fast.

It's taken a while (interpretation: about 2 years) as I've had a couple of disk crashes and had a baby arrive.

I can't wait to burn the DVD and put it in the DVD player for a final view (and check).

Yes, I'll post some screen-shots and clips here soon.