Metropolis is a 1927
German expressionist science-fiction film directed by
Fritz Lang. The film was written by Lang and his wife
Thea Von Harbou, and starred
Brigitte Helm,
Gustav Fröhlich,
Alfred Abel and
Rudolf Klein-Rogge. The film was produced in the
Babelsberg Studios by
UFA.
Made in Germany during the
Weimar Period,
Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban
dystopia, and follows the attempts of Freder, the son of a wealthy intellectual, and Maria, whose background is not fully explained in the film, to overcome the vast gulf separating the classist nature of their city.
Metropolis was filmed in 1925, at a cost of approximately four million
ℛℳ.
[2] The film was met with a mixed response upon its initial release, with many critics praising its technical achievements while deriding its simplistic and naïve storyline. Due both to its long running-time and footage censors found questionable,
Metropolis was cut substantially after its German premiere; large portions of the film were lost over the subsequent decades.
Numerous attempts have been made to restore the film since the 1970s-80s, and music producer
Giorgio Moroder released a version with a soundtrack by pop artists such as
Freddie Mercury and
Adam Ant in 1984. A new reconstruction of
Metropolis was shown at the Berlin Film Festival in 2001, and the film was inscribed on
UNESCO's
Memory of the World Register in the same year.
[3] In 2008, a print of Lang’s original cut of the film was found in a museum in
Argentina. After a long restoration process, the restored film was shown on large screens in
Berlin and
Frankfurt simultaneously on 12 February 2010.
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