European TV network ARTE will be premiering the newly restored cut of Fritz Lang’s 1927 science-fiction classic Metropolis on February 12 at 8:35pm (broadcast in France and Germany). The premiere is to simultaneously stream here. (Now, if the premiere is at 8:35 in Germany, it should begin around 2:35pm EST.)
This cut will include nearly 30 minutes of new footage, discovered in the Museo del Cine in Buenos Aires in 2008.
The total running time of the film in this broadcast will be 150 minutes, followed by a documentary about the film’s decades-long international odyssey, and the differing versions that have resulted.
Heavily truncated since its original, epic release in Germany by UFA, Lang’s film became renowned as the first true science fiction masterpiece, with sprawling sets and special effects arguably unequaled, even by Hollywood, until the 1950′s, when studios like MGM and Paramount began to fund films like Forbidden Planet and War of the Worlds.
Brigitte Helm’s dual role as a beautiful humanist and her evil, robotic doppelganger became a visual touchstone for nearly every robot character to follow, from iRobot to C-3PO. Every film depicting the future, from Blade Runner and The Fifth Element, to Akira and The Matrix, owes something to Lang’s bold art-deco vision of class inequality and humanism.
Click here to see ARTE’s entry on the event (in German).
The film will make its United States premiere at the Turner Classic Movies’ Classic Film Festival, April 22-25 in Los Angeles. Tickets and information for that festival are available here.
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