Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2724 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-01-24
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Black & White, Full Screen, PAL
• Subtitled in: English, French, Italian, Spanish
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 118 minutes

DVD Description
Fritz Lang's Metropolis is perhaps the most famous German film of all time, and certainly one of the most influential of all silent films. In its lifetime it has been: drastically re-edited (shortly after release); unseen for decades; revisioned with a modern music score in the 1980s; and thanks to the work of the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung and a network of archives all over the world, restored in 2001. This restoration of Metropolis is almost certainly the most complete and authentic version possible of Lang's original 1927 vision.

Special Features
The extensive 2001 official restoration presented for the first time in the UK or USA with original German intertitles and optional subtitles in English, French, Spanish, Italian, and German on the main feature and supplements.

Original 1927 orchestral score by Gottfried Huppertz, newly arranged by Berndt Heller.

Full length audio commentary by film historian Enno Patalas. In German audio with optional subtitles, and also presented in English audio.

The Metropolis Case (2002) - a 44-minute documentary by Enno Patalas on the making of Metropolis.

A 9-minute restoration documentary (2002) with Martin Koerber.

Production stills, posters, costume designs, stills of missing scenes, and architectural sketches.

28-page booklet containing extensive restoration notes by Martin Koerber, and writing by Otto Hunte, Günther Rittau, Aenne Willkomm, Brigitte Helm, and Rudolf Arnheim.

Synopsis
METROPOLIS, a visionary and elaborate spectacle by director Fritz Lang is an epic projection of a futuristic city divided into a working and an elite class. Its exhilarating climax brings the city to its knees, as the classes clash against each other. In the 21st-Century, a de-humanized proletariat labors non-stop in a miserable subterranean city beneath a luxurious city of mile-high skyscrapers, flying automobiles, palatial architectural idylls, tubes and tunnels. With stunningly inventive special effects, Lang's allegorical narrative and architectural vision creates a highly stylized vision of a not-so-unlikely future (especially for 1926 when the film was made.) As the elite frolic above the clouds, thousands of miserable workers toil night and day inside the belly of the gigantic machine that runs the entire city. Metropolis is controlled by a sinister authoritarian whose son, Freder, rejects his father's callous philosophy and attitude towards laborers. Meek though they are, the workers are encouraged by Maria, a wistful young woman who wills her comrades to embrace patience and silent strength. Upon discovering her influence upon the workers, a mad scientist kidnaps Maria and creates a robot in her image that will incite the workers to revolt. As Freder races against time to save Maria and curtail the damage done by her doppelganger robot, Metropolis is enveloped in chaos and the classes are brought together in a breathtaking and highly moralistic climax.