I can't wait for Kino's blu-ray!

Reminder on TCM showing the extended cut tonight. Can't be sure, but I think there's a mini-documentary afterwards about the restoration.

Thanks for the reminder! Ashamed to admit that i don't think I've ever seen the film, very much looking forward to it and the doc.

You will be amazed when you consider how long ago this movie was made.

Thanks, not only recording this but also M, The Fighting Sullivans, Birth of a Nation and Dr. Strangelove. And there is a 30 minute docu after Metropolis.

Starting now.

I watched the new restoration for the first time--It's SO much better a movie for the restored scenes. What a difference! I love that we can see what we could only previously READ about in intertitles!
The scratches on the previously missing scenes is mildly distracting at worst, so, it's a small price to pay to complete a fragmented movie and story, and for the chance to see history unfold in front of you.

The overacting and the fps are really the only things about the existing Metropolis that always bothered me.
The man in charge of the machines looks like he needs to pee really bad, and Maria always looks like she's having a seizure whenever she's afraid.

There's still footage missing too. I KNOW it's got to be out there somewhere. C'mon you fuckers! FIND IT!

First time seeing this film, and was amazed. It was great to finally see the source material for so many images in later films.

I watched the documentary today and got emotional, feeling the sheer joy of the various film historians as they saw their holy grail for the first time.

I am SO buying the restoration BD and devouring the film again, and all the supplements.

I started watching this today, but I realized it's going to take me longer than the 2 and a half hour run time, since I keep stopping to think about it. It's amazing how much shortening a scene changes it.

Near the beginning of the movie, in the Garden of Earthly Delights, Maria enters with a group of children, to show the children their "brothers". In the old edit, this is mostly Freder's introduction to Maria and after she's quickly shooed away, he follows her to the underground city.

I wondered what Maria's incentive was for bringing the children up to show them the rich privileged. Not to give them something to aspire to, since the worker class stays in the underground. To show them how some people are well off?

The original edit draws this scene out significantly longer. Not only does she inform the children that the elite before them are their brothers, she addresses the same comment to the elites. There's a period that the two groups are looking at each other, almost that they can't figure each other out. And instead of Maria being whisked away, the attending guards momentarily pause in their tracks as Maria stares them down. Before, Maria was just the love interest of Freder, but now she's a stronger character.

Another lengthening of a scene shows us how much more heartless Joh Fredersen is. We see him in his office, dictating to several record keepers scribbling furiously. When Freder enters, after seeing the workers in the underground and witnessing the explosion at the M-Machine, Joh motions for Freder not to interrupt. Joh continues his dictation and Josephat tends to Freder. We see Freder pouring out his experience to Josephat. This part is not specifically titled, but I imagine the Freder explaining his horror of seeing the working conditions and it's only until he mentions the explosion does Joh pause his dictation. It seems to me that the old edit has Joh regard the worker's conditions as a necessary evil, but seeing the original edit, Joh essentially has disdain for the workers, caring more about the machinery than the people. Even Freder is surprised hearing this from his own father.

Oddly enough, I still refer back to my Madacy copy of Metropolis, to compare the changes in the story and to appreciate the restoration.

I took that scene as not so much for the children to see the rich but for the rich to see the children.

This film seems even more poignant now that it ever has, substitute factories and machines for office buildings and computers.