THE COMPLETE METROPOLIS (1927, Blu-ray released November 23, 2010 – MSRP $39.95)
| MOVIE: |
 |
| VIDEO: |
 |
| AUDIO: |
|
| EXTRAS: |
 |
| BLU-RAY: |
|
Stunning. Absolutely stunning. You’ll never believe how beautiful, rich and detailed an old silent, black and white film from the twenties can look in high-def until you feast your eyes on Kino‘s new The Complete Metropolis Blu-ray disc.
I’m sure you’re well familiar with Fritz Lang‘s landmark cinematic vision of the future, Metropolis. Without which there would be no Blade Runner or Star Wars or Universal Monsters or, to be frank, no films being made as we know and love them today. Yeah, it’s a pretty important piece of work that’s influenced damn near every director, screenwriter and production designer working in the medium today. But chances are, unless you were lucky enough to catch it as it played the festival circuit in the last year, you haven’t seen The Complete Metropolis – a reconstruction of the previously truncated and heavily edited original film using a newly discovered 16mm print, which brings Lang’s masterwork closer to his cut of the film than its been in decades.
The 25-minutes of added footage are a welcome addition, significantly altering the pacing and the structure of the film. But these scenes, moments and quick cuts now spliced into clean, nearly-pristine 2001 restoration appear markedly different – scratched and dirty, dull with less detail and in a slightly different aspect ratio (a black bar crops the top portion of most images). Sadly, this is the best that could be done with the newly discovered footage. In fact, there are instances where available elements were too far gone to recover and exist now in the film as text, explaining the moments of lost story. Despite the less-than-perfect nature of this “complete” edit, we film fans can now watch this, one of the finest films ever made and rejoice that we’re finally able to experience the story as it was meant to be seen.
To make a blanket statement about the quality of the image on The Complete Metropolis Blu-ray disc would be misleading but to say that the overall transfer is accurate, free of digital tampering and mostly astounding wouldn’t be steering you wrong. To be honest, I found it quite breathtaking. Sure, the source is uneven, with images ranging from rich, detailed perfection to those that are cropped, scraped, low contrast and barely watchable, but all things considered, it’s tough to complain about the results. As wonderful as it is to see this complete, restored version of Metropolis in all its high-def glory, its equally great to hear the original, full Gottfried Huppert score, presented here in both a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track and a LPCM 2.0 track. Both presentations are dynamic, full and very impressive. Intertitles are in English. There’s no option to watch with original German titles.
Special features on the Blu-ray disc are excellent but few in number. The hour-long “Voyage to Metropolis” covers the history of the film, from production to restoration, to present day. Featuring interviews with the director himself and HD production art and stills, every fan owes it to themselves to see this doc. It’s almost worth the price of the disc alone. An interview with the museum curator who discovered the 16mm print used for the new footage and a trailer for the film round out the package. Sadly, none of the extras from the 2003 release are present this time around, so you might want to hold on to your old DVD. Also absent is the commentary track from the Masters of Cinema U.K. edition of the Blu-ray (locked to Region B.) The MOC and Kino discs are otherwise identical.
Super-extra-highly recommended!
[...] READ MORE: The Complete Metropolis Blu-ray Disc Review [...]
[...] READ MORE: The Complete Metropolis Blu-ray Disc Review [...]