The magnificent Metropolis movie has been mentioned in my stream recently (hello @
Harald Eilertsen), so I thought I could again show off our Metropolis memorabilia wall. The postcards that still require proper framing usually hang between two windows.
The world premiere of the reconstruction with most of the previously missing scenes included was rightly celebrated as a cineastic and cultural event of historic significance. It's been pretty exciting, and it was the very first time I actually watched the movie, and I was amazed how atmospheric it was, how eloquent despite being a silent movie.
As there was a small exhibition with some surviving historical artefacts such as props, camera lenses, manuscripts, scores, the book and information on it's author (Lang's then wife Thea von Harbou, who later had a successful career as a screen writer under the Nazi regime while Lang divorced her and went into exile despite being offered a top job by Goebbels), costume sketches (including two reconstructed costumes), information on the restauration process and more. It was pretty well done and full of information.
https://zeitgeschichte-online.de/geschichtskultur/complete-metropolisThat book you can see in the photo is highly recommended, but sorry, German only. It's the catalogue for the exhibition, so you will be able to dive even much deeper into everything the exhibition offered, except for that you cannot walk into it. It has been quite expensive, too, but it's absolutely marvellous even if you are only able to devour all those photos. Worth the price, definetely. There still are some backmarket copies available, on average the price has not changed much.
Sketches. Manuscripts. Scripts. Portraits. Production photos. Stills. Ads. Props. The amount of information and images is immense. I still need to read all those essays, even the ones on the re-discovery are much deeper I believe than that legendary Zeit Magazin which broke the news of the rediscovery. I have got that original edition in my archive, too, but no access at the moment, so I cannot compare or put it on diplay.
Then there are information on the reconstruction, on the score and how that changed due to these new findings and certainly the movie itself.
A treasure trove and pretty hefty. Worthy of such a cinematic milestone such as Metropolis.
(That piano roll on the left is unrelated.)
https://www.zeit.de/online/2008/27/metropolis-vorab-englisch
