“Best film news in 80 years,” my friend Joseph Failla notes of the report that a complete version of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, long only available in a substantially truncated multi-source restoration, has been unearthed in Buenos Aires. (Yes, I wish I could say that Borges had reviewed this movie. But my copy of his selected non-fiction work yields no such notice.) My ever-stalwart pal David Hudson at Greencine Daily has been tracking the story, which is a brilliant jaw-dropper. That the Murnau Foundation, which did all the great work that went into the wonderful version of Metropolis that was released on disc by both Eureka!/Masters of Cinema (my preferred version) and Kino, now has another very substantial job of work before it, must be simultaneously maddening and exhilarating.
I love stories like this, and I kind of hate them, too, because they invite us to dream. If there has been, all this time, a complete Metropolis out there, why can’t there be a complete…well, you know the titles. Ambersons. Greed. Some of you may remember the cruel false alarm sounded over Murnau’s Four Devils a while back. What this discovery proves is that almost anything is, it turns out, possible. What are the films we should be looking for in the light of this discovery? Whose are the attics that should be (politely) raided?
I wouldn’t mind seeing the song-and-dance version of Brooks’ I’ll Do Anything.
Romero’s 3‑hour Martin would be interesting, if only for the endurance test.
I wouldn’t mind seeing The Shining with the original ending.
Anything Harvey Weinstein thought he could improve, particularly Gangs of New York and All the Pretty Horses.
The Adrien-Brody-co-starring cut of The Thin Red Line.
It’d be nice if either Scorsese or Robertson went looking for additional numbers from The Last Waltz.
I know thewse are mostly modern-day movies, but they’re just as important.
A complete version of “Lost Horizon” would be great, too.
But this full “Metropolis” is quite the find!
That is the funniest macro I have ever seen. Inappropriate ones are the best.
Wow.
A good print of Republic’s “Drums of Fu Manchu” would be nice.
The current one on VCI is just serviceable.…
So who has a copy of LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT?
CONVENTION CITY, as well as a number of lost Raymond Griffiths (e.g., the last reel of PATHS TO PARADISE and all of WEDDING BILLS).
Sorry. too esoteric?
No, we LIKE esoteric here…
It wouldn’t be as momentous a find as the remaining hours of ‘Greed’, but if Stroheim’s second feature, ‘The Devil’s Passkey’ were to resurface, it would certainly put a smile on this kisser.
Magnificent Ambersons.
I know you asked for others, but that’s the one that keeps me up nights, dreaming of that party sequence, one long shot as Welles planned it.
But since you asked, there are so many silents I’d love to see.
Bits of Life (Marshall Neilan. Lon Chaney’s filmography is missing a lot, or does it just seem that way?)
The Queen of Sheba (discussed in The Parade’s Gone By)
The Mountain Eagle (Hitchcock)
Legion of the Condemned (Wellman)
Treasure Island (Maurice Tourneur)
I’m stopping here because this is depressing the shit out of me.