Metropolis: To purchase or not to purchase?
 

So I watched Metropolis many years ago and being a keen DVD buyer have the urge to purchase it for a repeated watch. I already own various Hitchcock silent movies along with Nosferatu, Phantom of the Opera and Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari. I have to be in the right frame of mind for the silent era but once in a while I don’t mind sitting through one.

Obviously there is no disputing the greatness for its time and the influence it’s had on other movies but the question I would like to ask is, do you feel that Metropolis is a film worth revisiting? Also given the fact with new restored footage it clocks up at around 2 hours 30 mins. I would appreciate your thoughts.

Re: Metropolis: To purchase or not to purchase?
 

Yes, absolutely. It's a great flick. I've seen it "live", accompanied by living musicians and that's a great thing to see, but as a DVD or blue ray, it's like having a bookshelf with a copy of something like Shakespeare's plays. I love some of those old silents, especially Phantom and Caligari. You do have to be in the right frame of mind, but when you get to that, it's worth a view.

I'm not selling any of my copies any time soon.

Absolutely purchase. To me, Metropolis is a must own.

If you're an occasional fan of silent movies, you might enjoy Return to Babylon (2013), which is a modern made movie, but filmed in black and white as a silent, with 16 mm film on a hand cranked camera. I loved the opening and the film style although is got a little too silly for me later on.

It's available for free viewing on YouTube. 75 minutes. I reviewed it on page 3304 of the "Rate the Last Movie You Saw" thread.

Well it depends if you have a 4K player or not, because I think 4K Criterion version is likely coming at some point.

I did.

Re: Metropolis: To purchase or not to purchase?
 

I wouldn't buy it from the estate that is striking down every YouTube video that has five seconds of fair use footage in it. But I am bitter like that. :skeptical:

Agree with this. Upgrade to at least the Blu Ray edition. This film deserves to be seen as crystal clear as possible.

This might be a complicated copyright issue. The traveling chamber music group Alloy Orchestra does performances where they accompany Metropolis and some other silent movies. They have "official" permission from the copyright owner of Metropolis to do this and have their own music copyrighted. I've seen them live and it's really a great, atmospheric presentation. Apparently, the copyright limitation runs out either next year or 2047, depending on who you ask. I don't think it will have much effect on Alloy because their musical performance is theirs and has been legal for a while.

Part of this is due to the fact that the original movie prints were seriously deteriorated and needed extensive and expensive digital restoration.

Apparently the rights expired in UK in the late 80's and a musical play was done there but somehow the copyright was reinstated and now seems to last until 2047, a century after the death of Fritz Lang. Other fights about who owns what until when have ensued.

I think we will need an SUV full of lawyers to argue about this for a while. For whatever it's worth I do own a presumably legal copy on DVD and it's worth having.

Reading about the legalities makes me happy I caught the movie on YouTube before they deleted it.

Purchased the DVD 2 days ago! Great disc from Eureka Masters of Cinema series.

;);)

Hopefully yours came without a car load full of lawyers.

You have to buy another copy every time somebody posts in this thread. Sorry, I don't make the rules.

Well I believe there is another shorter version to get hold of with a modern soundtrack featuring Freddie Mercury and Adam Ant. Think I’ll pass.:)

Re: Metropolis: To purchase or not to purchase?
 

Upscale it to 4K and 60 FPS. Have a computer clean up the print or force that Harmie guy to do it. Enhance those contrasts, but leave in black and white. And distribute it on the internet to spite the estate, and I would be very intersested in a copy of this film, which is in the public domain.

It's too late. I'm sending a crate full of copies to your house as we speak.

Apparently, whoever owns the rights is fairly vigorous about pursuing people who do things like this without all the legalities, so, before you undertake an expensive piece of piracy, you might as well take the easy way and just spend fifteen bucks on a disk or three bucks to "rent" it on Amazon. It's much cheaper and easier than a court fight.

Oh vile, dishonorable, calm, submission!

You can watch it for free and download it for free at the link below.

https://archive.org/details/Metropolis1927_201312

Why pay when there is a public domain copy?