This is the new restoration of Fritz Lang's 1927 science fiction masterpiece Metropolis, now with 25 minutes of lost footage and the original Gottfried Huppertz score. When it was first screened in Berlin on January 10, 1927, the sci-fi epic ran an estimated 153 minutes. After its premiere engagement, in an effort to maximize the film's commercial potential, the film's distributors (Ufa in Germany, Paramount in the U.S.) drastically shortened Metropolis, which had been a major disappointment at the German box office. By the time it debuted in the states latter that year, the film ran approximately 90 minutes (exact running times are difficult to determine because silent films were not always projected at a standardized speed).
Metropolis went on to become one of the cornerstones of science fiction cinema foreshadowing BLADE RUNNER and THE MATRIX to name just a few recent examples. Testament to its enduring popularity, the film has undergone numerous restorations in the intervening decades but this is the definitive restoration!