Metropolis in the Basement
For the cinephile contingent, some pretty astonishing news. I didn't think stuff like this ever actually happened. Maybe there are copies of the full versions of Bezhin Meadow or The Magnificent Ambersons lying around somewhere...? Am really quite excited to see the full version, although I expect it to be just as much of a bizarre, beautiful proto-fascist mess as before. I assume that Giorgio Moroder won't be re-editing and soundtracking the full version mind you.
posted by owen hatherley at 7:18 pm
7 Comments:
This is interesting. I wonder how much 'sense' it will restore to the film, though. But if there are more demented city-scapes, that would be splendid. Perhaps we should show it when it gets released.
We should look for the Moroder version! Fritz Lang plus Freddie Mercury and Pat Benatar, how can it go wrong?
La, amazing! I do recall a screening at a university lecture several years back where the soundtrack was so awful that we actually begged for it to be turned off. It was like synthesiser music for a cheap San Fernando valley porn movie circa 1974. Surely not the Moroder version?...
Next up: lost reels of N, the sequel to M, discovered in the basement of a Swedish antique shop, revealing that the eponymous killer is sentenced to a long jail term but enters a rehabilitation program and is released on parole two years early for good beahviour; cue tabloid-fed "community outrage" at child killer "living next door" to school children, poor M is dragged off back to prison and the Home Secretary (or 1920s Germanic equivalent) changes the law in order to "send a firm message" to criminals that their behaviour will not be forgiven. Zero tolerance. Truth in sentencing, etc etc.
Yes, quite...
It might well have been the Moroder version that you saw, as he did it in the mid-80s, by which point his crassness seemed to have gotten the better of his futurism (Flashdance, Top Gun, etc...however there is a certain glacial power to 'Take My Breath Away', nicht wahr?)
Ugh. The Moroder version is absolutely foul - vastly better to watch with the sound off.
Emmy, I think you would be referring to the JEF Films version. It was promoted as the "longest version ever", but this is only because they ran the film at a slower speed dragging it out to an epic 139 mins. the score was apparently by Peter Osbourne (?) & if it's the one I'm thinking of has a 'Ghostbusters' motif in it and is teeth-gnashingly awful.
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