Livestreaming Metropolis restoration 2/12

[dr.giraud]

Via Roger Ebert http://j.mp/bE20js

"The eagerly awaited restored version of Fritz Lang's silent classic "Metropolis" will steam live on the internet on Friday Feb. 12. In America, it can be see in the afternoon. It's said that nearly an hour of footage, long thought to be lost, has been added. The footage was discovered in a film archive in Buenos Aries."

[BenModel]

I don't read French or German...for me and the rest of us who don't, can you post where exactly on the pages linked from the Ebert article the link to watch the streaming video of Metropolis is?

Thanks.

Ben

[Mazamette]

From the French page

http://www.arte.tv/fr/mouvement-de-cine ... 90880.html

click on either of the top links for 20h45 ("Presentation..." or "Metropolis") at the appropriate time for your time-zone, and that should get you the stream.

This is pretty exciting, I think! Thanks, dr. giraud, for the heads up!

[Bya1]

As a newcomer to the forum,can anyone tell me what percentage of "Metropolis" has now been restored ? Thanks in advance.

[FrankFay]

From the French page

http://www.arte.tv/fr/mouvement-de-cine ... 90880.html

click on either of the top links for 20h45 ("Presentation..." or "Metropolis") at the appropriate time for your time-zone, and that should get you the stream.

This is pretty exciting, I think! Thanks, dr. giraud, for the heads up!

I tried watching a bit (at work) but the camera view is from the back of the square over the crowd and the film is (literally) postage stamp sized on my monitor. I'll wait until I can see it properly- though I bet screen grabs will be up on youtube by tonight.

[SFBOB]

Is anyone else able to get this to work? All I can get is a live stream of a milling crowd watching the film outside. The film itself can be seen, but it's about an inch in diameter on my computer screen.

[Mazamette]

By Jove's hoary jowls, hope has been dashed, and my sadness is complete!

I'd been seeing speculation on other boards this morning that the actual film would only be shown on arte.tv, which is only available in Europe -- and not online. I'm watching the stream right now, and it does in fact show the film in progress on a large screen across the Brandenburg Gate. But the camera is about a thousand feet away, so that the image on the screen is indistinct and about the size of a postage stamp. It's like watching it from the back of the top balcony at the Roxy through a hole in a saltine cracker. Pah!

This is kind of sort of like missing the showing of Tih Minh at Yale last December, although I guess that's probably of worse, since who knows when Tih Minh will ever come out on DVD?

Kino's releasing the "new" Metropolis, I think? Hurry, Kino, schnell!

Bya1, unless I'm incorrect, Kino's current DVD clocks in at 117m, and represents the most complete version until the Argentinian discovery, I believe. The Argentine footage runs to ~210m, so about an hour of missing footage has been found. Some of that has been found to be unrestorable, but I don't know just how much. At the very least, more than a half hour of "new" material is being added that will clarify plot threads and strengthen characters.

Back to seeing how much eyestrain I can induce by continuing to try to watch this stream!

[35MM]

I enjoyed the music despite the background noise so I let it stream while working. The video was a slideshow for me anyway.

[Mazamette]

It was actually kind of awesome to be able to watch this historic event via a live stream, despite having such a poor view of the film itself. I did very much like the score performed by the Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin, arranged and conducted by (if I got his name right) Franz Strober. Be great if that's the score that goes with the wider release.

It was hard to estimate the crowd's size, but it seemed as if it were perhaps 1500 or 2000, standing in the cold with intermittent snow coming down. I had to leave the computer before the end -- I wonder how many die-hards standing in the Pariser Platz made it through to the end?

[radiotelefonia]

By Jove's hoary jowls, hope has been dashed, and my sadness is complete!

I'd been seeing speculation on other boards this morning that the actual film would only be shown on arte.tv, which is only available in Europe -- and not online. I'm watching the stream right now, and it does in fact show the film in progress on a large screen across the Brandenburg Gate. But the camera is about a thousand feet away, so that the image on the screen is indistinct and about the size of a postage stamp. It's like watching it from the back of the top balcony at the Roxy through a hole in a saltine cracker. Pah!

This is kind of sort of like missing the showing of Tih Minh at Yale last December, although I guess that's probably of worse, since who knows when Tih Minh will ever come out on DVD?

Kino's releasing the "new" Metropolis, I think? Hurry, Kino, schnell!

Bya1, unless I'm incorrect, Kino's current DVD clocks in at 117m, and represents the most complete version until the Argentinian discovery, I believe. The Argentine footage runs to ~210m, so about an hour of missing footage has been found. Some of that has been found to be unrestorable, but I don't know just how much. At the very least, more than a half hour of "new" material is being added that will clarify plot threads and strengthen characters.

Back to seeing how much eyestrain I can induce by continuing to try to watch this stream!

I have seen the Argentine print. What is hard or impossible to restore and the flaws that were copied in the 16mm reduction. Yet, the scenes are still watchable.

[rogerskarsten]

I watched the live streaming online (yes, the whole thing!), and enjoyed being part of the "event" even if the view of the screen was really bad. Yes, it would have been nice if they had streamed the television feed, but I'm just glad they did this internet broadcast at all.

As for the difference between the "new" material and the familiar material, it was impossible to tell -- because on the internet video the whole thing looked like one of those dupey public domain prints!

~Roger
(who misses Berlin...)

[Mazamette]

Thanks for that info, radiotelefonia. I got the impression from the documentary clips shown today that some footage wasn't recoverable -- but that was me listening to German while reading French subtitles and trying to synthesize all that into English, and my French and German are pretty flimsy. So ultimately, we can expect the finished restoration to be the full 210 minutes? Was the version you've seen a workprint?

[rogerskarsten]

As far as I know, what was screened today in Berlin and Frankfurt is the finished product, and it runs approximately 147 minutes.

I think there were two places where the explanatory text (inserted in the previous restoration in 2001) appeared on screen to describe missing footage. So there probably was some material from the Argentine print that could not be salvaged.

[Mazamette]

rogerskarsten, thanks for that. I had to leave for awhile, but I left the stream playing and by the time I came back all I had was a black screen with a "replay" button (which didn't work) so I didn't know how long the cut ran.

There's been an oldish thread at criterionforum.org that's been full of new information today -- search "Metropolis". I take away from it the idea that what was shown today was still a working cut, so I'll guess we'll have to wait and see what hits the showroom floor.

I'm still a little peeved that all we saw after a bit of hype was what we saw, like peeping through a fence at a ball game. But overall, I think it's a great precedent toward having silent film events like this available globally. I can't even imagine what Fritz Lang would think of all this, but somehow the whole scenario is appropriate...almost Langian.

[radiotelefonia]

Thanks for that info, radiotelefonia. I got the impression from the documentary clips shown today that some footage wasn't recoverable -- but that was me listening to German while reading French subtitles and trying to synthesize all that into English, and my French and German are pretty flimsy. So ultimately, we can expect the finished restoration to be the full 210 minutes? Was the version you've seen a workprint?

No. It was a 16mm reduction of the original 35mm release version.

[Rick Lanham]

Here's an article on the showing. There were people watching inside as well as outside:

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61B4ZE20100212

Rick