8 / BD 16 Metropolis

[L'amiDeVS]

Looks wonderful =D>

The red/blue boxes with all the text is that a sticker, or on the print?

Wondering that as well, I hope it will just be a sticker on plastic wrapping, not one of those hard to peel off stickers on the actual box (though I trust MoC will not do this)

[peerpee]

They're red and blue stickers which will be outside the cellophane.

[TheGodfather]

That looks wonderfull. Certainly my most anticipated release of the year, bring on the autumn.

They're red and blue stickers which will be outside the cellophane.

Good. I surely hate it when companies put their stickers on the sleeve or case...

[TMDaines]

Can't wait for this although I'll be living in Italy when this is released so it'll be a Christmas present for me.

[merch]

I hate to be shitty, but is there a version in a standard keep case? Where am I going to put that thing? I kinda gave up on "deluxe editions" that don't fit on your shelf. It is quite lovely, though.

[Svevan]

This is a standard keepcase, just turned on its side. You can see the Blu-Ray logo (normally at the top of a Blu-Ray case) peeking out of the side of the sleeve.

[Adam]

Hi Nick,

I was at the Academy Film Archive in Los Angeles today, and in the ground level hallway they have a very nice large one sheet from a French release of Metropolis, probably form the 1920s or 30s, that would be a very nice art addition to the set...

[merch]

This is a standard keepcase, just turned on its side. You can see the Blu-Ray logo (normally at the top of a Blu-Ray case) peeking out of the side of the sleeve.

I see what you mean, I hope that's true. My first assumption was that that was the spine sticking out. In that case, I have no issue with it. Sideways is cool with me.

[daniel p]

I thought it was a double width case also, now I see the logo though I realise it is just on it's side.

I don't understand MOC's stance on booklets - shrunk Sunrise down to 20 something pages, released Un Femme Mariee with 80 something, but didn't you say Nick that 45 or so would be the limit?

I love the bigger booklets, so I will be more than happy with this one in Metropolis - I am just unsure what the final say was on the booklet sizes.

[peerpee]

We had to make the UNE FEMME MARIEE booklet fit in the BD case, so that we didn't lose any content. This was a tight squeeze and the paper had to be thinner than we'd like.

Our max for BDs is 56-pages.

The SUNRISE booklet shrank because we dropped a 90-page article at the last minute and chose not to release a dual-format single edition which would have contained a 128-page book alongside the BD case, both in a cardboard outer.

There's a logic to it all!

[daniel p]

Haha no problems, I understand the dramas with the smaller cases.

Although I wouldn't be adverse to wider spines to allow for booklets, nor plans like the cardboard slipcase with Sunrise, I cannot and won't complain as what you do is incredible and will support it regardless.

Thanks for the reply!

[jbeall]

Absolutely phenomenal cover art. Best I've seen in awhile--and that's saying something, given MoC's terrific track record in that dept.

Wasn't sure where to post this, but the NY Times had an interesting piece on the rediscovery of the lost footage: The Full Metropolis

[Finch]

Even as the full-length version of “Metropolis” plays in Germany and the United States, the Argentine archivists continue to examine the Museo del Cine collection in Buenos Aires. Just last month, Ms. Félix-Didier said, a print was found of a Soviet-era silent film long thought to have been lost: Yevgeny Chervyakov’s 1928 “My Son.”

In addition, the Museo del Cine has discovered what the Library of Congress says are the only surviving copies of three American films: a 1916 William S. Hart western called “The Aryan”; a 1928 drama called “The Crimson City,” with Myrna Loy and Anna May Wong; and a melodrama from 1921 called “The Gilded Lily” and starring Mae Murray.

“This is great news,” said Stephen Leggett, program coordinator of the library’s National Film Preservation Board.

Mr. Peña said: “I’m glad I persisted. We still haven’t been through everything, so new discoveries could keep appearing.”

Is it too much to hope the missing footage from Ambersons is still waiting to be discovered in the archives?

[Tommaso]

Ambersons?! We want "4 Devils"!

[HarryLong]

We want both!
Plus LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT...

[TheGodfather]

Ambersons?! We want "4 Devils"!

That really would be something...

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

Without having read up on the reasons why there was a print of the longer Metropolis existing in Argentina is there to anyone's knowledge some records to substantiate that 4 Devils might similarly exist in South America or indeed anywhere (except of course a woodshed in Wisconsin or wherever that particular wild goose chase led us)? I don't remember any thing specific on this on Bergstrom's doc but that is most likely a memory failure on my part and i don't have a copy to hand.

[godardslave]

very interesting read...

Metropolis and the Frame Rate Issue

http://www.dvdtalk.com/dvdsavant/s3200frame.html

[Jonathan S]

Yes, a very interesting read. Re. the question of needing to transfer the film faster to accommodate the original score, isn't there now digital technology to slow down music without altering the pitch?

Oddly enough, I think there's a valid analogy here with the world of classical music performance itself. Around the 1980s Beethoven's symphonies (to choose a high profile example) started to be performed and recorded with period instruments and at speeds which accorded with the composer's metronome markings on his original manuscripts. The speeds were often much faster than in any previous performances in living memory or on record but we were told these were "authentic" because that's what Beethoven wanted. Nevertheless, they sounded plain wrong to those of us brought up on Klemperer or even conductors who had not veered towards slowness. The fast speeds often seemed to suck the life and the poetry out of the music - and I feel the same about Metropolis.

Such passages as the rooftop fight and others mentioned in the article just look plain ridiculous to me at 24fps (or faster) - and I don't really care what Lang or anyone else intended as the "correct" speed. If Metropolis is supposed to look like that, then I guess I don't like Metropolis - though I always enjoyed it at slower speeds in previous decades right back to when I first saw it around 1975.

Just to show how "correct" speeds can differ even from when a particular film was first shown, here's a Nitrateville post from the silent film composer Ben Model about Sunrise:

Interestingly enough, I've discovered recently that the cue sheet for "Sunrise" has timings based on a running speed of 12 mins/reel, which is in the 21-22 fps range, and have just read a 1927 item in Variety reporting that Murnau, upon seeing a show at the Times Square theater where the film was being run at 90 ft/min (24fps), protested to William Fox that he make the theatre run the picture at 100 ft/min (about 27 fps). Go figure.

[Tommaso]

Funny, the first time I actually could 'stand' Beethoven (who is now one of my favourite composers) was when I heard the symphonies and the piano concertos as recorded by AMM/Hogwood, on period instruments and with authentic speed. All the stateliness and patina was gone, there was a richness to the instrumental colours and a clarity of the instrumental lines that I never expected to hear in Beethoven. And all this although Klemperer is one of my favourite conductors, just not with Beethoven.

Coming back to topic: yes, it should be possible to slow-down the music technically, or better, to simply conduct it at a slower speed from the beginning. There were people who expressed doubts that the music could work at such a 'slow' speed, but the experiences with classical music and the wide differences in speed there (not just with Beethoven) should prove otherwise. Klemperer was an ultra-slow-motion conductor occasionally, but the music still always worked, even in his (in)famous recording of Mahler 7.

With "Metropolis", I have always argued that the fast speed is wrong, but I must admit that I found it somewhat less annoying with the 2010 resto, probably because the whole pacing works far better with the added footage.

[triodelover]

Funny, the first time I actually could 'stand' Beethoven (who is now one of my favourite composers) was when I heard the symphonies and the piano concertos as recorded by AMM/Hogwood, on period instruments and with authentic speed. All the stateliness and patina was gone, there was a richness to the instrumental colours and a clarity of the instrumental lines that I never expected to hear in Beethoven. And all this although Klemperer is one of my favourite conductors, just not with Beethoven.

Not to veer way OT, but if the AAM/Hogwood approach appeals, you should seek out Paul Badura-Skoda's LvB sonatas. Badura Skoda was a collector of period keyboard instruments (and a very accomplished pianist) and the sonatas are recorded on instruments from his collection. His Waldstein on an 1815 piano forte is transcendent.

[Tommaso]

If you only knew how long I've been looking for Badura-Skoda's complete Beethoven sonatas on Astrée ...

[triodelover]

If you only knew how long I've been looking for Badura-Skoda's complete Beethoven sonatas on Astrée ...

That's a hard find. I've got about a third of the cycle on Astrée LP, but have never been able to finish it out. I'm not sure it was ever issued in one box set, which complicates the hunt since you have to find individual LPs or a series of the three-LP sets. It appears even the CDs are OOP and his website doesn't list them as part of his discography, although that Gramola set might be them on a licensed reissue.

[denti alligator]

If you only knew how long I've been looking for Badura-Skoda's complete Beethoven sonatas on Astrée ...

OT, but the new Richard Brautigam recordings of Beethoven's keyboard work on period forte pianos are remarkably good (available as CD/SACD hybrids from BIS). Much better, I think, than the Bilson set. Badura-Skoda's Schubert sonatas are among my favorites, though I haven't been able to find all of the volumes in the set.

[Jonathan S]

And I thought I'd got away from all this when I resigned from my nine-year stint at a specialist classical shop!

Well, I guess I started it - and perhaps a better musical analogy for silent film frame-rate debates would be the controversies surrounding the playing speeds of acoustic and early electrical vocal recordings. Except there all the detective work is really geared to determining the recording speed (like the clock analysis in the Metropolis article) through factors such as the key(s) the music was composed in, known transpositions by the singer, comparisons with his/her other recordings, vocal and instrumental timbre, etc. One thing is certain: the speeds printed on the original record labels at the time of release are sometimes definitely wrong and (though I'm not suggesting this in the case of Metropolis) I wonder if contemporary documentation about silent film frame-rates should also be approached with scepticism.