Metropolis Uncovered

The Irish Times reports that a complete copy of the 1927 film Metropolis, co-written by Thea von Harbou and Fritz Lang and directed by Lang, has been discovered in an archive in Buenos Aires.

Its existence only came to light through a remark heard by chance 20 years ago by Fernando Pena, now a Buenos Aires film museum curator. "I remembered an elderly projectionist at a cinema club complaining, 'It's bad enough I have to show such a poor quality copy of Metropolis , but it's getting hard at my age to stand at the projector for two hours, holding the film to make sure it doesn't spring out.'"

Knowing that only the original version of the film was that long, he told his then wife, Paula Félix-Didier, and then forgot about it.

When Ms Félix-Didier became head of the Buenos Aires Museo del Cine in January, she went straight to the archive to check its print.

"It only took 20 minutes," said Ms Félix-Didier to Germany's Die Zeit newspaper yesterday.

"We looked in the index, the archivist got the reels. Fernando held one to the light and said 'Está todo' - it's all there."

The film is a 16mm copy of the original, highly combustible negative.

Although the copy is very badly scratched, the Murnau Foundation is considering making of it a new complete version of the epic.

"Even if the footage is of inferior quality I think most people would rather see the film with it than without it," said Peter Walsh, cinema manager and programmer at the Irish Film Institute. "It's one of the few films from that era that still really excites people, so the excitement about this discovery will not be restricted to archivists and film buffs."