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Jul
08
2008

Kino announces full version of METROPOLIS

Posted by Ard Vijn at 5:36am.

Posted in DVD News .

Remember that some museum in Argentina discovered that their version of Fritz Lang’s “METROPOLIS” turned out to be the full, uncut version which had been considered lost since 1927?
In my post on that, I wondered who would provide a special edition containing this material.

Well, I didn’t have to wait long to find out. Those excellent guys over at The Digital Bits said this about Kino International (and yes, I know I’m rather late in picking this up):.

“The good news is that they have officially confirmed that the newly-discovered footage from Fritz Lang’s original version of Metropolis (which we mentioned yesterday) WILL be a part of the forthcoming special edition BluRay Disc release in 2009.”

Splendid, splendid.
By then I hope to finally own a BluRay player (and the right sort of television to appreciate it...) but if not, no worries: Kino International announced they’ll release the same edition on regular DVD!

I’m very pleased with this news. Back in 2003, when it was released, Kino’s edition was the best in the world so I’m confident they won’t mess it up.

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Reader Comments

  1. anton_es 07/08/2008 @ 7:10am

    eureka’s version is actually better and the ones to get atm.
    we’ll see about further editions although german news already report that NOT ALL of the missing part have been found, it’s only a saftey copy on 16mm (instead of the orig. 35) and the quality is very, very, very low. even with heavy restauration they said that the new parts will inevitable stand out from the rest of the movie. so don’t get your hopes up, on blue-ray it will be even worse to look at.

  2. Cinexcellence 07/08/2008 @ 7:23am

    Excellent.

  3. Ard Vijn 07/08/2008 @ 9:22am

    Anton-es, I agree that currently the Eureka is the best.

    But when Kino released their DVD in 2003 it was a marvel compared to what was on the market then. Their attention for a public-domain title (which only had had releases which were sorely lacking of any) was to be commended.

    Not dissing Eureka at all though, they’ve been very successful with upgrading already good special editions by taking into account what was lacking so far and filling in the gaps.
    It’s funny to see them play ping-pong with Criterion, each trying to one-up the other when they release a film later. Eureka had a superior Kwaidan, Criterion had a (slightly) superior Vengeance is Mine etcetera.

  4. anton_es 07/08/2008 @ 12:13pm

    eureka had only the upper hand with its edition because it was from a pure pal source while kino unfortunately ditched the necessary pre-conversion to NTSC and ended with the known ghosting and flicker problems for pal on ntsc.
    in the end, for me, it boils down to price and since im an euro, the eureka editions are in the same league but cheaper than criterion, so it’s a no-brainer.
    also don’t forget the mighty secondrun-films, a company equally as important as moc or criterion in my eyes. true gems of cinema can be found there, worse quality but unbeatable prices.

  5. fetch fox 07/08/2008 @ 1:54pm

    I’m excited as hell about this… what a wonder to the world of cinema.

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