The Complete METROPOLIS
A Spectacular Find in Buenos Aires
In January 1927, the Argentinian film distributor Adolfo Z. Wilson saw METROPOLIS in Berlin and decided to screen the film in Buenos Aires. At that time the city already boasted some 200 cinemas with an enthusiastic audience. After commercial exploitation, the copy of the film was acquired by the private collector Manuel Peña Rodríguez. It was shown in film clubs until well into the 1960s, but no one noticed that this version was particularly long and differed from copies circulating in Europe and the USA. In the 1970s, the collector presented his films to the National Film Fund and in 1992 the material passed to the Museo del Cine Pablo C. Ducrós Hicken in Buenos Aires.
When the version of METROPOLIS backed with pop music by Giorgio Moroder was screened worldwide in the mid-1980s, the Argentinian film historian Fernando Martín Peña was the first to suspect that the film could be longer than the generally known version. Peña had heard that a colleague and projectionist always spoke about having to keep the film pressed down with a finger in the projector for over two hours, when screening METROPOLIS, to ensure the poor copy ran smoothly. It turned out that the museum no longer had the 35 mm copy imported from Germany in the 1920s. The film had in the mean time been copied onto safety stock, but, probably for cost reasons, on 16 mm dupe negative. This process had reproduced all defects and scratches and had truncated the picture. It was not until 2008, after the film archive had repeatedly moved premises, that it became possible to investigate the matter and view the reels no one had used since copying.
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Argentinean 16 mm copy
Photo: Urban Zintel,
Stephanie Fuessenich
Museo del Cine
Pablo C. Ducrós Hicken,
Buenos Aires
Photo: Urban Zintel,
Stephanie Fuessenich
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