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Fritz Lang season and release of restored ‘Metropolis’
The IFI presents two fantastic seasons celebrating Fritz Lang to support the release of one of the most important restorations in film history, Metropolis (1927)
The twenty-five minutes of additional footage not seen since the premiere of Metropolis (and presumed lost until being recently unearthed in Argentina) was the film find of the 21st Century, throwing light on a crucial gap in film history. The IFI is presenting the newly restored version of the sci-fi classic alongside two fantastic seasons, one showing Fritz Lang’s early works and one taking a look at the sci-fi classics that Metropolis has influenced from The Matrix to Dr. Strangelove. There will also be a special orchestral preview screening on the 4th September at the National Concert Hall conducted by Helmut Imig.
The new material completes Lang’s mighty, prophetic vision of the modern world. Many core science-fiction concerns are anticipated here: the futuristic City with its brutal social hierarchy of rich and poor; the mechanisation of work and the dehumanisation of the individual; the mad scientist; and the evil robot deliberately fomenting rebellion that will be ruthlessly crushed. Taking nearly a year to film and utilising over 30,000 extras, Metropolis was the grandest, most spellbinding spectacle of 1920s silent European cinema. This restoration, accompanied by Gottfried Huppertz’s fine original score, cannot fail to attract a new legion of awed admirers.
Lang’s dazzling films from his early career in Germany quickly put him at the forefront of the thriving German film industry of the 1920s. Notable for their visual grandeur and psychological gloom, and often peopled by megalomaniacs intent on global domination, many see them as a distillation of the era’s subconscious and a harbinger of the rise of the Nazis. Lang himself fled the Nazis for a career in mainstream Hollywood but the majority of his most distinctive work came from this period and is getting a rare public screening in the IFI’s Fritz Lang Season.
Cinema goers will be able to trace the diverse legacy of Metropolis through some landmark films of the twentieth century in the After Metropolis Season. Kubrick’s comic study in megalomania Dr. Strangelove…, Jean-Luc Godard’s marriage of film noir and sci-fi in Alphaville and the Wachowski brothers’ crowd friendly exercise in The Matrix all pay tribute to Lang’s masterpiece.
METROPOLIS IS RE-RELEASED AT THE IFI FROM 10TH – 23RD SEPTEMBER
More info at www.ifi.ie.
