'Metropolis'

A city restored

THE SKYSCRAPERS OF New York helped inspire the colossal deco palaces of Fritz Lang's Metropolis. Now, the best restoration to date of Lang's 1927 masterpiece has arrived at a time when N.Y. towers possess added political and historical significance. The word "restoration" – increasingly overused and thus rarely cause for celebration – has been particularly abused in relation to this film: a Giorgio Moroder 1984 reissue further shortened an already hacked work, adding a Moroder score featuring songs by Pat Benatar and Billy Squier (but not Queen's "Radio Ga Ga," which uses clips from Metropolis in its music video). Kino International takes liberties in calling this 2002 version "definitive" – more than 3,000 feet of film from the movie's original cut are still missing – but its digitally restored negative and rerecorded original score are definitely improvements.

As a spectacle of urban dystopia, Metropolis is stunning, not just influential but also contemporary – Minority Report could be viewed as a not-as-timeless recent companion piece. Pauline Kael's 5001 Nights at the Movies does an apt job of pointing out the opus's weak points (Gustav Fröhlich's corny swooning as the hero) and wonderful peculiarities (Brigitte Helm's bizarre winking when transformed from the angelic Maria into Maria's villainous robotic alter ego). Metropolis's moral is naive, yet Hitler still misinterpreted it, essentially casting himself as a real-life – ultimately far more monstrous – hybrid of the movie's dictator and mad scientist figures in Triumph of the Will. Here, visuals overtly reign supreme over the text; in Lang's American talkies, they subvert it. (Johnny Ray Huston)