StarShipSofa: Science Fiction Audio Podcast

Colby Cosh rejoices at the news that a nearly-complete copy of Fritz Lang's 1927 science fiction masterpiece Metropolis has been discovered in Argentina, containing a full half-hour of scenes previously believed to be lost forever.

One way or another, it is hard to think of any archival discovery that has been, or could be, more earth-shattering than an extra 30 minutes of Metropolis. It is the cinematic equivalent of finding a new book of the Bible or a new play by Sophocles. The only events that can conceivably approach it, I think, are the gradual reassembly of Abel Gance's innovative Napoleon (1927) and the 1981 discovery (in the closet of a mental hospital) of Dreyer's full Passion of Joan of Arc (1928). And for all their greatness, these are, unlike Lang's science-fiction masterpiece, movies much more often admired than actually watched.