Jondaris,
Indeed, I have been talking about this all day on Thursday. My good friend Jorge actually got to see the missing footage yesterday. I'm dragging this over here from another Forum. The possibility certainly looms large that many more lost films could be found in Argentina, but time is of the essence!
Everyone,
Very big news! The lost footage of Fritz Lang's METROPOLIS has been discovered in Argentina! This from my good friend Jorge Finkielman, who is on vaction back in his home country for the first time in a decade.
Jorge's late close friend the Historian and Archivist in Argentina Roberto Di Chiara, who passed away a couple months ago, had hundreds and hundreds of Silent films in 35 Millimeter largely un-catalogued! I mean they have never been identified! He had been acquiring them since the late 1940's.
There are very likely dozens, and dozens of Silent films in his collection that are currently considered to be lost! I find it inexplicable that this Archive of Thousands, upon thousands of titles has gone virtually unexplored for decades on end!
People like Kevin Brownlow and David Shepard neither of who had even met Roberto Di Chiara, had better start looking into this matter before it is to late! The fate of Roberto's holdings are really up in the air right now! The discovery of the missing footage from METROPOLIS may finally shed a light on this nation as a vast potential gold-mine of so called Lost films? Let us hope so anyway!
Jorge says that the Government in Argentina had no interest in the films! That is why it is imperative that something be done and quickly to save these rare treasures! Jorge mentioned that back in the 90's, when He and Roberto were attempting to identify the films He saw pristine prints of several Laurel and Hardy, and Charley Chase comedies that looked much better than anything He has seen on Television, or Video collections.
Roberto had a large number of Columbia Pictures Silent's, and only a handful of those are known to survive today! So who knows what could all be in there? The sad fact is Roberto had little money, and never learned to speak English. Still I was very suprised that both Brownlow, and Shepard had never ever heard of him, let along met the man! They knew nothing of him until I brought up the guy on Silver Screen Oasis. Although Kevin did remember Jorge.
Roberto also had some bad experiences of people attempting to rip him off when He tried to get the films some exposure. He did write a book on the Silent Cinema years ago in Argentina. He preserved the best films from that nation from the Silent Era, otherwise they would be long since gone today.
Jorge is visiting Roberto's Widow in Argentina right right now. Here are his thoughts from His home Country where He was able to view the METROPOLIS footage first hand yesterday:
[
i]Writting from Buenos Aires, Argentina, It was a miracle to be in that audience filled almost only by journalists with television and photo cameras where almost nobody spoke English:
In total there are 23 minutes (at 24 fps) of the film that were recovered. You will see everything on video shortly because there were a lot of cameras (video and photo) everywhere.
There are bits here and there (you can say, this take is in the actual print, this one is not), but the exhibition consisted of only 4 sequences.
The first sequence is the one in which the worker with whom Frederer exchanges clothes gets into his car and gets lost in Yoshiwara, the street of sin.
The second one is brief and it shows a newspaper stand in which also appears the guy who have to follow Frederer on orders from his father.
The third one is the one in which the false Maria is introduced in Yoshiwara. Along with alternate takes and the appearance of a preacher just before the introduction of the seven capital sins. This scene features titles in Spanish (like the entire print) reportedly written by director Leopoldo Torres Ríos, and Paula Félix-Didier (of the Museo del Cine Pablo Ducrós Hicken) said that he gave a tango lyric kind of feel to them.
The last sequence was the longest: it includes the complete scenes of Frederer meeting with the real Maria and trying to rescue the children, including takes that are present in the actual prints plus others that are not. You can see more of the drowning, the actual ceiling of Metropolis where the water enters, intertitles in Spanish, and the children locked on bars trying to escape the flood until Frederer manage to release it and the kids began to escape.
The copyright of the film belongs to the F-W-Murnau-Stitfung and for that reason now German and the Buenos Aires city will have to negotiate a purchase of a copy the print, since they are not going to sell it.
The reason why this film survived is because the film was released by a company called "Cinematográfica Terra", owned by Adolfo Wilson, that brought to Argentina the complete version of the film, and not the edited version distributed by Paramount in the United States. The intertitles are all in Spanish and reportedly they were translated or adapted by Leopoldo Torres Ríos in a tango mood (he was also a lyricist).
A print of the film was purchased by film historian and critic Manuel Peña Rodríguez and, in the seventies, the 35mm nitrate print was reduced to 16mm for preservation in the seventies after bein purchased, along with the entire Peña Rodríguez collection by a State institution. In 1992, the collection was donated to the Museo del Cine Pablo Ducrós Hicken, and for years they tried in vain to have people in Germany to know about this version. They didn't care until film historian and collector Fernando Martín Peña, called Luciano Berratúa in Spain after looking for his phone in a guide. He did see the images and he himself contacted Ennos Patalas who finally gave the OK.
Argentina have a long tradition of Cine Clubs that goes back to 1929. So... I guess many people will have to learn Spanish.
I'm writing from Buenos Aires, Argentina, which is almost an accident. I am quite fortunate to be in the right place at the right time while all of you reading this are NOT.
I already wrote a report about the new scenes of METROPOLIS that you can see somewhere else, in another forum, but here in this site.
The death of Roberto Di Chiara is a sad thing for me because he was my friend. For his archive is even a terrible blow because the people in charge are fine technicians but virtually without any knowledge about the history of film and a lack of the kind of passion of many other people I have been fortunate to know, like Roberto himself.
The archive has been splitted and despite good will I don't know how many of those films are going to be rescued?
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