30.4.10
29.4.10
Juan Jose Campanella to direct 'Heck' film adaptation (The Hollywood Reporter)
Juan Jose Campanella, whose Argentinean film "The Secret in Their Eyes" won the foreign-language film Oscar this year, is making his English-language feature directing debut by tackling "Heck," an adaptation of a children's fantasy novel for Spyglass Entertainment.
"Heck," described as a kids' version of Dante's "Inferno," centers on a good boy named Milton Fauster who, with his shoplifting sister, dies in a freak accident and ends up in an unearthly reform school called Heck, where Lizzie Borden teaches home economics and Richard Nixon is the ethics teacher. Milton meets Virgil, a boy who has a map of the Nine Circles of Heck, and the two plot to escape the netherworld and its leader, the principal of darkness Bea "Elsa" Bubb.
The project will adapt the first book of the series, "Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go," written by Dale E. Basye and illustrated by Bob Dob. A second book, "Rapacia: The Second Circle of Heck," was published last year, and a third book, "Blimpo: The Third Circle of Heck," will be released next month.
Spyglass' Roger Birnbaum, Gary Barber and Jonathan Glickman are producing. Cassidy Lange, the company's vp production, brought in the project and will oversee.
Spyglass, which is looking at "Heck" as a big, effects-driven family adventure in the vein of "Beetlejuice," is zeroing on a writer to adapt the book; Campanella will supervise the writing.
Campanella has been working in the U.S. on the TV side of the business on and off for more than a decade. Repped by CAA, Protocol Entertainment and Stone Meyer Genow, he most recently directed episodes of Fox's "House" and NBC's "Law & Order: SVU."
Spyglass is in production on "The Tourist," a thriller starring Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp that the company is producing with GK Films. Spyglass also co-financed the upcoming comedies "Get Him to the Greek" and "Dinner for Schmucks" and is co-financing Ivan Reitman's untitled Paramount comedy.
Cannes 2010: "The Tree", de Julie Bertucelli, película de clausura
Julie Bertucelli ’s film, The Tree, with Charlotte Gainsbourg, Marton Csokas and Aden Young, will be presented at the Closing Ceremony of the 63rd Festival de Cannes. Shot in Australia, the film is an adaptation of Judy Pascoe’s novel, "Our Father Who Art in the Tree".
The film will be screened on Sunday May 23rd once the Award ceremony, presided by the American filmmaker Tim Burton, is over. The Festival de Cannes opens on Wednesday May 12th with Robin Hood, by Ridley Scott.
The film will be screened on Sunday May 23rd once the Award ceremony, presided by the American filmmaker Tim Burton, is over. The Festival de Cannes opens on Wednesday May 12th with Robin Hood, by Ridley Scott.
28.4.10
Cannes 2010: Trailers de "Poetry", "Hahaha" y "Aurora"
Lee Chang Dong's "Poetry" (sin subtítulos)
Hong Sang-soo's "Hahaha" (sin subtítulos)
"Aurora", de Cristi Puiu (teaser, con subtítulos en inglés)
Cannes 2010: ¿no falta anunciar jurados?
Digo, dan como que ya está todo anunciado para el Festival de Cannes, pero tengo la sensación de que siguen faltando, al menos, dos cosas importantes. Una -menos importante que tradicional- es la película de clausura. Dos, si le están dando tanta bola a "Un Certain Regard", ¿no debería salir quienes van a acompañar a Claire Denis en ese jurado? ¿O la mina es tan "capanga" que se arregla solita para decidir todo?
Y ya que estamos, pregunto: ¿los premios se darán el domingo 23, no? Porque si se dan el 22, yo voy a estar viendo la final de la Champions aunque sea en el medio del Palais.
27.4.10
26.4.10
Dos argentinos en los jurados del Festival de Locarno
The jury for the Concorso internazionale (International Competition) has five members, and its president will be Singaporean filmmaker, Eric Khoo (Be with me, 2005; My Magic, 2008). He will be accompanied in the task of selecting the Pardo d’oro (Golden Leopard) by Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani (Body of Lies by Ridley Scott, 2008; About Elly by Asghar Farhadi, 2009), French actor Melvil Poupaud (Time to Leave by François Ozon, 2005; A Christmas Tale by Arnaud Desplechin, 2010), Swiss director Lionel Baier (Stupid Boy, 2004; Another Man, 2008) and American filmmaker Joshua Safdie (The Pleasure of Being Robbed, 2008; Go Get Some Rosemary, 2009).
The jury for the Concorso Cineasti del presente (Filmmakers of the Present Competition), now dedicated to first and second films, will be chaired by Eduardo Antin, aka “Quintin”, former director of the Buenos Aires Film Festival (BAFICI). Other jury members confirmed so far include German director Maren Ade (The Forest for the Trees, 2003; Everyone Else, 2009) and Belgian filmmaker Joachim Lafosse (Private Madness, 2004; Private Property, 2006).
Finally, there is the jury for the Pardi di domain (Leopards of Tomorrow), the section dedicated to short films, which has both a national and international competition. Argentine director Lisandro Alonso (Los Muertos, 2004; Liverpool, 2008) will be jury president, accompanied by French producer Sylvia Pialat, from Les Films du Worso (The King of Escape by Alain Guiraudie, 2009; Rebecca H. – Return To The Dogs by Lodge Kerrigan, 2010), Swiss actress Nina Meurisse (Complices by Frédéric Mermoud, 2009), and Portuguese director Miguel Gomes (A Cara que Mereces, 2004; This Dear Month of August, 2008).
Artistic director of the Festival, Olivier Père comments “For the selection in the 63rd edition of the Festival, that promises to be rich in terms of new discoveries, we have chosen international personalities, young and passionate about films, who are highly respected within the sector. We are delighted they have responded to our invitation with such enthusiasm.”
The final line-up for the Concorso Cineasti del presente and the Pardi di domani juries will be announced over the next few weeks.
The 63rd edition of the Locarno Film Festival will take place August 4 -14, 2010.
Gustavo Noriega: libro y escándalo
Anoche, en la presentación de un libro sobre el INDEC escrito por el colega, director de la revista El Amante, buen amigo y ex empleado de dicho organismo, Gustavo Noriega, hubo serios incidentes que terminaron con varios detenidos, sillazos, golpes y otros destrozos varios mientras el panel intentaba presentar el libro en cuestión.
En este Link un recuento de lo sucedido y audio del propio Noriega, a quien supongo atosigado por radios y diarios, y convertido, de golpe, en otro tipo de figura mediática (imagino que no es la que más le agrada). Desde este modesto espacio, le mando mi mayor solidaridad y apoyo. Si hay tipos realmente serios y profesionales en lo que hacen, Gustavo es uno de ellos, y se que llevaba años preparando este trabajo. Y que no se merece ser objeto --ni él ni su trabajo-- de este tipo de amenazas y operaciones políticas.
25.4.10
Radio Micropsia: Episodio 23
Por Radio Nacional (FM 93.7), domingos de 20 a 22hs.
O por internet, entrando por aquí.
O por internet, entrando por aquí.
No, la foto no es de acá, pero podría serlo (tampoco cambian mucho visualmente los shows de Jonathan Richman). Lo cierto es que estuvimos allí, en el Salón Real, y lo vimos. Escucharlo, más o menos, pero era él y, si hacías silencio, parecía como que cantaba. Así que repasaremos el concierto, otros shows de la semana, y algunos lanzamientos nacionales e internacionales (de Cerati a Jakob Dylan, pasando por MGMT), además de nuestros comentarios sobre el cine de la semana. Si quieren escuchar algún programa en donde no se diga que "La cinta blanca" es una obra maestra, tienen una cita con nosotros a las 20.
"El secreto de sus ojos", un éxito en los Estados Unidos
Según las estimaciones de taquilla del segundo fin de semana de "El secreto de sus ojos" en los Estados Unidos, el filme recaudó allí 372 mil dólares entre viernes y domingo en 33 salas. En su primer fin de semana había llevado 168 mil espectadores en diez salas. Si bien el promedio por sala bajó un poco (de 16.800 a 11.200, algo que pasa siempre cuando las películas se expanden a más salas), la película ya superó los 605 mil dólares en sólo diez días.
No sólo eso: pasó del puesto 30 al puesto 17 y subió un 121% su taquilla respecto al fin de semana anterior. Es el segundo mejor promedio por sala en todos los Estados Unidos (sólo por debajo de "Exit Through the Gift Shop", el documental del artista de grafitti Banksy, que se ve sólo en once salas) y es también la segunda película que más creció en taquilla respecto a la semana pasada (la primera es "The City of Your Final Destination" porque, claro, pasó de una pantalla a once).
No hay duda que pronto superará la barrera del millón de dólares y habrá que ver cómo se sostiene con las siguientes semanas a partir del excelente "boca a boca" que está teniendo en los Estados Unidos, tanto como lo tuvo en todos los lugares en los que se estrenó.
Este cuadro es el de las calificaciones (entre A y D, de mejor a peor) que los lectores del sitio www.boxofficemojo.com le dan a la película. Lo cual habla de que el futuro comercial de la película es más que promisorio.
Cannes 2010: "Stones in Exile" (The Guardian)
It's nearly 40 years since the Rolling Stones fled to the French Riviera and recorded their masterpiece, Exile on Main St. On the eve of its relaunch, Sean O'Hagan marvels that the album was made at all…
There is a great moment in Stones in Exile, a new documentary about the making of Exile on Main St in 1971, when Keith Richards defines the essential difference in temperament between Mick Jagger and himself.
"Mick needs to know what he's going to do tomorrow," says Richards, his voice slurring into a laugh. "Me, I'm just happy to wake up and see who's hanging around. Mick's rock, I'm roll."
On Exile on Main St, though, Jagger, for once, rolled with Richards. So, too, did everyone else involved, from Jimmy Miller, the producer, to Marshall Chess, the young Atlantic Records executive, to the rest of the group and their extended retinue of session players, studio technicians and hangers-on.
Once the decision had been made to record the album in the basement of Villa Nellcôte, Richards's rented house in the south of France, the working schedule was dictated by the irregular hours kept by the group's wayward guitarist, who also had a singularly dogged approach to composing songs.
"A lot of Exile was done how Keith works," confirms Charlie Watts in the documentary, "which is, play it 20 times, marinade, play it another 20 times. He knows what he likes, but he's very loose." Without a trace of irony, Watts adds, "Keith's a very bohemian and eccentric person, he really is."
Exile on Main St is so emphatically stamped with Keith Richards's rock'n'roll signature that it could just as easily have been called "Torn and Frayed" after one of the two gloriously ragged songs that he wrote the lyrics for. The title alone sums up his gypsy demeanour, his elegantly wasted look. Or they could simply have called it "Happy", after another track that was actually recorded in a single take when Richards woke up one morning – or evening – and gathered up the only other people who were awake, saxophonist Bobby Keys and producer Jimmy Miller, who was drafted in to play drums in place of the absent Watts. The whole record was, says Keys, a good ol' boy from Texas, "about as unrehearsed as a hiccup".
Perhaps because he was not the controlling presence on Exile on Main St, which has often been voted the greatest rock'n'roll record ever by music critics, it is not necessarily one of Mick Jagger's favourite Rolling Stones albums. He once described it as sounding "lousy" with "no concerted effort of intention", adding "at the time, Jimmy Miller was not functioning properly. I had to finish the whole record myself, because otherwise there were just these drunks and junkies."
Jagger may have been miffed that his vocals are sometimes swallowed up in the soupy mix but he sings with real passion throughout and seems galvanised by the raw rock'n'roll the group are making. If anyone should need a reminder that no one before or since has sounded as louche and limber, so raggedly majestic, they should watch the Stones playing "Loving Cup" live on their subsequent American tour. Footage of that performance is a highlight of the documentary, produced by the Oscar -winning film-maker John Battsek, which will be premiered at the Cannes film festival before screening on the BBC later in May.
Despite his former reservations, Jagger has gotten behind the planned reissue of the album, too, which comes in a deluxe package containing 10 previously unheard bonus tracks, some of which are alternative takes of familiar songs while others sound suspiciously like they have only recently had new vocals added. No one in the Stones' camp is coming clean as to whether this is the case or not.
For the purists among us, though, the original version of Exile on Main St, in all its ragged, full-on, rock'n'roll swagger, is all we need. "This is just a tree of life," said Tom Waits, when he selected it as one of his all-time favourite records a few years back. "This record is a watering hole." On the documentary, Caleb Followill from Kings of Leon is taken aback to discover the album was recorded in France. "I literally thought they were in Memphis, going out every night eating barbecue and partying." Which is exactly what it sounds like.
The creation of Exile on Main St, like so many early chapters in the Rolling Stones story, is shrouded in myth and blurred by conflicting anecdotal evidence. The American journalist Robert Greenfield, who was present briefly during the recording, wrote an entire book about — and named after — the album. Its subtitle is "A Season in Hell With the Rolling Stones". The book paints an often lurid portrait of Richards and his then partner, Anita Pallenberg. Greenfield places the couple at the centre of a spiral of sustained hard drug abuse and wilfully amoral behaviour. Among the rumours he airs, but does not confirm or refute, is the one about Pallenberg encouraging an employee's young daughter to inject heroin for the first time. Another has Jagger bedding Pallenberg while Richards has nodded out on heroin, thus reigniting an affair they were rumoured to have had while filming Performance under the direction of Nic Roeg in 1968.
Needless to say, the documentary, which has Jagger's controlling presence written all over it, does not dwell on such unsavoury and unsubstantiated matters. The French photographer Dominique Tarle, who chronicled the making of the album in a series of wonderfully evocative shots, and who was Greenfield's entrée into the Stones' milieu, had this to say about the book when I spoke to him in Paris last week: "I read only eight pages and I really felt sick. First of all, how can he not write about the music? And all this stuff about a season in hell with the Rolling Stones? No, no, it was anything but that. We were all young and it was a time of great freedom and energy and creativity. For me, it was a kind of rock'n'roll heaven."
Perhaps, though, it was both. Tommy Weber, who is described as "a racing driver, drug runner and adventurer" in the documentary, and as "a fabulous character straight out of F Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night" by Greenfield, was one of Richards's inner circle at Nellcôte. His son, Jake, now a Hollywood actor, was just eight when he witnessed the decadence around the Rolling Stones first-hand. In Stones in Exile, he says, "There was cocaine, a lot of joints. If you're living a decadent life, there is always darkness there. But, at this point, this was the moment of grace. This was before the darkness, the sunrise before the sunset."
Bobby Keys, as ever, is more blunt. "Hell, yeah, there was some pot around, there was some whiskey bottles around, there was scantily clad women. Hell, it was rock'n'roll!"
Others experienced more mundane but no less pressing problems. Both Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman missed home and some of their own creature comforts. "I hated leaving England," Wyman reminisces. "You had to import Bird's custard, Branston pickle and piccalilli... you had to buy PG Tips and then deal with the French milk."
The Rolling Stones pitched up in the south of France in the spring of 1971 as reluctant tax exiles fleeing the Labour government's punitive 93% tax on high earners. The group had just extricated themselves, at some cost, from a misguided management deal with the infamous Allen Klein, who was still claiming he owned their publishing rights. In the public eye, though, the Stones were still the rock group that most defined the outlaw rock'n'roll lifestyle, their bad reputation built on an already colourful past that included high-profile drug busts, the death by drowning of Brian Jones, one of their founding members, the near death by overdose of Marianne Faithfull, Mick Jagger's former girlfriend, and the murder of a fan by Hell's Angels, who had been hired by the group's management to provide security at 1969's ill-fated Altamont festival.
Altamont was viewed by many contemporary observers as the symbolic death of the 60s dream of a burgeoning counterculture; by others as an inevitable result of the Stones' hubris and arrogance. Through it all, though, the Stones' music had echoed their turbulent lifestyle and soundtracked the tumultuous times, from the upfront sexual bravado of "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" in 1965, through the apocalyptic swirl of "Gimme Shelter" in 1969, to the swagger of "Brown Sugar" in 1971.
Sticky Fingers, the group's ninth album, nestled at the top of the British and US pop charts as the Stones, their families and extended entourage decamped to France to begin their exile. Richards sensed that the reason for their flight from Britain was not just to do with their dire financial predicament.
"There was a feeling you were being edged out of your own country by the British government," he remembers. "They couldn't ignore that we were a force to be reckoned with."
Having searched the coastline and hills around the town of Villefranche-sur-Mer for a suitable recording space, the Stones then opted to start working in the cavernous, multi-roomed basement of Nellcôte, with their mobile recording studio parked outside in the driveway. The house had once been occupied by the Nazis, and in a recent interview Richards describes working there as "like trying to make a record in the Führerbunker. It was that sort of feeling… very Germanic down there – swastikas on the staircase… Upstairs, it was fantastic. Like Versailles. But down there… it was Dante's Inferno."
In the often intense heat of the dank basement, the group struggled to get started. Musicians set up their instruments in adjoining rooms, with Bill Wyman having to play his bass in one space while his amplifiers stood in a hallway. Initially, they were hampered by guitars going out of tune due to the humidity. Basic communication, too, was a problem, with Jimmy Miller continually having to run from the mobile studio to the basement to deliver his instructions.
Then, a few weeks in, Mick Jagger announced that he was going to marry Bianca Pérez Morena de Macias, a Nicaraguan-born model, in nearby St Tropez. The international press and a clutch of the world's most famous pop stars jetted in for the very public wedding ceremony. As Jagger and his bride departed on honeymoon, the celebrations continued for a week at Villa Nellcôte. A week after they stopped, Gram Parsons, the country-rock singer who had bonded with Richards in Los Angeles a few years before over their shared love for Merle Haggard and heroin, arrived with his wife, Gretchen. The couple stayed for a month before they were diplomatically asked to leave by a Stones minion. "The atmosphere kept changing but the party kept going," says Tarle, laughing.
Interestingly, the Stones in Exile documentary does not even mention Parsons, whose closeness to Richards rattled the possessive Jagger. "Keith and Gram were intimate like brothers," says Tarle, "especially musically. The idea was floating around that Gram would produce a Gram Parsons album for the newly formed Rolling Stones Records. Mick, I think, was a little afraid because that would mean that Gram and Keith might even tour together to promote it. And if there is no room for Mick, there is no room also for the Rolling Stones. So, yes, there was tension. You could feel it and I captured it on Mick's face in some of my pictures."
The music the Stones made in Nellcôte reflected those tensions, as well as the sense of exile and uncertainty that hung heavily over the group, and the continuing encroachment of heroin on the lives of Richards and Pallenberg, and on the lives of some of those who entered their orbit. Speaking recently, Richards protested that he was not the only drug user in the group. "At the time, Mick was taking everything. Charlie was hitting the brandy like a motherfucker. The least of our concerns was what we ingested. These sorts of questions [about drugs] are predicated on what came a few years later when… I would play the game. 'Oh, you want that Keith Richards? I'll give you the baddest mother you've ever seen.'"
By October, though, heroin use seems to have been a constant in the lives of Richards and Pallenberg. "I walked into the living room one day and this guy had a big bag of smack," Pallenberg remembers, "and everything just disintegrated." Perhaps it was telling that when Richards bought himself a speedboat, he called it Mandrax.
Heroin brought with it the usual problems of supply and demand, and the usual retinue of shady characters and criminals, both local and from nearby Marseille. Villa Nellcôte was such an open house that, one day in September, burglars walked out of the front gate with nine of Richards's guitars, Bobby Keys's saxophone and Bill Wyman's bass in broad daylight while the occupants were watching television in the living room. "That's how loose and stupid it was out there," says Wyman. The crime was reputedly carried out by dealers from Marseille who were owed money by Richards. The nocturnal goings-on at Nellcôte were also starting to attract the attention of the local populace and the increasingly suspicious police force. "The music was so loud, really, really loud," Pallenberg remembers. "Sometimes I went to Villefranche during the day and you could hear the music there. And it went on all night."
Whatever the truth of the rumour about Pallenberg encouraging the teenage daughter of the resident chef to try heroin, the police eventually raided Nellcôte and, in 1973, both she and Richards were charged with possession of heroin and intent to traffic. The resulting guilty verdict meant that Richards was banned from entering France for two years, and thus the Stones could not play concerts there.
As summer turned to autumn, people started drifting away from Nellcôte and, in November 1971, Richards and Pallenberg followed suit. The album was eventually finished in Sunset Sound studios in Los Angeles. In the documentary, Jagger reveals that some of the lyrics were written at the last minute, including the album's first single, "Tumbling Dice", which was composed "after I sat down with the housekeeper and talked about gambling". The words to another gambling song, the frenetic "Casino Boogie", were created by Jagger and Richards in the cut-up mode made famous by William Burroughs, which gives a lie to the notion that the line about "kissing cunt in Cannes" refers to an episode in Jagger's notoriously promiscuous sex life.
Jagger also denied recently that "Soul Survivor" was about his relationship with Keith Richards during the making of Exile. On it, he sings the line, "You're gonna be the death of me".
In places, Exile on Main St does indeed sound, in the best possible way, like an album made by a bunch of drunks and junkies who were somehow firing on all engines. Jim Price and Bobby Keys's horns are an integral part of the dirty sound, as is Nicky Hopkins's rolling piano. Songs such as the galloping opener, "Rocks Off", surely about the effects of a heroin hit, and "All Down the Line" are messily powerful, with vocals fading in and out of focus and the group kicking up a storm underneath. "Tumbling Dice" features one of the greatest opening gear changes in rock'n'roll and a swagger that carries all before it.
In one way, the double album, housed in Robert Frank's contact sheet-style cover, is Keith Richards's swan song of sorts, a final blast of rock'n'roll energy before he descended into a protracted heroin addiction that would often make him seem – and sound – disconnected from the rest of the group during live shows. After Exile, Jagger carried the weight and, despite some great moments on subsequent albums including Goat's Head Soup and Black and Blue, the Stones would never sound so sexy, so raucous and abandoned, so low-down and dirty. Neither, though, would anyone else. By the time punk came and went and indie rock had taken hold, the mix of sexiness and sassiness that the Stones at their best epitomised had disappeared entirely from rock music. So had the kind of survival instinct that the group drew on when the going got tough.
"The Stones really felt like exiles," Richards says. "It was us against the world now. So, fuck you! That was the attitude." You can still hear it, loud and clear, on this messy, inchoate, rock'n'roll masterpiece; the Rolling Stones in excelsis.
24.4.10
"Metrópolis", de Fritz Lang (trailer norteamericano)
Apple has the trailer for the re-restored version of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis which premiered at Berlinale, will be the closing night film of the ongoing TCM Classic Film Festival and which will play in US theatersbeginning May 7 at New York’s Film Forum.
Re-restored? Well, “definitive” versions of the butchered classic have come out over the years including a 2001 75th anniversary restoration including 124 minutes of the film’s original 153. Then in 2008, a 16 mm reduction negative of the original cut of the film was discovered in poor shape in Argentina. The new footage has been restored as best as it can be (you can see how scratched much of it is in some of the scenes above) and the film is being shown in a form as close as possible to the way Fritz Lang originally intended.
The original editing has been restored with scenes now in their original order. Subplots are returned, others expanded on and character motivations are better explained.
Read more about the restoration, an updated synopsis and a detailed list of the new scenes at the Kino website.
Seldom has the rediscovery of a cache of lost footage ignited widespread curiosity as did the announcement, in July 2008, that an essentially complete copy of Fritz Lang's METROPOLIS had been found.
When it was first screened in Berlin on January 10, 1927, the sci-fi epic ran an estimated 153 minutes. After its premiere engagement, in an effort to maximize the film's commercial potential, the film's distributors (Ufa in Germany, Paramount in the U.S.) drastically shortened METROPOLIS. By the time it debuted in the states, the film ran approximately 90 minutes (exact running times are difficult to determine because silent films were not always projected at a standardized speed).
Even in its truncated form, METROPOLIS went on to become one of the cornerstones of fantastic cinema. Testament to its enduring popularity, the film has undergone numerous restorations in the intervening decades. In 1984, it was reissued with additional footage, color tints, and a pop rock score (but with many of its intertitles removed) by music producer Giorgio Moroder. A more archival restoration was completed in 1987, under the direction of Enno Patalas and the Munich Film Archive, in which missing scenes were represented with title cards and still photographs. More recently, the 2001 restoration—supervised by Martin Koerber, under the auspices of the Murnau Foundation—combined footage from four archives and ran a triumphant 124 minutes. It was widely believed that this would be the most complete version of Lang's film that contemporary audiences could ever hope to see.
But the world of film preservation is not governed by the laws of wide belief. In the summer of 2008, the curator of the Buenos Aires Museo del Cine discovered a 16mm dupe negative that was considerably longer than any existing print. It included not merely a few additional snippets, but 25 minutes of "lost" footage, about a fifth of the film, that had not been seen since its Berlin debut. The discovery of such a significant amount of material called for yet another restoration. Spearheading the project was the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung (hereafter referred to as the Murnau Foundation), which controls the rights to most of Lang's silents and is the caretaker of the legacies of many other German filmmakers, including the one after whom the foundation is named. Film Restorer for the Murnau Foundation, Anke Wilkening coordinated the endeavor.
"We discussed the new approach with experts and German archive partners to establish a team for the 2010 restoration,"Wilkening explains, "The project consisted of two main tasks: the reconstruction of the original cut and the digital restoration of the heavily damaged images from the Argentinian source."
Returning to METROPOLIS was Koerber, Film Department Curator of the Deutsche Kinemathek, who had supervised the 2001 restoration. "Three people worked on what we call 'edition'—meaning sorting out the material and determining the order of shots, making aesthetic and technical decisions, etc.: Anke Wilkening, Frank Strobel and myself," says Koerber.
As word spread of the discovery of the Buenos Aires negative, a nervous public worried that archival politics might hinder the integration of the rediscovered footage into METROPOLIS. Koerber explains this was never the case. "They were always willing to cooperate, in fact they offered the material once they identified what it was."
Once obtained by the Murnau Foundation, the 16mm negative was digitally scanned in 2K by The Arri Group in Munich.
The condition of the 16mm negative posed a major technical challenge to the team. The image was streaked with scratches and plagued by flickering brightness. "It had all been printed from the 35mm nitrate print, which means they have become part of the picture," says Wilkening. The source 35mm element was later destroyed (probably due to the flammability and chemical instability of the nitrocellulose film stock).
An unfortunate lessons was thus learned from the restoration. "Don't throw your originals away even if you think you preserved them, and even if they are in bad shape," Koerber says, "If we could have had access to the 35mm nitrate print that was destroyed after being reprinted for safety onto 16mm dupe negative some 30 years ago, we would have been able to make a much better copy today."
Fortunately, advances in digital technology allowed the team to at least diminish some of the printed-in wear. "If we would have had the Argentinian material for the 2001 restoration, it would have hardly been possible to work on the severe damage," Wilkening says. In 2010, however, "it was possible to reduce the scratches prominent all over the image and almost eliminate the flicker that was caused by oil on the surface of the original print—without aggressively manipulating the image."
Under Wilkening and Koerber's supervision, the visual cleanup was performed by Alpha-Omega Digital GmbH, utilizing digital restoration software of their own development.
At one time, purists objected to the use of digital technology in the restoration of film. But it has become an indispensable tool for preservationists. "[Digital technology] has made things possible we could only dream of a decade or two ago," Koerber says, "Digital techniques allow more precise interventions than ever before. And it is still evolving—we are only at the beginning."
"The work on the restoration teaches us once more that no restoration is ever definitive," says Wilkening, "Even if we are allowed for the first time to come as close to the first release as ever before, the new version will still remain an approach. The rediscovered sections which change the film's composition, will at the same time always be recognizable through their damages as those parts that had been lost for 80 years." Viewing METROPOLIS today, the Argentine footage is clearly identifiable because so much of the damage remains. The unintended benefit is that it provides convenient earmarks to the recently reintegrated scenes.
Other changes are not so noticeable. Because the Buenos Aires negative provided a definite blueprint to the cutting of METROPOLIS—which in the past had been a matter of conjecture—the order of some of the existing shots has been altered in the 2010 edition, bringing METROPOLIS several steps closer to its original form.
It is important to note that the "new" shots are not merely extensions of previously existing scenes. In some cases, they comprise whole subplots that were lopped off in their entirety.
"It restores the original editing," Koerber says, "restoring the balance between the characters and subplots that remained and those that were excised."
"Thanks to the Argentine find, the film's structure changes thoroughly," explains Wilkening, "especially the three male supporting characters—Josaphat, Georgy and "der Schmale" (the Thin One)—who had been diminished to mere extras due to the elimination of two large scenes." "Parallel editing becomes now a major player in METROPOLIS," Wilkening says, "The new version represents a Fritz Lang film where we can observe the tension between his preferred subject, the male melodrama, and the bombastic dimensions of the Ufa production."
The 2010 restoration took about one year, from conception to completion, and was performed at a cost of 600,000€ (approx. $840,000). But Wilkening is quick to point out that it is but the latest chapter in an ongoing saga, and pays tribute to the other preservationists who have so vigorously championed the film. "METROPOLIS is the prototype of an archive film. Decades of research for the lost scenes and various attempts to reconstruct the first release version have produced a large pool of knowledge of this film."
Asked how the METROPOLIS restoration compared to other projects in which the Deutsche Kinemathek participated, Koerber replies, "No comparison, METROPOLIS is more complex in many ways. On the other hand, it is also more rewarding, as the [availability of source material]—film material as well as secondary sources—is exceptionally good."
Currently, Wilkening is finishing a restoration of Lang's DIE NIBELUNGEN saga, and is optimistic about future projects. "Like everybody we would be keen to find the lost films of Murnau and Lang." But she adds, "I would be happy to turn from the holy grails to some films which are existing in the vaults of the archives, but are forgotten and hardly considered for restorations as they are not part of the canon."
On behalf of the Deutsche Kinemathek, Koerber says, "We were happy to be a partner with the Murnau-Stiftung and provide all the necessary expertise as well as the documents from our collection (script, music, etc.). I hope this successful cooperation will be a model for future projects."
"The project was a very good experience regarding team work." Wilkening says, "The collaboration of the different individuals with different background—historians, musician and technicians—was exceptionally fruitful."
Now that METROPOLIS is—at least for now—behind them, preservationists resume their watch for new opportunities, and forgotten cans of film that might offer other cinema treasures a second life.
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