The Books of My Life: Metropolis

Film scholar Thomas Elsaesser explores the influences on, origins of, making of, the three versions of, interpretations of, including in later films, the  plot of, including a detailed summary or synopsis of, and the restoration of Fritz Lang's now famous 1927 film Metropolis in his BFI monograph Metropolis (London: BFI, BFI Film Classics series, 2000). Along the way Elsaesser notes that Metropolis's budget was half of UFA's, the German film studio where Metropolis was made, budget for 1926, explores the contexts that impacted the interpretations of Metropolis from its premiere in 1927 to the 1990s, notes that film critics at the time of its three premieres were highly critical of the film, notes that there is no real ur-text of Metropolis, that UFA hoped Metropolis would do well in the United States--it didn't--as part of the distribution agreement they made with Paramount and MGM, and explodes Lang's self-serving myth that the idea for Metropolis came to him when he and UFA producer Erich Pommer arrived in New York City by ship in 1924 and were, according to Lang, mesmerised by Manhattan's skyline. And he does all this in the compass of 87 pages.

While some may quibble with Elsaesser's hybrid theoretical approach and certain of Elsaesser's theoretical emphases and others may want more meat in any analysis of Metropolis, Elsaesser's brief monograph is an excellent introduction to the history of Metropolis and Metropolis criticism. I should note that I read the 2000 edition of Elsaesser's monograph and that he added a new forward to the 2012 reprint in which he takes account of the 27 minutes of extra footage of Metropolis discovered in 2008 and the 2010 "restoration" that brought the film close to the length of its first premiere in Berlin in 1927. For some, of course, the most recent Metropolis represents as close to the ur-text of the film we are ever likely to get, a perspective Elsaesser doesn't agree with because he, as I mentioned earlier, does not concur that there is one final and authoritative version of Metropolis.