[WT Sharpe]

The 2010 restoration of Metropolis arrived today. I had just watched the first half (up to the Intermission) with my 12 year old grandson when his friends arrived, so I told him we could finish it later. I was amazed. He sat through the entire first half mesmerized! A child of the X-Box generation fascinated by an 84 year old silent film!

So far I'm really impressed. The old footage is crystal-clear. The newly discovered footage is rather damaged, but quite serviceable. What happened is that in 2008 someone in Buenos Aires discovered a 16mm copy of almost the entire film. Since 16mm wasn't what the professional releases of the film were in, there's quite a bit of difference. The 16mm film is poor quality and has several streaks that aren't in the rest of the film, but it's a huge improvement over the previous restoration, which mainly consisted of still photos and additional dialog shots. I understand there are some of those in the second half, but the addition of 25 minutes of actual FILM (even if it was poor quality 16mm) makes a huge difference!