The metropolis itself isn’t restored, but the movie. The relatively recent discovery of 15 minutes of missing footage in Buenos Aires is one of the greatest findings of cinema; those minutes had been cut out of the finished product to make the movie shorter, but they had included some essential plot points. Now you can see the film in its entirety (almost—a few minutes are still missing), which hadn’t been possible for 80 years. In a world where the privileged live in luxury within an ultra-modern city while the enslaved masses work underground to keep their city going, the son of the wealthy city leader falls in love with a prophetess of the workers and sets off a chain of events that endangers the stability of both worlds. A great work of art it is. Many scenes are masterful, such as those of the enslaved industrialized masses, the towering futuristic city, and the evil scientist creating its androgynous robot; they have become icons forever etched in cinema history. You can easily see the direct influence “Metropolis” had on many of the great sound movies that came later, such as “Frankenstein” and “Modern Times.” However, the rest of the film feels somewhat “out there” to modern sensibilities. The exaggerated styles and approaches common to silent movies of the 1920s feel very cartoonish today; they work well with comedies, but they make it hard to take silent dramas seriously. “Metropolis” is a must-see for lovers of artistic cinema and sci-fi fans; for everybody else, I would instead recommend the sound classics that this movie inspired, since those are much more relatable to the modern viewer.

Not For Kids

Extras:

• This is an epic movie, both in theme and in production. Huge sets and hundreds of extras were used in some scenes. And the special effects were way ahead of their time, far better than the cheesy effects prevalent in most science fiction movies throughout the 20th century.