I made a rough translation (i.e. it has not been revised or anything). I hope this will provide some more insights for those of you who don't speak German.
The Metropolis Courier, a supporting character in Metropolis, becomes relevant. For almost 80 years, nobody in Germany has seen these images.
Only in Buenos Aires did they guess that they were sitting on a treasure – in the Museo del Cine where they don’t even have enough money for the heating during the Argentine winter.
It smells moldy in Javier’s archiv, the air conditioning keeps going out of order. However, Metropolis has survived.
Javier: “I already held the film in my hands a few years ago. I am very proud. I didn’t think this finding would mean so much to the movie world.”
Javier inserts the precious film reels for us. They had come to the museum from a private collection and been forgotten. The copy is scratched, the quality is significantly inferior to the images from the current edition of Fritz Lang’s bombastic big city fairy tale. After its premier in 1927, the movie became a flop. Hurriedly, it was shortened. One quarter of the masterpiece disappeared. The original version ended up only in Argentine. But nobody wanted to believe it – up until now.
Berlin, the German Kinemathek. Invited by ZEIT Magazin, the head of the museum, Paula Felix Didier, has come from Buenos Aires. In a secret screening, experts will judge the authenticity of the newly-found materials.
The head of the Kinemathek compares every scene with the ones already known. In several places, his computer shows black gaps or photographs. But the images from Argentine keep on running.
Head of the Kinemathek: “Yes, that is new. Oh, those are nice scenes. Yes, great. Incredible.”
The experts have no doubts, the material is authentic. And despite the scratched images, the mutilated masterpiece is now almost complete.
Head of the Kinemathek: “It changes the movie. In my opinion, it turns it into a complete and really much better movie, a moving/poignant/thrilling/touching movie.”
Head of the Museo: “I knew that our material contained the missing scenes. It is very moving for me to share this with these people who have been working with this movie for so long.”
The rusty film canisters from Buenos Aires fill a great gap in movie history. That would make for a great headline in the newly discovered Metropolis Courier.
