Whether you're coming to "Metropolis" fresh or for the third or fourth time, seeing the "complete" 147-minute version of Fritz Lang's 1927 silent masterpiece is like watching a fever dream reach delirious perfection. This glorious dystopia gains in both logic and gusto.
Building on the 2001 124-minute restoration, it fills out Lang's vision of a futuristic city as a glittering, buzzing organism that thrusts high up into the atmosphere and digs way down into the earth.
Now you can really connect to the romantic fervor behind the cool genius of Joh Fredersen, the architect of Metropolis — and the animus that simmers, then explodes between him and his mad-magician inventor, Rotwang. (American cutters removed any mention of the woman these men loved because the editors didn't think audiences could love a gal named Hel.)
You can also see more deeply into Fredersen's manipulation of his idealistic son, Freder, who bonds with the workers in their city beneath Metropolis, then partners with their spiritual leader, as she urges peaceful protest in the catacombs. A character called "The Thin Man" shadows Freder for Fredersen and brings the film a whiff of angst-ridden espionage.
The 124-minute version did some of that. But only the 147-minute version restores director Lang's total imagistic genius. The new shots explode with invention and vitality. Their damaged look adds to a mystic aura. Fresh streaks of action fix the movie's clashing forces in your mind and make you feel their impact in your bones. You appreciate what Lang devotee Lotte Eisner meant when she wrote, "in the noisy visual orchestration of 'Metropolis' — a silent film — we can almost hear [the machines], like the factory whistle."
Today, thanks to the Alloy Orchestra, you'll do more than hear the machines — you'll experience this epic of urban sprawl and revolt through your pores. Alloy (based in Cambridge, Mass.) generates unique vibrations with found junkyard instruments, an accordion, a clarinet and a musical saw. When Alloy scores conceptual movies like "Metropolis," the group's instinct and ingenuity transport audiences to unexpected realms of aesthetic rapture.
The Maryland Film Festival has turned Alloy's visits into regular events. But on Tuesday, the group's director, Ken Winokur, said that Baltimore fans should get ready for something different. As Alloy began to specialize in silent-film scoring, and its fans became a global audience, the group stripped its instrumentation down to make travel easier. But "Metropolis" — the 80-minute Giorgio Moroder-produced version — was the first film that this three-man orchestra ever scored, nearly 20 years ago. Baltimore audiences will witness Alloy in all its junkyard glory, complete with a 40-pound stretch of galvanized-steel air-conditioning duct.
"If you take a wooden drumstick to this thing, it sets off an unearthly wailing sound," said Winokur.
When a programmer at the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline, Mass., invited the group to score "Metropolis" in 1991, "we were not thinking of it as a career," Winokur said. "It just hit." They had only two weeks to come up with their themes, "But as we did five shows, a good score got even better, and the audiences got bigger and bigger, until we were selling out." The movie became the group's signature act. "We've done it about 500 times, mostly with the Moroder cut."
To Winokur, each version has something to recommend it. The Moroder version was fast and punchy — it told the story in shorthand. Using subtitles instead of intertitles helped make it speed by. A later English-language print — not much longer than Moroder's prints, but radically different in editing — "was a good, coherent short rendition of the film."
The 2001 restoration posed a problem for Winokur.
"It was an archivist's restoration, bogged down with explanations of stuff we didn't get to see," he said.
Stretching out an 80-minute score didn't work for this two-hour-plus version. Alloy took a break from "Metropolis." But when the group was asked to expand and rework the score for the premiere of the complete "Metropolis" at the first TCM Classic Film Festival at Grauman's Chinese in Hollywood, Alloy threw itself into the task.
"We worked hard. We created new themes. This version has everything going for it. I could do without the added religious iconography, but the editing is mature, the story is comprehensible, and audiences like this version the best of the four."
Does Winokur agree that a movie like "Metropolis" is a natural fit for his group?
"Absolutely. Our natural style is very big and dramatic, and 'Metropolis' suits the percussion thing. We are the machine in this movie."
If you go
The Alloy Orchestra provides a live score for 'Metropolis' at 7:30 p.m. Friday, in Falvey Hall at the Maryland Institute College of Art's Brown Center, 1301 W. Mount Royal Ave. Tickets ($15, or $5 for students) are available at the door, or in advance by calling 410-752-8083.