History of Sorts

It is hard to believe that Fritz Lang’s masterpiece is 97 years old, In those 97 years, that movie has lost none of its magic.

I have done a post on Metropolis before, the link is at the bottom of this post, but this edition will focus on a re-imagined version of the movie which was released in 1984.

Italian music producer Giorgio Moroder released a truncated version with a soundtrack by rock artists including Freddie Mercury, Loverboy, and Adam Ant

Giorgio Moroder, who paid $200,000 for the rights, outbidding his Cat People collaborator David Bowie. Although Moroder initially intended only to create a new soundtrack, he was surprised by the lack of a definitive print, and expanded his project to a major reconstruction. Moroder’s version, which was made in consultation with the Munich Film Archive and their archivist, Enno Patalas,was tinted to emphasise the different moods and locations in the film. It also featured additional special effects, replaced intertitles of character dialogue with subtitles and incorporated a soundtrack featuring songs Moroder composed, produced and recorded with popular artists such as Freddie Mercury, Bonnie Tyler, Pat Benatar, Adam Ant and Jon Anderson. It was the first serious attempt made at restoring Metropolis to Lang’s original vision, and until the restorations in 2001 and 2010, it was the most complete version of the film commercially available. The shorter run time was due to the extensive use of subtitles for spoken lines instead of title cards, a faster frame rate than the original, and the fact that large amounts of footage were still missing at the time.

Moroder’s version of Metropolis generally received poor reviews. Moroder responded to the critics who lambasted his production for not being faithful to the original in The New York Times: “I didn’t touch the original because there is no original.” The film was nominated for two Raspberry Awards, Worst Original Song for “Love Kills” and Worst Musical Score for Moroder. However, Bonnie Tyler was nominated for Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance at the 27th Grammy Awards for “Here She Comes.

1984 Soundtrack

1. “Love Kills” (Freddie Mercury)
   Giorgio MoroderFreddie Mercury
   MoroderMercuryReinhold Mack
   4:29
2. “Here’s My Heart” (Pat Benatar)
   MoroderPete Bellotte
   MoroderNeil Giraldo
   4:54
3. “Cage of Freedom” (Jon Anderson)
   MoroderBellotte
   Moroder 4:40
4. “Blood from a Stone” (Cycle V – a.k.a. Frank Dimino)
   MoroderBellotte
   Moroder 3:37
5. “The Legend of Babel” (Giorgio Moroder)
   MoroderBellotte
   Moroder 3:55
6. “Here She Comes” (Bonnie Tyler)
   MoroderBellotte
   Moroder 3:48
7. “Destruction” (Loverboy)
   MoroderBellotte
   MoroderPaul Dean
   4:09
8. “On Your Own” (Billy Squier)
   MoroderSquier
   Moroder 4:09
9. “What’s Going On” (Adam Ant)
   MoroderBellotte
   Moroder 3:49
10. “Machines” (Giorgio Moroder) Moroder Moroder 4:11

Metropolis

sources

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0017136/?ref_=tt_mv_close