The Complete Metropolis

Fritz Lang's masterpiece employed nearly 37,000 actors, took a year and a half to produce and nearly bankrupted the studio—but Lang's dystopian epic still haunts film history. Set in the year 2026 in a future society divided between a master race of capitalists who rule from towering high rises and the enslaved masses who toil in sprawling subterranean factories, Lang’s film focuses on the struggle between the pacifist, Lower City activist Maria and her evil robot double who incites the worker slaves to self-destruction. This restored version of Metropolis premiered at the 2010 Berlin Film Festival and includes 25 minutes of footage presumed lost since the film’s original 1927 Berlin debut. (Screening takes place in the Bing Theater; black & white; 127 mins.)