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Metropolis, the classic 1927 Fritz Lang German silent anti-fascism science fiction (sci-fi) robot fantasy dystopian future thriller ("The screen sensation of the age!"; "The wonder city of the future"; "Adapted by Channing Pollock"; based on the novel by Thea von Harbou; set designs by Edgar Ulmer; about an ultra-depressing world of the future where the rich people live in cities in the clouds, and the poor people toil away endlessly underground; a female populous leader arises and a mad scientist makes an android robot duplicate of her to ruin her work; a brilliant movie, light years ahead of its time, and movie makers are still stealing from it!) starring Brigitte Helm (in a dual role as Maria, the female leader of the workers, and as the android [gynoid] "Maschinenmensch"), Gustav Frohlich (as Freder), Alfred Abel (as Joh Frederson), Rudolf Klein-Rogge (as Rotwang the Inventor), Theodor Loos (as Josaphat), Fritz Rasp (as the Thin Man), Heinrich George, and Margarete Lanner. Note that there is a fascinating story behind this movie being imported to the U.S. in 1927, that we did not learn until 2023, when we noticed the "Adapted by Channing Pollock" on the first U.S. herald we auctioned, and Internet research (NOT on the IMDb) revealed this: Fritz Lang's version of this movie at the premiere was 153 minutes, and Paramount was unwilling to release such a long movie in the U.S. So they hired playwright Channing Pollock to shorten the movie to a more "reasonable" length, around 2 hours. What Pollock did was to essentially drastically change the entire movie, by shortening it to 115 minutes, and changing all of the inter-titles to ones he wrote! Among the changes he made was that the man who made the robot (Rotwang) had made it in the image of the love of his life, named "Hel", who had run off with another man. Pollock did not want to use the name "Hel", because of its similarity to "Hell", but instead of just changing it, he eliminated all references to the robot having a name, or to the reason why Rotwang built it! He made a number of other major changes to the movie. When Fritz Lang heard what had been done, he said "I love films, so I shall never go to America"! The movie was somewhat restored to its original version in 1984, when the Giorgio Moroder score was added, and has since been completely restored to its original version!
NOTE: Click on linked names to see a biography.

Artist: Nikosey

Important Added Info: Note that this poster has never been machine folded! Most pre-1970 Italian locandina posters were folded twice horizontally right off of the printing press. It is very difficult to find an unfolded example of most pre-1970 Italian locandina posters (note that most post-1970 Italian locandinas were NOT folded, so they are pretty much only found unfolded, and therefore this does not apply to those Italian locandinas).

Note that it is difficult to accurately date Italian posters, and some unmarked re-release posters can be extremely difficult to distinguish from first releases, so please bear that in mind before you place a bid. We used our best information to date this poster, but we can't always guarantee that the Italian posters we sell are not from an unmarked re-release, but this will only prove to be true in a very tiny number of cases.

Note that this item (and others we are auctioning in this set of auctions) come to us from the estate of Lee Sanders. Mr. Sanders was a nationally recognized projectionist, film poster collector, and union activist who passed away last year, and the net proceeds from the sale of his varied and eclectic collection will be donated to promote film studies at the Besant School of Happy Valley in Ojai, Ca.

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