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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.

Important Added Info: Note that we have twice previously auctioned different examples of this trade ad. When we auctioned the first one, we did not know where it was from, but we have since learned much more about it. It was taken out of a French trade magazine, "L'Imprimerie et la pensee moderne", which was published at Christmas, 1928. Our current trade ad was taken from an example of this magazine. The trade ad itself is in excellent condition, but it was slightly trimmed down the right edge, where there originally were small holes from the binding of the magazine. This wonderful Metropolis trade ad will look fantastic framed on the new owner's wall (and we have never seen this image for this movie used in any other form of advertising)! Also note that we have seen where the really unusual art on this trade ad has been attributed to Boris Bilinsky, but it is not signed. A Metropolis expert says that he believes the unknown artist for this ad used the Bilinsky Metropolis image (which was on the cover of the pressbook) as inspiration in drawing this ad, but that he believes that it is NOT by Bilinsky.

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