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Auction History Result 5j0495 METROPOLIS Japanese program 1929 Fritz Lang, Thea von Harbou, rare first release, Sewge art! Date Sold 11/21/2023 Sold For: Login or Register to see sold price. An Original 1929 (from the first release of this movie in Japan) Vintage Japanese Film Program (measures 6" x 8 3/4" [15 x 22 cm]; 12 pages) (Learn More) 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: Sewge Important Added Info: Note that we have only previously auctioned one example of this 1929 first release Japanese program, and it sold for $1,284. That example has now been reconsigned to us, so this is still the only example of this Japanese program we have ever auctioned! Also note that we have provided an image of the front cover, the back cover, and several interior two-page spreads of this 12-page program. You can use these images to determine the exact condition of it from our super-sized images, but realize that there are pages you are not seeing. Condition: fair. There is uneven paper loss in the top right of the cover measuring 3" x 4" at its widest points. The program was folded down the middle at a slight diagonal and there are creases on all the interior pages. Please look super closely at our super-sized images before bidding on this incredibly rare program. Our consignor located an image of the complete cover and printed out the full wraparound cover, plus a close up of the upper right of the cover, and those two printouts will be sent to the winning bidder of this auction in case they want to use them in getting the cover of this program restored to how it originally looked. Learn More about condition grades 
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