German silent film given new life by the NZSO

The Pacific Blue Series Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (restored film with new footage and live orchestra) Original music by Gottfried Huppertz New Zealand Symphony Orchestra Frank Strobel Conductor Auckland Town Hall Saturday November 12th The NZSO’s latest concert will be playing the musical accompaniment to the film Metropolis which has recently been screening internationally in its original form after eighty-five years Fritz Lang’s iconic 1927 film was one of the major German expressionist films as well as one of the films which established the genre of science-fiction. Set in the future, the city of Metropolis is home to a Utopian society where its wealthy residents live a carefree life but beneath them is an underground world of workers who run the machinery which keeps the above ground Utopian world functioning. Lang uses an evolving love story to explore the social crisis between workers and owners inherent in capitalism. Lang later immigrated to the USA where he was a major influence on the development of film noire including The Big Heat. Metropolis was cut substantially after its German premiere, and much footage was lost over the passage of successive decades. There have been several efforts to restore it with a reconstruction in 2001 and then in 2008 a copy of the film 30 minutes longer than any other known surviving copy was located in Argentina. After a long period of restoration the film was shown in German last year. This restoration includes new footage and additional scenes taken from a print held by the New Zealand Film Archive. Like many big budget films of the time, the original release of Metropolis had a specially commissioned musical score meant to be performed by a large orchestra accompanying the film. The music was composed by Gottfried Huppertz, who had composed the original scores for Lang's Die Nibelungen films in 1924. For Metropolis Huppertz composed a leitmotific orchestral score which included many elements from the music of Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss, plus some mild modernism for the city of the workers and the use of the popular Dies Irae for some apocalyptic imagery. His music played a prominent role during the shooting of the film, since during principal photography many scenes were accompanied by him playing the piano to get a certain effect from the actors.