----------------------------Original message---------------------------- I just took a quick preview of Giorgio Moroder's demented 198? desecration of Fritz Lang's METROPOLIS. The opening titling-text describes this travesty as a 'restoration', but in the same breath admits a 'contemporary score, sound effects and colour', apparently inspired by 'the film's novel [script], some stills and illustrations... [etc.]' My area of particular interest is sub-titling, and I can't say I was favourably impressed by the cheesy MTV-style pyramids that jutted into the screen from the top and bottom. The sub-titling of dialog is utterly inadequate, and it struck me (not having seen Lang's original) that the film had been re-edited like a music video at the expense of narrative exposition. The colorization was in garish monochrome tints. If anyone has seen both a reasonable facsimile of Lang's 1926 METROPOLIS, I would appreciate hearing how titling and dialogue were handled in the original. And, would anyone agree that an underlying problem of cultural confusion has been introduced by Moroder in his determination to make a commercially-viable project out of his 'restoration,' through the overlay of a 1970's Italian pop design sensibility on a 1920's German film. (I must admit some of the original footage is of dubious merit, even in glorious black and white - Lang might better have stuck to his wonderful machinery montages and left well enough alone). By the way, was the project commercially successful? David Smith [log in to unmask]