The restored version is now playing in LA, and I have some questions before I go.
Firstly, if they are there, I would assume, they would be in English for the LA screenings.
Secondly, my GF may have trouble reading them, so it will influence her choice of whether to go.
So far as I’m aware a full screen dialog card is as big as text gets on the screen, so if your girlfriend can’t read that what alternate option would make her interested? 
But yes, it has full-screen cards like the one that begins this video, unless the new cut has changed it somehow: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzINI3au9q0
Been years, but I think it did have pretty normal title cards.
There are title cards through out, not so much for dialog, but for setting the scene. Movie title cards shouldn’t be confused with subtitles – they are larger print and take up the entire screen.
And, yes, the titles will be in English. One small advantage the silent films had over sound was that it was very easy to reshoot just the title cards and show the film in multiple languages.
Even with the restored version, there are a handful of missing scenes. There are some “title cards” with different, somewhat smaller text, that explain what is going on in that part.
And on a side note, let me just whine publicly again that I’d really like a DVD or even a BR of the 1984 Moroder restoration.
Is this the fully, fully, restored version, from the copy found in Buenos Aires?
Yes, it’s the one discovered in Argentina and is the most complete version in existence. There are still about eight minutes missing, however, because some of the scenes had been cut prior to its rediscovery or were too damaged to restore. Some of those scenes have been filled in with scenes from prints of the film found in Australia and New Zealand, but the entirety of the movie was not possible to be restored.
I think I have it on VHS tape … I remember buying one back in the 90s … it might be available at youtube or somewhere online.
I do have the soundtrack cd ripped into Itunes =)
OOo look what I found online!
Not only are thre intercards, but some of them are animated (like during the “Tower of Babel” sequence). In the Moroder version, he animates a few of the others.
And the opening title animation is gorgeous. When I saw the film pre-1984 I saw the “standard” US print, which was so washed out that you couldn’t make out the title animation, and they replaced it with a dull static card. When I saw the Moroder restoration it blew me away.
The intercards used to be, in the hands of a caring and talented production team, more than simply white words on a black background. Sometimes they’d have artwork on them, as in the Barrymore Dtr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde. When they re-released The Phanotom of the Opera with Technicolor sequences in 1929, the intercards had colored initial letters, like an illuminated manuscript.
AWESOME!
Already sent him an email offering praise and to see what I need to do to get a copy! Thanks!
I hate to be the wet blanket, but this is almost certainly illegal. Fritz Lang’s film is in the public domain, but Giorgio Moroder’s score almost certainly is not.
Unfortunately, the same problem will arise with the restored version of the Argentinian copy. Whoever did the restoration will own the copyright on that version. On the one hand, it’s too bad that this means the best copies of these old films will probably always be copyrighted. But on the other hand, without such protection, there would be no profit in restoring old films.
Actually, I flipped over to youtube, and searched moroder metropolis, and it looks like you might be able to see most of the scenes there.
I just saw the newly restored version yesterday.
There were some scenes that were scratched and faded (quite obviously from the recently-discovered print), but amongst the clear footage, there were some parts that weren’t familiar. Maybe I’ve just seen it enough times that I’ve forgotten which parts I’ve seen where.
I couldn’t help but think of what an editor’s job must be like. If it was 1927 and I had only ever seen the original version, and someone told me to take out 30, or 45 minutes, would I have cut the parts that they did? It seems totally alien to me to look at a film and make those all-or-nothing decisions; “this stays, this can go.”
It’s great to see those missing scenes; they fill in the story amidst the propaganda. For something that’s so morally heavy-handed, there are some surprising nuances. When 11811 gets a reprieve from his toil, rather than nobly fighting for the cause, he goes carousing at Yoshiwara. The other workers aren’t worthy of much sympathy, either; turning to easily-led mob violence and abandoning their children (and then more mob violence). On the other hand, the new footage makes it even clearer that Joh Fredersen is one called-hearted bastard. At least Josaphat seems like the kind of guy who’d have your back.
I wonder if those last few minutes will ever be found. Can’t complain, though, there’s stuff here that everyone thought was gone forever.