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Though it’s not actually true, it feels like bad things only happen to the best. A recent release on Blu-ray and DVD, for example, is Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. This is one of the best movies of the year, and not that many people saw it in theaters. Despite a healthy marketing campaign and mostly positive critical reviews, Scott Pilgrim didn’t even make its budget back, grossing about $45 million worldwide. The Expendables, which opened on the same day, makes over $100 million. There is clearly not justice in the world. I know there are some people who liked both movies, or will tell me that The Expendables is a damn good action movie, but all I see there is a bunch of really old guys being carted around by Jason Statham. Not much fun.

The rule of bad things happening to good movies stretches much farther back than this past summer. Orson Welles, notably, got plenty of square deals when making such classics as The Magnificent Ambersons and Touch of Evil. One of the saddest stories of cinema also involves one of the best and most important films ever made; thankfully, this story has gotten its happy ending, even if it took 83 years to get there. I’m talking about the 1927 silent classic Metropolis, from director Fritz Lang. Metropolis is arguably as influential a film as Citizen Kane is; one of the only ways it could have had more of a stamp on world cinema is if it had spoken dialogue. This science-fiction epic is soon going to be available on DVD and Blu-ray, and recently had its world television premiere on Turner Classic Movies.

Before I get into the history of how Metropolis came to be, and its many restorations and re-releases, let’s get something out of the way: this is a really great movie. I appreciate that pretty much every stigma that goes with old films crops up with this film. It’s long (this new restored version is 145 minutes long, and it’s not even the complete version), it’s in black-and-white, and it’s a silent film. But don’t run away so quickly, dear reader! If I can convince you to stay, maybe I can throw out some movies at you. Brazil. Blade Runner. The Matrix. The list goes on, but suffice it to say, if you can think of a science-fiction film set in a dystopia where the worker is oppressed by the ruling class, it’s been heavily influenced by Metropolis, which wrote the book on the subgenre.

What is perhaps most fascinating - and could be troubling to some viewers - is that for a movie that runs nearly 2.5 hours, Metropolis’ plot is deceptively simple. Freder (Gustav Frohlich) is the son of Joh Fredersen (Alfred Abel), the man who rules the titular city. Freder is following in his father’s footsteps but one day sees a beautiful vision: a woman named Maria (Brigitte Helm) who is secretly encouraging the teeming masses of workers in this technological place to find solace in a mediator, someone who will bring the workers to the same place of equality as those who rule them. Freder, of course, has fallen hopelessly in love and when he goes to pursue Maria, he realizes the horrors the working class goes through every day. We see what look like thousands of downtrodden people entering or exiting the underworld where they are forced to work.

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