Bedtime Champ

Metropolis was the first silent film I ever saw and one of the first films I remember seeing.  It was probably early 1985 and I was four years old sitting on the couch in our house in the Walnut Creek neighborhood.  My dad and I were watching TV and he had been turning the dial on our cable box looking for something we both could watch.  He spotted the film and eagerly ran over to the couch and told me that I would like the movie.  It was in black and white which to me meant old and boring so I had no interest.  I told my dad I wanted to watch something else but he said, “wait, this lady is going to turn into a robot.”  I watched and it was the coolest thing I had seen up until that point.  That’s all I remember from my first viewing but that short snippet is very vivid.

Since then I have seen the film maybe about 50 times and no less than three different cuts.  The last version I saw was the most complete cut in existance, released by Kino International.  My wife and I went to the Castro Theater to see the beautiful new 35mm print.