Fritz Lang's silent, 1927 classic has always been a puzzle, no less for its plot gaps than for its buffet approach to political philosophies. It wields the rhetoric of brotherhood while accepting a natural hierarchy of brainy capitalists and workers too dumb to tend to their own children, meanwhile expressing both a patronizing concern for the lower orders and an ingrained terror of their collective action. But it's hardly necessary to explain Metropolis to enjoy it -- and this latest version purports to finally be the complete version, as originally conceived by Lang. A copy of that cut, long believed to be lost, was found in Argentina two years ago. Starts Fri., July 30. Melwood
