'Metropolis' goes back to the future

10:18 AM PST 2/11/2010 by Kirk Honeycutt, AP

Fritz Lang's film gets a true director's cut 83 years later

BERLIN -- The memory is still vivid after these many years. Following a screening of Fritz Lang's 1927 silent film "Metropolis" at one of my UCLA film history classes in the early '70s, the great man himself made his way to front of the auditorium and sat at a table. From there he denounced the print we had just seen. You could almost see steam coming from his ears as he castigated American censors and distributors for ruining his master work.