Return home Return to previous page Shopping for a Video That Did Not Exist I first began shopping for videos in 1984, when I moved to Santa Fé and purchased a VHS VCR. Over the next 18 years I never saw a good video copy of Metropolis anywhere. I saw plenty of rotten copies, thousandth-generation public-domain junk that was entirely unwatchable. There was, yes, the Moroder version, which was good quality, but it was far too altered and not really what I wanted. I wanted to get a good copy of the version I had seen on PBS in May 1977 and I also wanted a good copy of the Janus version I had seen at the cinema in July 1977. I did not and still do not understand why there was no good video copy of Metropolis in the 1970’s or 1980’s or 1990’s. The first decent home-video release was in 2002 when Kino and other companies issued DVD’s of Martin Koerber’s reconstruction. Since so many films in the Janus catalogue had made their way to VHS, Beta, and laserdisc, courtesy of a licensing contract with Embassy Home Entertainment (later Nelson Home Entertainment and still later Home Vision), I was expecting Metropolis to be included. It was not. I did not understand why. I searched relentlessly. Only now do I understand what had happened. The Janus Collection offered by CBS/Fox, by Embassy Home Entertainment, and by Nelson Home Entertainment Grand Illusion ★VHS $39.95 7140 Mar 1983 The Red Balloon $39.95 6001 1984 / 1987 The Love Goddesses ★VHS $59.95 6002 1984 The Devil’s Eye ★VHS $59.95 dubbed 6003 1984 The Legend of Valentino $59.95 6005 1984 A Boy and His Elephant $19.95 1984 The Unicorn $19.95 6008 1984 The Lone Wolf $19.95 6009 1984 White Mane $39.95 6013 Apr 1984 Voyage en ballon $59.95 6014 1984 Bim, the Little Donkey $19.95 6015 1984 Our Daily Bread $59.95 Nov 1984 The Seven Samurai ★VHS $89.95 subtitled 6023 1984 Young Aphrodites ★VHS $59.95 dubbed 6024 1984 The Magician ★LD $59.95 dubbed 6025 1984 Witchcraft through the Ages ★VHS $59.95 6027 Sep 1984 Sawdust and Tinsel ★LD VHS $59.95 subtitled 6030 Nov 1984 Secrets of Women ★VHS $59.95 dubbed 6164 1984 The Threepenny Opera ★VHS $59.95 subtitled 6041 1984 Mr. Hulot’s Holiday ★VHS $59.95 6042 1984 The Great Chase ★VHS $59.95 6043 1984 Playtime $59.95 6044 1984 Port of Call $59.95 1984 To Joy $59.95 Nov 1984 Dreams ★VHS $59.95 subtitled 6056 1984 Pygmalion $39.95 6018 Oct 1985? Tunes of Glory $39.95 6020 1985 Whistle down the Wind ★VHS $39.95 6040 Oct 1985? The Horse’s Mouth $39.95 6047 Oct 1985? The Seventh Seal $39.95 6049 Oct 1985? Hobson’s Choice ★LD $39.95 6053 1985 Winter Light $59.95 dubbed 1985 Miss Julie $39.95 subtitled 6059 Oct 1985? That Obscure Object of Desire $29.95 6121 Dec 1985? M ★LD $29.95 6061 Jan 1986 Rashomon ★VHS $29.95 dub/sub 6109 Jan 1986? La strada ★VHS $29.95 dub/sub 6115 Jan 1986 Richard III $39.95 6206 Jan 1986? Mon oncle ★LD $29.95 6111 Mar 1986 Beauty and the Beast ★LD $39.95 6038 Feb 1986 A Very Curious Girl $29.95 6133 1986 Victim $39.95 6134 ??? Sanjuro ★LD, VHS $29.95 6063 Mar 1986 Yojimbo ★LD $29.95 6143 Mar 1986 Ashes and Diamonds $29.95 6033 May 1986 Pandora’s Box ★VHS $29.95 6046 May 1986 The Devil and Daniel Webster $39.95 6051 1986 Dodes ka-den ★VHS $29.95 6076 May 1986? Ugetsu $29.95 6130 May 1986? Through a Glass Darkly $29.95 6157 30 Jul 1986 $29.95 6157 Reissue 16 Sep 1987 The Virgin Spring $29.95 6160 30 Jul 1986 The Devil’s Eye $29.95 6161 Reissue 30 Jul 1986 The Magician $29.95 subtitled 6162 Reissue 30 Jul 1986 Port of Call $29.95 subtitled 6163 Reissue 30 Jul 1986 Secrets of Women ★VHS $29.95 6164 Reissue 30 Jul 1986 Winter Light $29.95 subtitled 6165 Reissue 30 Jul 1986 Triumph of the Will $39.95 Aug 1986 Orpheus ★VHS $29.95 6062 27 Oct 1986 Gate of Hell ★VHS $29.95 6085 27 Oct 1986 Rules of the Game $29.95 6114 27 Oct 1986 Street of Shame ★VHS $29.95 6117 27 Oct 1986 Umberto D. $29.95 6131 27 Oct 1986 Samurai I ★VHS $29.95 6139 1986 Samurai II ★VHS $29.95 6140 1986 Samurai III ★VHS $29.95 6141 1986 The Mistress ★VHS $29.95 6097 1986 Summertime ★LD $29.95 6019 1987 The Seven Samurai $29.95 subtitled 6023 Reissue 1987 Fires on the Plain $29.95 6061 Jan 1987 The Emperor Jones $39.95 6084 1987 Maedchen in Uniform ★VHS $29.95 6093? Jan 1987 Smiles of a Summer Night $29.95 6153 Jan 1987 The Threepenny Opera $29.95 6041 Reissue Feb 1987 Kanal ★VHS $29.95 6089 25 Mar 1987 Lola Montes $29.95 6092 25 Mar 1987 The Silence $29.95 6152 25 Mar 1987 Donkey Skin $29.95 Apr 1987? Mayerling $29.95 6095 Apr 1987 The Bulldog Drummond Escapades $39.95 6167 May 1987 Golden Demon $29.95 May 1987 Sylvia and the Phantom ★VHS $29.95 May 1987 Kameradschaft $29.95 6088 Jun 1987 A Lesson in Love $29.95 6145 Jul 1987 Hiroshima, mon amour $29.95 6181 Jul 1987 Odd Obsession ★VHS $29.95 6060 16 Sep 1987 Forbidden Games $29.95 6065 16 Sep 1987 Three Strange Loves ★VHS $29.95 6155 16 Sep 1987 Two Daughters ★VHS $29.95 16 Sep 1987 Two Women ★VHS $29.95 1622 16 Sep 1987 Sword of Doom $29.95 6142 1987 The Red Balloon $39.95 6001 1984 / 1987 Androcles and the Lion ★VHS $39.95 6028 1987 The Eternal Return $29.95 6080 Oct 1987? La ronde $29.95 6112 Oct 1987? The Testament of Dr. Mabuse $29.95 6119 Oct 1987? Summer Interlude $29.95 Oct 1987? Torment $29.95 6125 Oct 1987? Westfront 1918 $29.95 Oct 1987? Jour de fête $29.95 Nov 1987 The Red Balloon $39.95 6001 Reissue 1988 ★ = in my collection, VHS or Laserdisc, though many are in storage And that is probably the vast bulk of Embassy/Nelson Home Entertainment’s VHS/Beta/laserdisc releases of the Janus Films Collection. “The Classic Collection” had a few more tapes, not from Janus, but licensed from Samuel Goldwyn, and “The International Collection” included at least twenty further films: Happy New Year Mon oncle d’amerique which was pulled a minute later when New Yorker got the contract Dirty Dishes Make Room for Tomorrow Lumiere Contempt The Home and the World Holiday Hotel The Nest Jacko and Lise The Rascals Malou The Associate A Question of Silence Investigation Dersu Uzala Three Brothers Too Shy to Try Pardon Mon Affaire, Too! Spetters, The above twenty were not in any way connected to Janus. It would not surprise me to discover a few others besides. As for the Janus titles, there may be a few that escaped my notice, but I think the illustrated inventory is pretty darned complete. The above videos by no means constitute the entire Janus Films catalogue. Janus had plenty more films in release, but it was a list of titles that would appear for a while when Janus placed a winning bid on an outdated item and which would then disappear a few years later when the license expired and another company placed a higher bid, or when the original licensor decided to issue it on its own or to withdraw it altogether. Janus apparently acquired a number of titles without home-video rights, probably because other distributors already had dibs on home video. When Embassy/Nelson came to its/their end, it seems that New Line bought the remaining stock and replaced the cassette labels, and at one time RCA did the same. It’s a bit odd to find a tape with the shrink wrap proclaiming one company, the slip cover another, and the cassette label yet another. Janus then started licensing a few films to Connoisseur Video Collection, which issued them on VHS. That was from 1988 through 1990. Then Home Vision Entertainment started to reissue the Embassy/Nelson items with a few more besides from Janus. What exactly Home Vision Entertainment is/was, and when it was founded, I do not know, and the online explanations confuse me terribly. and then Kino somehow got involved for a short while for 35mm/16mm distribution, and then Janus and Films, Inc., hooked up with Voyager, and together they founded Criterion, but I never followed that story and so my understanding is worse than hazy. Now that I have put this together and checked the approximate dates, I can see what happened. Janus’s license to the ABPC edition of Metropolis expired in about 1982, and the Deutsches Institut für Filmkunde (DIF) then offered Janus the Jahnke/Fitzwater/Davies edition, but cropped, overspeeded, and terribly printed. Janus had first contracted with Embassy in 1983 for several films, with dubs predominating over subtitles. Customers complained. Little by little more movies were added, and then some Janus films were rolled into Embassy’s new “Classic Collection” while the others were rolled into the newer “International Collection.” From January 1984 through September 1987, Embassy brought out more and more of the Janus collection. Towards the end of 1985, Embassy offered subtitles as a matter of course but also offered some dubbed versions for the few who insisted upon them, if dubbed editions were available. When Nelson gobbled Embassy in September 1987, it continued for a few months before dropping the series. But the ABPC edition of Metropolis was a thing of the past. It was gone just as Embassy Home Entertainment came into being in late 1982. (Also expired, unfortunately, was the license to the two-part Dr. Mabuse, the 1964 abridgment scored by Konrad Elfers. Fortunately, pale shadows of that mutilated shortened faded misprinted cropped overspeeded edition can be seen — and heard!!! — online: Part 1, Part 2. Hoorah.) The Metropolis license had lapsed and all materials had been returned presumably to the Deutsches Institut für Filmkunde (DIF) or maybe to Transit Film. That particular edition of Metropolis has never been seen since. As for the new Electronic Metropolis, a badly vandalized edition of the BBC2/PBS edition, apparently a license for home-use rights was not available, and so it was offered only to cinemas, film societies, clubs, churches, libraries, museums, schools, and television. I would frequently, regularly, relentlessly, manically, maniacally visit Video Factory at 2625 Delaware Avenue in Buffalo back from about 1988 through 1996. Amidst its usual boring overstock of all the latest boring mass-production paint-by-numbers cookie-cutter formulaic Hollywood car-chase-shouting-explosion-shouting-gun-fight-shouting-cops-and-robbers-shouting-male-bonding-shouting-damsel-in-distress-shouting-CGI-monster-shouting-puppy-love-shouting-tug-at-the-heartstrings-humorless-comedy product that feature exclusively shallow and tiresome characters you would never want to meet or even learn about and who are not interesting in any way shape or form, there were also nice sections of more daring works — silents, foreign stuff, off-beat stuff. (Well, I called them more daring works. Others called them “boring movies about a bunch of people being depressed.”) Then, sometime around 1994, the owner, Ron Alsheimer, decided to sell off his inventory of countless thousands of VHS tapes, many of which were brand new and had never even reached the rental shelves and were still in the factory shrink wraps. My guess was that he had purchased them for new outlets that never came to be. Among this staggeringly huge mass of tapes were shelves and shelves and shelves of Janus Collection VHS cassettes from Embassy Home Entertainment. I cursed my small bank account because I wished I could purchase them all. I dreamed of those tapes at night. I lusted after them. I still do. Never mind that some were badly cropped (Witchcraft through the Ages, M, Kameradschaft), never mind that some had sound that was so poor that no amount of filtering or amplification could help (Maedchen in Uniform), never mind that some were severely abridged (Triumph of the Will), never mind that one was horribly overspeeded (Pandora’s Box), I lusted after them anyway, and I still do. Amidst all those titles, I was fully expecting to find Metropolis but I never did. Because, as I now see, there never was such a video. It took Video Factory I think a couple of years to sell off the bulk of those tapes, and then, in late July 1996, there was no more Video Factory. That’s when I finally understood why those tapes had been sold off. The owner knew he could never monetize them except by selling them immediately, and he tried to sell them all. He nearly succeeded. Blockbuster bought out the entire Video Factory chain and turned it into Dullsville, disappointingly mainstream and not eclectic at all. I walked in right after the transition, took a brief look around, and never returned. It took decades to dawn on me why the Janus Films Metropolis was never issued on home video. Wardour licensed the film from Ufa in 1927. Then a reorganization dissolved Wardour and assigned its properties to Associated British, which thus inherited the Ufa license. Murnau-Stiftung of Wiesbaden purchased the underlying Metropolis rights from Ufa in 1966. Associated British was folded into EMI-Elstree in 1970. In the meantime, it was most likely EMI-Elstree that sublicensed Metropolis to Janus Films in the spring of 1972, but those rights seem to have expired by December 1982. Thorn EMI, affiliated with EMI-Elstree, issued a VHS of the 1965 edition in 1982. EMI-Elstree was soon acquired by the Cannon Group, Inc., and the Cannon Group released a properly licensed VHS edition in 1984, which may have been before its acquisition of EMI, maybe, though the acquisitions may well have been piecemeal over several years. It is interesting to me, though surely to nobody else, that the catalogue numbers of the Thorn EMI and the Cannon Group VHS editions are almost identical. That confirms that the Cannon Group acquired the Thorn EMI license. It seems to me that the Wardour / Associated British / EMI / Cannon license expired probably shortly after 1986. The Staatliches Filmarchiv der DDR had the rights to Jahnke’s 1972 reconstruction, but the Bundesarchiv rights prevailed over the Staatliches rights. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, things changed. On 3 October 1990, the Bundesarchiv acquired all Staatliches rights and properties. By longstanding contracts with both the Murnau-Stiftung and with the Bundesarchiv, the government-owned Transit Film GmbH of Munich was placed in charge of foreign sales. When the Janus license expired, it is likely that Transit/Murnau et alia did not wish to renew and instructed EMI-Elstree and/or Cannon not to renew. In all likelihood, Transit/Murnau et alia preferred to make different distribution arrangements. That is likely why the Associated British/Janus version of the movie, which was far superior to nearly all others from 1948 through to its withdrawal in (probably) 1982, disappeared and has never been seen since. Nothing is forever, as any architect knows. Now that the Staatliches materials were at the Bundesarchiv, Enno Patalas arranged to have the Münchener Filmmuseum access them to incorporate into the reconstruction that he had been working on since 1979. Patalas utilized not just of the Staatliches collection, but also MoMA’s nitrate copy negative of 1937/1947, thanks to Moroder who donated a superior triacetate copy negative to MoMA to replace it. Patalas also had access to the Australian “Harry Davidson” print from 1928, which Moroder had managed to extricate. On top of that, Patalas was also free to copy sections of Moroder’s own version of the film, which contained materials from Packard’s nitrate and the fragment from John Hampton’s collection. Patalas completed his new restoration in 1987. This is known colloquially as “The Munich Version.” If I were a history teacher, I would now tell you to close your books and put your notes away and take a test on this material. The kids with photographic memories would be able to spit it all back effortlessly and earn grades of 100%, even though they wouldn’t and couldn’t understand the significance of any part of the story. The normal kids who completely understand the significance of the story would flunk with grades of somewhere between 0% and 10% and would need to have mommy and daddy sign acknowledgments of poor performance. I know nothing at all behind the Bundesarchiv’s acquisition of the Staatliches Filmarchiv. Perhaps there was a perfectly good, sensible reason for it. Nonetheless, knowing nothing, I feel rather bad about this. Knowing nothing, I wish that the Staatliches Filmarchiv had remained independent. The goals and methodologies of the two archives were different. Much Staatliches paperwork vanished during the merger. Maybe there was a good reason, yes, but still, I feel bad about it. If you know better, if you can convince me otherwise, please elucidate. Thanks! Zo, why not just buy the Thorn EMI or Cannon Group VHS editions of Metropolis? Those would have been derived from the Associated British edition, and therefore would be identical to the Janus edition, yes? No, I don’t think so. The Murnau-Stiftung, I suppose, quashed the Associated British edition and stipulated that any future releases be of its own version, which at the time was the 1965 Nordwestdeutscher Filmverleih version that it had inherited. Probabably. I betcha. The running time on the Thorn EMI tape is listed as 87 minutes (at 25fps), and that closely resembles the Nordwestdeutscher edition (88½ at 25fps). Indeed, it is the Nordwestdeutscher’s 1965 edition, as I discovered when I purchased a copy on eBay. The Associated British/Janus edition of 8,537' would run 91 minutes at 25fps. The Cannon Group tape irritatingly does not provide a running time. I’m tempted to buy the tape anyway, just in case (if it ever pops up again), even though I am quite certain it would prove to be identical to the Thorn EMI tape in every way. Been thinking again, despite myself. Above is the possibility that the Murnau-Stiftung declined to renew the contract. There is a second possibility: The Murnau-Stiftung did renew the contract, but recalled Janus’s prints, explaining that the old edition was now obsolete. The Murnau-Stiftung suggested that Janus order new prints, 35mm and 16mm, which had an audiotrack, and which could be licensed through the Deutsches Institut für Filmkunde (DIF), and Janus agreed. A standing contract with Brandon Films required that the Brandon name be on the credits. Another possibility is that when Janus requested an extension, the Murnau-Stiftung directed Janus to Brandon for a sublicense. Those are the only possibilities I can think of. So there you have it: several paragraphs in which I attempt to plot the rights issues. Took me hours to write. Hours and hours and hours. The above few paragraphs contain gobs of unverified assumptions, and so I am not convinced that my reconstruction of events is exact, though it is certainly plausible and I strongly suspect that my reconstruction is extremely close to the reality. If I am correct that the Janus license expired in December 1982, that would help explain why Janus/Brandon issued the newer Eckart Jahnke version in 1983. Embassy assigned its contract for the Janus Collection to Nelson Entertainment, which then assigned it to Home Vision, and not long afterwards we were in The Age of DVD. Janus at one time (late 1980’s???) released its 16mm and 35mm films through Kino, and back around 1989 I had a Kino/Janus catalogue, but whatever became of it, heaven only knows. I do not recall seeing Metropolis listed, but my memory is vague. It was more or less at that time that Janus and Voyager joined forces to create Criterion. My narrative is confused because I never paid too much attention, unfortunately. Did you? Continue to Chapter 43, Can We Find the BBC2/PBS Version?