Metropolis: All New Restoration

Alfred Abel (12 March 1879 – 12 December 1937) was a German film actor, director, and producer. He appeared in over 140 silent and sound films between 1913 and 1938. Abel’s most famous silent film performance was in Fritz Lang’s futuristic film, Metropolis (1927). In the film, he plays the arrogant Joh Fredersen, leader of the metropolis. Abel was renowned for his acting style characterized by his avoidance of dramatic gesturing. He learned to show the psychology and internal tensions of his characters with reserved expressions. With the advent of talkies, Abel contimued his sucessful career and starred in 38 films, working with directors such as Detlef Sierk, Anatole Litvak, and Paul Martin. Abel’s final film role was as Daffinger in Herbert Maisch’s Frau Sylvelin (1938), which was not released until after his death in 1937.

Gustav Fröhlich (March 21, 1902 – December 22, 1987) was a German actor. He landed secondary roles in a number of films and plays before fate took a hand. He was cast in a small role in Metropolis when the original leading man, André Mattoni, portraying the young hero, walked off the set during shooting, infuriated by the hardships imposed by Lang. He was discovered by Thea Von Harbou, Fritz Lang's wife, working on the set, and she immediatly cast him in the lead as Freder because of his striking good looks. Before becoming an actor, he was an editor and a journalist. Many of Fröhlich's films in the early '30s were lighthearted musicals and romances, and Metropolis was far and away the most important role of his career. He spent the last 30 years of his life living in Switzerland, and died in 1987, age 85.

Brigitte Helm (March 17, 1908 – June 11, 1996) was a German actress. Her most famous role was in Fritz Lang's Metropolis in 1927. She was born Brigitte Eva Gisela Schittenhelm in Berlin. Her most memorable role, was as Maria in Metropolis. After Metropolis, Helm made over 30 films, including talking pictures, before retiring in 1936. Other appearances included The Love of Jeanne Ney (1927), Alraune (1928), Gloria (1931), The Blue Danube (1932) and Gold (1934). In 1935, put off by Nazi control of the German film industry, she moved to Switzerland where she had 4 children with her second husband Dr. Hugo Kunheim, an industrialist.

Friedrich Rudolf Klein-Rogge (1885 – 1955) was a German film actor. Klein-Rogge is known for playing sinister figures in films in the 1920s and 1930s as well as being a main stay in director Fritz Lang's Weimar-era films, most notably as master criminal Dr. Mabuse. He was married to actress and screenwriter Thea von Harbou who eventually left Klein-Rogge to marry Lang. Klein-Rogge re-married twice. First with Margarete Neff and secondly with the Swedish actress Mary Johnson. He died, almost forgotten, in Austria in 1955.

Theodor August Konrad Loos (1883 - 1954 in Stuttgart) was a German actor. The son of a watchmaker, he left secondary school prematurely and worked for three years at an export firm for musical instruments in Leipzig, and after that for his uncle, an art dealer in Berlin. He left to become an actor. His theater engagements led him to Leipzig, Danzig and Frankfurt am Main, then to Berlin where he acted from 1912 to 1945 at different theaters. From 1913 he performed in more than 170 feature films, initially silent films. In the 1930s he could be seen performing in classic theater, on over 400 occasions in Peer Gynt alone. After the end of the war, Loos returned to the theater. After August 1949 he was a member of the Staatstheater Stuttgart.

Heinrich George (1893 -1946) was a German stage and film actor. He had one of his first roles in Metropolis and was also in the first film version of Berlin Alexanderplatz (1931). He was active in the Communist Party of Germany before the Nazi takeover, who did not permit him to continue to work. He later took over leading a group of "non-desirable" actors. He acted in a number of propaganda films before and during WWII. He died in 1946 in a Russian concentration camp just north of Berlin, of starvation.

Fritz Heinrich Rasp (1891 - 1976) was a German film actor who appeared in 104 films between 1916 and 1976. His most notable roles were J.J. Peachum in The Threepenny Opera and "Der Schmale" (The Thin Man) in Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis; many of the scenes in which he appears are part of the film's footage long believed lost until their recovery in 2008.

"Der Schmale" (the slim one), Josaphat and Georgi (worker 11811) have much more screen time in the new restoration.
"Pictures gave us the impression of what was missing – the to a supernumerary reduced figure of Georgy, the man named Slim, Josaphat, the car journey through Metropolis, the observation of Georgy through Slim, Freders delirium of Slim in which he changes into a apocalypse preaching monk."
Die Zeit - Press Release

Hans Leo Reich (1902–1959)

Olaf Storm, Actor, Editor, Producer
Date of Birth 10 January 1894, Frederiksberg, Denmark
Date of Death March 1931