On the restoration problem: when does restoring a film become remaking it?

The 2011 restoration of Metropolis by the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation incorporated footage discovered in Buenos Aires that had been missing for over eighty years. The restored version is closer to what Fritz Lang made in 1927 than anything previously in circulation.

But 'closer to what Fritz Lang made' raises a question: the film that existed in critical discourse for eighty years — the truncated, restructured version — was the film that influenced cinema, film criticism, and science fiction. That version is the one that Ridley Scott watched before making Blade Runner. That version is the one Thea von Harbou's screenplay was condensed from.

The restored version is longer and more coherent and arguably less interesting than the truncated version. The truncation created an elliptical, dreamlike quality that the restoration somewhat dissipates.

This is a genuine restoration paradox: the more historically accurate the film becomes, the less it resembles the cultural object that accumulated meaning over decades of circulation in a different form.