Lisa got me an extremely thoughtful gift from Paris. I've complained before about how there don't seem to be any good consumer-released copies of Fritz Lang's Metropolis available (link is to a very good fan site). The Madacy release is the only one in print in the United States, as far as I know--and the DVD sells for $8 or less--and the print, cut and music are dreadful. A version sells in the UK, but has terrible reviews.

Lisa got me a French release of Metropolis on DVD, finally justifying my spending extra money on a DVD player that can play multiple region codes (it's a region 2 disc, meaning it won't play on DVD players sold in the U.S.). The image quality is excellent, and it appears to contain more footage than versions we've seen. The menus are in French, and the titles are in German (with optional French sub-titles for the titles). The music is bizarre, but I like it. Knowing the condition of existing prints, this is probably the best I could have hoped for on video.

And it sounds like it is. The above-mentioned fan site has comparison charts, but most helpful was the note at the bottom of this page:

Important note to anyone considering buying Metropolis in DVD: the versions released by Madacy, CMH/Xoom, and Eureka are not recommended by us, since they all are reported to (1) have bad image quality; (2) have an inadequate soundtrack; (3) be very incomplete (many scenes found in Moroder's or in Munich's restored versions are missing in them). The only DVD version that could be considered worth buying would be that released by Film sans Frontieres. However, this version has French captions and we do not know if a version with English captions is being sold or at least being planned.

The Films sans Frontieres web site has little information, and Amazon.co.uk doesn't list this version, so I don't know where you can get it. DVDfr.com lists it (with a picture of the silver 3-D cover), but I can't tell if they actually sell DVDs or just review them (my French isn't that good :).

Here's a long, energetic and very appropriately scathing review of the Madacy release, which mentions the FsF version:

There are other versions of this film on DVD available, but most experts on Metropolis agree that only one of them is any good-and that's in French, released by the company Films Sans Frontieres.

And thanks to Lisa, I now own it. =)