On Sunday night, the coolest guy in Los Angeles was unoffical rock star Robert Osborne, who capped off the four-day TCM Classic Film Festival with a breathtaking screening of Metropolis. Introduced for the last time, Osborne was greeted at Grauman’s Chinese with a thunderous standing ovation, complete with whistles and cheers. Adroitly managing all the adoration, Osborne went on to thank all the TCM folks who made the festival possible, and recounted being approached by fans who told him that the channel got them through dark times, including unemployment and cancer. Osborne deflected any maudlin feelings by quipping, “I hadn’t expected we’d be anyone’s nurse!” and then told the crowd, almost conspiritorially, that it would be announced tomorrow that, yes, there would indeed be a second TCM Classic Film Festival. (If that doesn’t prove true, I’m going to have to eat my hat — and this blog.) More cheers. After those subsided, Osborne got down to the business at hand: briefing the audience on the screening to commence in mere minutes.

The last day of the festival was focused on the epic: things kicked off at 9am with a screening of 1963′s Cleopatra, featuring co-star Martin Landau, who had sardonically stated yesterday, “I’m going to have to bring a boxed lunch to that thing!” The 100-year-old Luise Rainer, the first actor to win back-to-back Oscars, did indeed make it to the screening of The Good Earth (Jerry Lewis, however, did not make it to The King of Comedy). And Eli Wallach was on hand for a pre-screening discussion of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. But the crowning achievement of the day — if not the festival — was the North American premiere of a new restoration of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Though the film has gone through copious restorations since the 80s, in 2008 a complete print of the film was discovered at a museum in Buenos Aires, and this new restoration, minus one scene near the end that was damaged beyond repair, is now just beginning to circle the globe.

To be honest, I did not cotton to the idea of sitting through 2 1/2 hours of silent film at the tail end of an already exhausting film festival. I’m glad I didn’t trust my instincts — the print that unspooled onscreen was pristine beyond belief, and seeing it on a huge screen literally took my breath away. Lang’s iconic images are just as potent today as they were over 90 years ago, and leave most any of today’s quote-unquote epic filmmakers in the dust; anyone who has helmed most any summer blockbuster of the past ten years should see this film and then hang their head in shame at Lang’s mix of action, suspense and drama. Osborne told the audience beforehand that, because the found print was 16mm, the newly restored scenes would be grainy from their age as well as being enlarged to accommodate the restoration. The difference is immediately apparent; the “new” scenes are scarred with lines, sometimes blurry, sometimes grainy. That said, after about 30 minutes (while you’re playing a game of could-this-scene-have-been-cut?) you forget the disparity and just become enveloped in the film. The acting does indeed tend toward silent-film histrionics, but in a movie dominated by men, it’s the female lead, Brigitte Helm, as the saintly Maria and her evil doppelganger robot impersonator, who captivates through and through. Helm has the unenviable task of playing both madonna and whore, but wow! As the “machine-man” version of Maria, Helm seems like a punk-rock queen, and a raised eyebrow from her conveys more than most recent Academy Award-winning performances altogether. If you get a chance to see this restoration, you must.

And, if you can, see it with live music accompaniment. The Alloy Orchestra provided live music for the Grauman’s screening, and live pulsating rhythms for the first time made me understand the magic that silent films must have conveyed when first unveiled to the public, seeing images you could never conceive in your own mind set to the musical version of a live heartbeat. It’s truly magical.

And, that magic was what was celebrated throughout the four days of the fest in various forms — the visceral experience of true moviegoing. Loath to attend movies at my local cineplex, I found myself completely enjoying the communal experience — hearing laughs where I may not have expected, smiling ruefully as audience members clapped at various names through the opening credits, feeling the tension that pulls people together; it was a great reminder of the power that movies still hold in the era of ultra-modern technology that can isolate us from audiences. Hopefully, this kind of classic moviegoing will never go out of style.

Thanks for reading and coming along with us (virtually) to this unique, celebratory festival:  check out photos here, our Twitter feed here for highlights from the event, and our special section on the festival here.