Die Nibelungen: Siegfried

I am not especially an aficionado of silent films though I have long loved Lang's 'Metropolis'. Being an opera lover, especially Wagner, it is to my shame that it has taken me decade to get around to watching Lang's masterpiece 'Siegfried'.

Even more than Richard Wagner's 4 Ring operas in 'Der Ring des Nibelungen' Lang's films tie in many of the ancient Nordic and Teutonic legends that contributed to Wagner's monumental creation.

Brunhild is a powerful Icelandic Queen, Siegfried the son of King Siegmund, all this quite different from the operas in that Siegmund was not a king in those. Also, Hagen, the evil deus ex machina is portrayed here as a Wotan like figure, with patched eye and horned helmet. Otherwise, the basic story is the same but more believable as drama than Wagner's highly fantastic story line.

This film is going to last a lifetime with me. And it is especially wonderful that the great musical score by Gottfried Huppertz has been included in the DVD release on Kino films. Its a haunting score and very much its own character. It doesn't try to imitate Wagnerianism but there are what Wagner called leitmotivs to represent the various characters and mood.

Even if you aren't a Wagner fan this film by Fritz Lang displays so many amazing innovations for 1924 that it puts the computerized f/x of our day quite in the shade in terms of novelty and human artistry.

I can't recommend 'Siegfried' highly enough. Haunting and beautiful, even in black and white. The Kino picture is quite clear and the acting superb.

I'll say this up front: this film can move very slowly at points. Also, I saw it in a theater with live piano accompaniment, and it's likely to be much less impressive on a smaller screen. I doubt the video print is very good, since I am familiar with other tapes that that company has distributed. Despite its slow points, when Lang and crew create the numerous set pieces, watch out: you're in for some of the greatest scenes of filmdom. I'd also like to point out that, as someone who is quite familiar with the original poem, I'll tell you that source material often moves a lot slower than this film does. As a technical marvel, I don't think some of the stuff here was surpassed until very recently, except maybe in King Kong. It's even more amazing to behold than Metropolis, Lang's next and much more famous film. All of the effects might seem dated now, but anyone who appreciates early cinema will easily fall in love.

The film opens with Siegfried's infamous battle against the dragon. A bit of trivia: this scene is not in The Nibelungenlied. It is briefly mentioned in the first lay by Hagen as having happened a while ago. However, this is the one scene from this movie which is widely remembered, and for good reason. The dragon is amazingly created, nearly on the level of the dinosaurs from The Lost World and King Kong. Unlike them, though, it is a puppet and not stop motion. As far as puppetry goes, it surpasses most of the muppets of Return of the Jedi by leaps and bounds. Unfortunately, as lifelike as they made it, the dragon is not at all that fierce. It almost looks like a friendly dog (it even wags its tail as Siegfried valiantly rushes at it, sword aloft). When it is supposed to be roaring at Siegfried, the audience was giggling; it looked more like it was yelping. As a result, the depiction of Siegfried begins to come off as satirical (probably not intended, but it makes things more interesting). There is a major strain of Niebelungenlied scholarship which sees Siegfried not as the hero, but as the aggressor.

The second major set piece involves the battle with Alberich, the Nibelung, an episode that occurs a bit later in the poem, from whom he wins the cloak of invisibility, a horde of treasure, and Balmung, his famous sword. The mythological characters in this episode are awesome to behold in their costuming (and simply in the casting, which is perfect throughout; the creatues in the film's first scene, in which Siegfried is forging his sword, are great, too), especially the dwarves who balance the pot full of treasure on their backs.

The best scene in the film occurs in the next chapter, the dream of Kriemhild, which is animation done in sand. Other great scenes in the film include the crossing of the lake of fire, the battle between Brunhild and Gunther (with an invisible Siegfried helping him), the wooing of Brunhild, the quarrel between the queens, and the hunt. As far as I remember, only the war with Denmark is left out, which happens in the poem before they go to Iceland for Brunhild. It's not missed.

Special attention must be given to the miraculous casting. Paul Richter plays Siegfried as the hero to beat all heroes. With his blonde, flowing hair, he marches across the world blindly performing great deeds and talking to birds (the look on Richter's face when he starts to hear birds talk is priceless). He's too naive to see the trouble he causes as he dishes out treasure to the poor (a wonderful touch; Lang doesn't even draw attention to how this angers the Burgundians in their dialogue, but only in their expressions). As many scholars have proposed, Siegfried's actions all suggest that Worms is in iminent danger of being usurped by him. Margarethe Schoen may not have been the best choice for Kriemhild. The actress is so manly that I assumed that an actor was playing her. She is supposed to be the most beautiful woman in the world. The actress does emote quite well, however. Now, Hannah Ralph, who plays Brunhild, exudes a manliness that her part requires. She's supposed to be a warrior maiden. Ralph does a great job conveying Brunhild's cunning, bitterness, and cruelty. Theodor Loos, who plays King Gunther, is absolutely perfect. I couldn't have imagined him better. His face exhibits both his moral predicament and his supreme inadequacy that the poem spells out so clearly. Hans Adalbert Schlettow plays Hagen. His costume may be a bit overwrought (a huge, gnarly beard, a furry eye patch, and an enormous helmet with eagle wings reaching a foot and a half upwards), but the actor's perfect for the role, although he might be too old. His age makes me wonder how he's going to fight like a demon in Kriemhild's Wrath, the second part of the film, which I'll see tomorrow. I'm very eager to see how Lang and Thea von Harbou, his wife ans screenwriter, will make the remaining half of the epic interesting on film. It's nothing but battles. Volker and Gunther's brothers are also well cast, although they'll probably be more important in the second half, that is, if the poem is followed as closely as it is here. 8/10.

When I saw this wonderfully exciting adventure film, it got me thinking, "Why can't people make films like this anymore?". Partly why the film makers don't make films like this anymore is that they are so occupied in having the best special effects around and don't give a hoot about the characters, story or detail (Jurassic Park, Lost World, Independence Day, Armageddon are only a small part). I would love to go and see a film that have real characters from these make-believe worlds. There are so many movies today that have Americans in a make-believe world, acting and talking like Americans, this makes me sick all over. This movie has real characters we care about in a believable world. This is partly why I love silent films so much. It is the acting and not the dialog that the viewer gets to know the character through.

This film has all the elements that makes up for a good adventure film. Very good story, exciting action, wonderful sets, beautiful photography, chillingly wonderful villains and some of the best special effects I've seen (for the time's standard). I especially love the trick photography to make Siegfried invisible and casting a shadow even though he is. I'm looking forward to watching Kriemhild's Revenge.

If you haven't seen this movie and love adventure movies, see it. It is so exciting and magical that you'll remember it always when you see a bad adventure movie, something that is normal today.

I think this is an important film to see even for historical reasons, since after "Die Nibelungen" (1924) Lang would make "Metropolis" (1927), something for which he is best remembered. But more importantly, this is in my mind astonishingly gripping and the far more satisfying film (or two).

It's fascinating how different the two parts are. As they are, their respective brilliance shines brightly, individually, and in itself the film as one grand epic reinvents itself come the revenge story of the latter half. The first film is the fantastical one, precursor to what we have now as high fantasy adaptations, mainly "The Lord of the Rings". In this sense "Siegfried" is shockingly modern, and here Lang succeeds far better than in "Metropolis", where he didn't have a national epic upon which to project the visual aesthetics, instead his own sense of national identity projected into a perceived future or alternate present. This is surprisingly lucid, which itself is a testimony of its filmic brilliance.

The court at Worms is as rigidly symmetrical and foreboding as one can be, and the film is full of such visual information, rigid symmetry that I bet greatly inspired Eisentein's "Ivan Groznyi" films (1944, 1958). In fact, I would love to see these masterworks by the two directors together someday, since their similarities go beyond style and visual language, also converging in their handling of national folklore in highly theatrical terms.

The new restoration of the project, made by the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung, is available on Blu-ray in both Region A and B, courtesy of Kino and Masters of Cinema respectively. What a treasure! In fact, the more I think of it, I can't wait to revisit it again.

Fritz Lang's DIE NIBELUNGEN: SIEGFRIED is absolutely astounding cinema, heroic, beautiful, tragic, and overwhelming in its scope. Even though I have been a fan of silent cinema for a decade now, I was intimidated to watch this film due to its length, but the two and a half hours went right by and now I am pumped to see the second installment. As someone who doesn't tend to enjoy "binge-watching," let me tell you, it is a great temptation to just drop my other obligations for the day and just continue this great story.

The most interesting part about this movie is that it both revels in and subtly critiques its main characters. There really isn't a good guy or a bad guy. All of the characters are in their own ways sympathetic, but they are also quite vicious, capable of violence, pettiness, and deceit. Their codes of honor come to fail them as one character after another vows vengeance for wrongs done to them.

After a greasy diet of banal modern blockbusters more interested in advertising the next sequel rather than telling a compelling story, this is such a wonderful alternative.