Learning on ScreenDie Nibelungen
2012. GB. DVD + Blu-ray. Eureka (Masters of Cinema series). 288 minutes + extras. £19.99
About the author: Dr Paul Cuff is an Associate Fellow in the Department of Film and Television at the University of Warwick. He has written an article on Abel Gance’s La Roue (1922) (published in Film History) and has work awaiting publication on J’accuse! (1919) and Napoléon (1927), two films from the same director.
E-mail: paul.cuff@warwick.ac.uk
Fritz Lang’s epic masterpiece Die Nibelungen (1924) is one of the treasures of silent cinema. Based on the same German legends that inspired Wagner’s ‘Ring Cycle’, this five-hour film is divided into two parts. The first, Siegfried, depicts the eponymous youth in search of adventure. Siegfried (Paul Richter) slays a dragon and becomes invincible by bathing in its blood – but a leaf that lands on his shoulder leaves him with a fatal weakness. Though he finds success and riches, his complex allegiance with the Nibelung clan breaks down amid greed and treachery – he is betrayed and murdered whilst on a hunt. Visually, Siegfried is as precisely designed as its narrative: every detail of the sets, lighting, and costumes is impeccably organized. Lang’s vast production created some of the most iconic images of silent German cinema: Siegfried riding through the sun-dappled forest (a maze of concrete columns rendered sublimely magical by lighting and colour tinting); his fight with the dragon (an immense mechanized model that breathes real fire), the bridge made from a hundred knights supporting a walkway of shields; Siegfried being pierced by a spear and falling to the ground, mortally wounded, amid a bed of trembling flowers.
The stately, majestic imagery of the first film gives way to the increasingly intense and chaotic style of Kriemhilds Rache, where Siegfried’s widow seeks to avenge his murder. Kriemhild (Margarete Schön) journeys to the East, where she forms an alliance with the Huns and King Etzel (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) and brings their army to bear on those who betrayed her husband. The thrillingly gloomy denouement of the film comes with Kriemhild’s vengeance reaching its inexorable conclusion: the heaped-up bodies of the slain herald a terrifying conflagration of a palace stronghold.
