Long before techno or Kraftwerk there was Richard Wagner, and in 1924 director Fritz Lang and his writer wife Thea von Harbou decided to put a story the German headbanger had popularised onto the screen. Die Nibelungen: Siegfried is the first of a two-part phantasmagorical medieval epic “dedicated to the German People”, a Tolkien-before-Tolkien, Game-of-Thrones-before-Game-of-Thrones tale of hair, helmets and hunting horns. Plus invisibility, dragons, fair damsels, derring-do, treachery and death.
George Lucas clearly watched this first film (at least) before making Star Wars and the debt owed visually by Game of Thrones is also obvious here and there. What’s remarkable is how technically accomplished it is given given the crudity of the technology available. And the shock, if you’re only familiar with later work by Lang, is that it’s not shot in the style Lang would later make his own – balletic cameras swinging about on cranes.
Instead a much more monumental, picturesque, pre-Raphaelite Lang is at work, using sets and lighting and special effects (montage, dissolves, matte paintings, models, puppets) and even animated sequences to work up a mood of courtly quest following his hero, Siegfried, from swordsmith to fighter, to dragon-slayer, to lover and eventually to victim.
Blond, Nordic and stripped to the waist, Siegfried travels from the simplicity of a life in the forest working at a forge, propelled by stories of the beauty of a princess called Kriemhild, to the court of King Gunther – en route slaying a dragon and becoming a superhero after bathing in its blood. At the court of King Gunther he uses his new powers of strength and invisibility to help Gunther woo and win Brunhild, the fiercely combative Queen of Iceland. In return Gunther gives Siegfried his sister Kriemhild’s hand in marriage. Though this enrages proto-feminist Brunhild, it’s the trickery Siegfried uses to win Brunhild for Gunther rather than the offhand treatment of Kriemhild that eventually tips Brunhild over the edge and proves to be Siegfried’s undoing.
Kriemhild seems OK with being passed around like a parcel. And, actually, it suits the casting, this lack of oomph on the princess’s part. Margarete Schön may be a stately and eye-catching Kriemhild in her long, long braided blond hair but it’s Hanna Ralph who draws attention as the feisty, warrior princess Brunhild. Ralph brings glamour, power and flashing eyes to a screen that needs it – Paul Richter’s Siegfried is a touch underwhelming and Theodor Loos is positively limp as Gunther, though that is the way this moaning, weak monarch appears to have been written. Keeping the end up for the patriarchy is Hans Adalbert Schlettow as Hagen, Gunther’s one-eyed, huge-helmeted chamberlain who’s the go-to when dark deeds and decisive action are called for.
The sets are the star, though, and they give the likes of De Mille, DW Griffith, Von Stroheim or Douglas Fairbanks’s fantasies a run for their money. Thanks to the pretty good restoration (scavenged from all sorts of sources, and sometimes obviously from next-generation elements), the fabulous costumes and internal décor can also be scrutinised pretty closely. The restoration is good enough that you can also play “spot the wig” if you like – with Siegfried’s you can clearly see the join.
You might expect Wagner on the soundtrack. Instead composer Gottfried Huppertz gives us rousing bursts of Wagner-lite horns and cascading strings. The film actually did originally come with this soundtrack – it was not silent at all, then – but only one cinema, the Century Theater in New York (where it had its US premiere), was technically capable of playing it. So for the most part people made do with whatever version of Huppertz (or something different entirely) local musicians could perform.
The Nazis, high on Wagner and “authentic” Teutonic expression, loved it and co-opted it. Its reputation has survived the appropriation and it’s still often heralded as one of the greatest silent films. Truth be told its reputation rests largely on the film’s first half, where the action is. Once the dragons and dwarves and magic spells have given way to intrigue and plotting at court, things slow down a touch and there are more scenes set inside the castle than seem strictly necessary, as well as a fealty to the original Middle High German epic poem from 1200 that’s touching but not entirely helpful (it goes on a bit, in other words).
The film came in two parts, with Kriemhild’s revenge (a very Game of Thrones event) coming in part two, not for nothing titled Kriemhild. It did not fare as well as Siegfried, which was wildly successful, and Lang re-edited it hoping to fix whatever were the perceived problems. But Lang’s re-edit couldn’t overcome the allure of other big movies of the year, like The Thief of Bagdad or The Sea Hawk. Perhaps audiences had just had enough fantastical medieval sword and sorcery. How times have changed!
Die Nibelungen complete (Siegfried and Kriemhild) – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2024
