Game of thrones… Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (1924), with Costas Fotopoulos, Kennington Bioscope

 

First Bioscope of the year and it’s an epic evening for one of the cornerstones of Weimar Cinema, one in fact that I’ve been saving up for just such an occasion and, judging from a non-too scientific sampling of the audience, I’m not the only one with the DVD/Blu-ray at home on the shelf, waiting to be watched after a proper screening and the Bioscope made sure that this was indeed a special screening.

 

A 16mm print was shown tonight, slightly shorter the restoration on which our home media is  based but still very impressive, astonishing even given the scale and verve of the film making. Regular KB, MC, Michelle Facey gave her usual high-content introduction, providing the background on director and cinematic visionary Fritz Land and his script-writing partner Thea von Harbou, as well as explaining the film’s link to early 13^th Century Saxon epic poetry, Der Nibelungenlied, written in High Middle German and by unknown hands in Passau in what is now southern Bavaria.  This tale was itself based on oral traditions dating back centuries and mentioning historic events and individuals of the 5th and 6th centuries.

 

There are similar stories across German speaking Europe and up to Scandinavia and, there are some similarities with later Middle English stories such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight or Le Mort d’Arthur, they are all epics in which it is how the characters live as much as if they die: chivalric romances with logic and outcomes based on magical and religious certainties. The link as a noted medievalist pointed out, may well be the French writer Chrétien de Troyes, who, writing in the late 12^th  Century, told tales of Arthurian legend; setting up a style and subject matter that led to the Extended Chivalric Universe, spreading across borders and language.

Paul Richter provides some scale

Der Nibelungenlied is altogether fuller of dungeons and dragons than usually found in Arthur, it is peculiarly Germanic and this appealed especially to Lang and von Harbou who were looking to take their countrymen out of themselves by presenting a folk-fantasy many would recognise on a grand scale, something even the Americans would struggle to better. There’s no getting over the links between the story and German identity though with elements not only quoted after German reunification in the 1870s, but forming the basis for Wagner’s Ring Cycle, a celebration of the loyalties rather than the more courtly aspects. After the First World War – and Lang’s film – it’s even possible to see Siegfried as literally representing the betrayal of German interests, “the stab in the back”, seen by many at home after surrender in 1918. Politics and culture pick and choose each other in odd ways, for more on this see von Harbou’s output in Germany after 1933…

 

No doubt the primary purpose in 1924 was to deliver rousing entertainment every bit as stirring as Arthurian legends, swords and sorcery. This is something of a superhero epic with a hero who, having bathed in dragon blood, is almost invulnerable. It’s not too much of a stretch to imagine two young friends, sons of recently migrated European Jews, Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, both ten on this film’s release, perhaps seeing it in the USA and getting a few ideas. The Italians had their own strong man, Maciste, the German Übermensch went back a bit further.

 

The film is huge in scale and features many tropes that are now staples of the explosion in fantasy films, although Lang’s vision is decades before Tolkien or CS Lewis set their templates, let alone Game of Thrones, House of Dragons and all the rest. Like modern blockbusters, Lang’s film was also in two parts and tonight’s screening was only of the first part, still some two hours even on 16mm and well over half an hour longer on the reconstruction found on the Eureka Blu-ray.

 

Siegfried holds aloft his sword

It tells the tale of Siegfried (Paul Richter), son of King Siegmund of Xanten, who becomes an expert swordsmith, fashioning the perfect blade which the artful blacksmith, Mime (Georg John) tests by dropping a feather onto the edge and slicing it in two. Siegfried is a genetically lucky blonde, yes, an Aryan, who attains success through bravery, guile and killing the right dragon. After the sword is struck he leaves on his white charger (possibly called Tonto or Comet the Superhorse) after hearing about the kings of Burgundy who reign at a mighty castle at Worms on the Rhine, where the beauteous Princess Kriemhild (Margarete Schön) awaits just such a knight as he.

 

I shall set out for that place so that I may win Kriemhild!

 

Mime tells our hero how to find Worm but he sends him to almost certain doom as there is a dragon blocking his way. Siegfried is of course fearless and wily and outthinks the, actual fire-breathing creature, who looks a little sad as he’s blinded and then fatally stabbed by the knight’s blade. This blood has magical qualities and a little bird, literally, tells him that if he bathes in it, he will become impervious harm which leads to some  long-distance nudity as Siegfried takes the bath of invulnerability. One last twitch of the dragon’s tail though and a leaf lands on his shoulder meaning that he has one area of weak human flesh… every superhero needs their kryptonite or Achille’s Heel.

 

He also gains additional super powers and wealth after being attacked by Alberich, King of the Dwarves (Georg John, again) who wears a net of invisibility but is soon overwhelmed and forced to promise Siegfried his fortune, the treasure of the Nibelungs, if he will spare him. Naturally Alberich double-crosses but fails and as he dies curses all in his subterranean kingdom to be turned to stone. Siegfried heads off and goes from strength to strength soon conquering 12 kingdoms and presenting a suitably heroic prospect to the Burgundians. 

Margarete Schön

In her introduction, Michelle referred us to Lotte H Eisner’s Haunted Screen¹ for an analysis of the film’s incredible design and mix of the usual expressionist/UFA studio work with stunning location shots; all perfectly controlled by Lang and his team led by art director Otto Hunte. Eisner quotes early film critic Béla Balázs in saying that “the soul of a landscape or milieu did not always present itself in the same way” and so it was up to the director to “seek the eyes of the landscape…” Nature had to be “stylised” for film to become a work of art (Rudolph Kurtz²) and plain nature was not enough in itself to “make man’s destiny understood” and Stimmungsbilder, “mood pictures” had to be used.

 

Lang certainly took control of his landscape and it is very much a major character in this film, reflecting and setting the moods of the characters and the narrative. The studio constructs are huge dynamic depictions of nature; rocky outcrops, dense pine woods and treacherous pathways whilst the building of Worm are massive in scale both for the interiors and exteriors, with huge stairways dwarfing the players, who move across them, black or white, like pieces on a chess board.

 

Talking of which, Lang also micromanages the way his human resource was aligned and where exactly they where in the frame. There are so many examples of this that I was tempted just to leave 150 screen shots in place of all these words. The opening sequence is almost balletic, as Siegfried hammers out his sward and Mint recoils in horror as he sees how powerful he has become and then, when we first see the imposing King’s Castle, the guard are spaced out symmetrically as the nobles walk past, as if the audience, commoners all, are held at a distance. We quickly switch to the interiors and the almost sterile atmosphere.

 

Order in the castle

All this will change when Siegfried strikes a deal with King Gunther of Burgund (Theodor Loos) to help him gain the hand of the fearsome Queen Brunhild of Isenland (Hanna Ralph who is great value!) in exchange for allowing his new friend to give him his sister Kriemhild’s hand in marriage. They head off to Brunhild’s realm and Siegfried uses his net of invisibility to make sure that the puny King Gunther wins the three trials of strength he needs against the woman he wants to marry. Brunhild is down but not quite out and, whilst she has to accede, she suspects something is wrong.

 

All is now set for some court intrigue in Burgundy and, as with other characters who break the code of chivalry, there is always a price to pay and an uneasy peace will not last for long at the King’s castle.

 

It’s hard to think of many films with this kind of scale in 1924, and the direction as well as cinematography are first rate with cameraman Carl Hoffmann, Günther Rittau, and Walter Ruttmann as good if not better than almost anyone in Hollywood. Paul Gerd Guderian’s costumes also match the set designs and there’s a striking mix of strong modern design with traditional folk stylings. Everything is larger than life from the hairy hobbits working in the smithery to the dwarfs and the brown back coiffeurs of Siegfried and Brunhild. There’s also a moody turn from the King of Burgundy’s general, Hagen of Tronje (Hans Adalbert Schlettow), eye patch over one eye and huge black wings attached to his armoured helmet.

Hanna Ralph is not to be messed with

It's operatic, and fantastic with an emotional sweep designed to sweep the audience away. To this end, Costas Fotopoulos’ tirelessly inventive accompaniment also played its part, never flagging during the epic mood and melded to Lang’s vision as everything else. It contributed mightily to the unfolding ultra-drama with lines and themes as intriguingly structured as the architecture and design on screen.

 

Die Nibelungen was premiered in the at the Royal Albert Hall in London, where it played for 40 performances between 29 April and 20 June 1924. A hit and an influence on film for all eternity. It was certainly a hit tonight and here’s to the second part when it can be arranged… no spoilers but it’s called: Die Nibelungen: Kriemhilds Rache (Kriemhild's Revenge).

1.       The Haunted Screen, Lotte H Eisner, first published in 1952 and updated with translation and new material for Thames and Hudson in 1969.

2.       Rudolf Kurtz’s Expressionismus und Film, published in 1926, was one of the first, if not the first, art historical treatises to examine film as an equal of the other arts.

 

Fever dreams… The Indian Tomb (1921), Eureka Masters of Cinema Blu-ray

I want this tomb to be built by a man from whose hands the stones receive a soul.

 

Fritz Lang later described Thea von Harbou’s novel on which this two-part epic was based as a fever dream and those were exactly my thoughts after spending the last few days emersed in Joe May’s visuals and the hypnotic new score from Irena and Vojtěch Havel. It’s 243 minutes of high-quality atmospherics, drenched in bass desire and the magic ethereality of the imagined sub-continent, all recreated on a grand scale in Woltersdorf, a lake land and forested area not far from Berlin.

On the centenary of its opening Eureka are releasing a 2k digital transfer on Blu-ray as part of the Masters of Cinema series and it fully warrants the treatment. Lang co-scripted with von Harbou and expected to direct only for May to tell him, truthfully or not, that he couldn’t get the financial backing for a directorial novice. Lang would later return to the story for two films in the late fifties showing this was an itch he had to scratch near the end of his career. Budget-busting exotica may have been in vogue, when funding was available, but it’s very interesting to hear comments from film preservation student Sreya Chatterjee who, whilst noting that the film draws from a variety of Indian cultures, Hindu, Muslim and Buddhist, sees it as an objective and non-judgemental creation with “respect and fascination” for its subject.

Mr Veidt

Indeed, the depth of characterisation of the “Indians”, including Conrad Veidt’s tour de force portrayal of the conflicted Ayan III, the Maharajah of Bengal, offsets charges of “orientalism”, especially as the whole story is based on love, loss and betrayal not one-dimensional autocracy. It’s also a commentary on British colonialism, certainly a feature of von Harbou’s writing in general, and here the cause of the broken hearts that drive the narrative. It’s even suggested in the excellent video essay from David Cairns and Fiona Watson, that part of the reasons the British kept the writer interned for three months after the second world war, was because of her critique of the Empire. That’s a Nazi party member calling the kettle pot black but these things are complicated… just ask Mr Lang.

Back in 1920, Germany had just lost a ruinous conflict with the British and the film was more escapism for a cash-strapped population who wanted to travel virtually away from their troubles. May’s India was a mix of huge sets of which DeMille would have been proud and the mountains of southern Germany which may or may not have seen the first cinematic use of the wooden rope bridges so beloved of adventure serials from Indiana Jones to Jumanji.

There are still a few properties in Woltersdorf adorned with the remnants off these giant sets

May’s direction is big on grandeur if less on camera mobility but he makes the most of his luminous stars with my hard drive now heavy with screen grabs of close-up Connie emoting. Having seen so much recently of Asta Nielsen’s perfection of the art of screen acting intensity, here we have the next stage of that evolution with a quite incredible range of explosive expression, blood pumping through engorged veins as his heart bursts with anger and utter despair, he’s a stressful watch. Conrad runs the range from unknowingly imperious to devastated wreck always hinting at that vulnerability even when at his most commanding.

The first part is the Mission of the Yogi and here we learn of the maharajah’s plan to recruit a leading German architect, Herbert Rowland (Olaf Fønss) using the mysterious powers of Ramigani 'Rami', the Yogi (Bernhard Goetzke) a fanciful mix of Indian spirituality and a “genie” straight out of the pages of the Arabian Nights. Rami can astrally project, control peoples’ minds and cure the seemingly incurable. Goetzke’s is another remarkable performance with his impassive granite-featured majesty somehow making you convinced of his mystical capabilities.

If you want to obey the command of my lord… you must do so within the hour. But no one must know of your departure, including your bride.

Olaf Fønss and Bernhard Goetzke

The Maharajah wants Rowland to build a huge temple to house his beloved, Princess Savitri (Erna Morena) in a manner echoing the Taj Mahal, built in 1632 by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan to house the tomb of his favourite wife, Mumtaz Mahal. Rowland is shown earlier in the film marvelling at a drawing of the Taj, telling his fiancé, Irene ((Joe May’s wife, Mia, a theatre actor and singer, turned film star under his guidance), how he would love to build something so beautiful. Initially reluctant, the architect agrees to travel out to India with the Yogi under a cloak of secrecy.

 

Irene, however, is a woman to be reckoned with – as are all the female leads – and, despite the Yogi having telekinetically removed Rowland’s illicit note to her, she decides that something is amiss in Rowland’s departure and follows the trial to the coast and from there way out east.

 

Up here, nearer to heaven than earth, I shall raise up the mighty building.

 

Conrad Veidt and Mia May

Arrived in Bengal, Rowland finally meets his new employer who shows him round hid opulent palace, introducing him to his pet tigers and then taking him to the Valley of Sorrow, high up in eth mountains. It is here that he reveals that the person whom the tomb will commemorate, is very much alive… collapsing in grief to the rocks the Maharajah tells Rowland that, you shall not build a tomb for the dead or the living… but for the great love I have squandered, like a god or a fool.

 

It is very much as if destiny has already set these tragic events in stone… a frequent concern of Lang’s work. He even made a film about it with Bernhard Goetzke again uncanny.

 

The players are revealed as the story of Princess Savitri’s love affair with British officer, Mac Allan (Paul Richter) is revealed to Rowland by her faithful maid servant Mirrjha (Lya De Putti) who appeals to him and Irene separately, to save the Englishman from a trap set by the Maharajah. It’s hard not to see the disruption caused by Mac Allan as a reflection of colonial ambition and it’s a classic betrayal that drives the all-powerful Maharajah to punish those who have betrayed him. He’s not going to gain any satisfaction and as the Yogi, the epitome of Indian spirituality, warns, his plans are unconscionable.

 

Paul Richter and Erna Morena

Meanwhile, as Irene walks through the palace’s beautiful gardens and Rowland learns the full story, Mac Allan is ambushed on a tiger hunt by the Maharajah’s henchmen. The officer is an all-action superhero, fighting off dozens with gun and fists before escaping on his horse… all the ingenuity and ferocity that built our Empire and forced the German surrender in 1918. Is he a good guy in the film? He’s as nuanced as the Maharajah in that respect, not everyone in Europe would be rooting for the Brit…

 

Part two, The Tiger of Eschnapur, deals with the coming together of all the players as the action hots up and the full extent of von Harbou and Lang’s vision becomes clear. You don’t want any more of my summary, you need to buy this disc and relax into this moral adventure on a stormy weekend afternoon with a full pot of Darjeeling followed by liberal amounts of schnaps… the later to aid recovery after the tumultuous final segments.

Lya De Outtie and Erna Morena

The release comes with a fulsome collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Philip Kemp along with that superb video essay by David Cairns and Fiona Watson. It is presented in 1080p HD, from 2K restorations undertaken by the Murnau foundation and does this major film due services.

It’s released on Monday 21^st February and you can order direct from Eureka who very kindly send me review copies. No silent home should be without it!

 

Connie improvises with a curious elephant. Master!

Bright lights, big city… Metropolis (1927)

Metropolis is probably one of the two or three silent films most people can name and for such an intensely evaluated film I feel a bit like Cordelia being challenged by her father to elevate her level of praise above that of her siblings: “…what can you say to draw a third more opulent than your sisters/fellow bloggers…” Maybe not much but I should have a go and I know King Lang isn’t fussed either way.

Robo women through the ages: Sophie May Williams gets silent on The Voice...

My teenage daughter asked to see the film, we’d just watched an episode of the BBC’s talent show, The Voice (Saturday night compromise TV...), which featured a staging drawn directly from Metropolis – proving the film’s enduring mainstream credentials almost 90 years on… Our Beth also wanted to understand more of the references to the film in Janelle Monae’s music. Both Monae’s two albums have looked back to Metropolis along with her early EP, called, erm, Metropolis: Suite 1 (The Chase)… The energetically eclectic, multi-talented Monae is obviously a woman of taste and discernment as, indeed, is my daughter.

How much she found connecting the concept albums with Fritz Lang and Thea Harbou’s story I’m not sure but The Electric Lady was certainly there for all to see with teenage Brigitte Helm’s amazing performance: she is mesmerising and gives a quite stunning physical performance as she switches from the graceful spiritualism of Maria to the body-popping kinetic madness of robo-Maria. Her energetic commitment is still genuinely shocking: she is the robot and she is infused with the nihilism of her creator laughing in the face of her own destruction.

Brigitte Helm

But the immediate dazzle of Metropolis is the city itself: a vision so powerful that you can trace its influence not just through to modern soul-punk but also through cinematic science fiction – Blade Runner even looks a little like it. Lonng before Philip K Dick Lang was telling us how badly the future can go wrong Lang was in there even if Aldous Huxley and HG Wells would already have agreed with him – although I'm not sure the latter was that impressed with the film: he called it silly… thank goodness he never saw the Giorgio Moroder version.

Lang presents a future world with amazing cohesion and style – and art deco heaven propped up by a Dadaist hell in which machines are oiled by the sweat of subterranean slaves who march in de-humanised desolation all unified in their defeat by a society that values only their number, not their individuality. Weimar Germany still lay crushed by the defeat/”betrayal” of 1918 and communist alternatives still found wide favour as did other developing ideologies that looked to redress the imbalances in German society.

Art deco heaven...

The Weimar was the first democratic government in Germany a country with no culture of democracy but of benevolent autocracy and political culture cannot be changed through process alone… if you are used to the Leader you may still look for a Leader (political scientist SE Finer is not alone in pointing out the ways in which changed systems must evolve and not just be imposed).

It’s not too much of a stretch to see Metropolis attempting to find answers to the question of how to rule and how to manage capitalist diversity… Then again it may just be a simple fable.

Greasing the wheels...

But the film also clearly portrays Modernism and by implication Americanisation, as a threat… albeit a good-looking one! Lang claimed later that his first trip to New York had inspired the film’s look and feel even though its stunning designs had already been completed by this time. Then again he could hardly have been unfamiliar with high-rise…. There are glimpses of San Francisco in The Spiders (1919-20) apart from anything else.

But again, is Metropolis any less of a fable than Die Neibelung – one looking forward the other looking back? Above all else Lang dealt in adventure and human drama and both films deliver mightily on both scores. What gives Metropolis the edge though is the scale of its forward-thinking fantasy: it was a step change in how the future was going to look and move from the airborne vehicles flying between the mile-high towers to the slow-moving traffic on crowded fly-overs.

The opening segment has the audience looking up at the sheer scale of the future city and then marvelling at how those at the top tier live, gymnastics in roof-top stadia and arboreal pleasure gardens: they appear to be free from the everyday, Earth-bound concerns.

That is until one of the playboys, Freder (Gustav Fröhlich) notices a young woman with a group of children clearly out of place in their rags. She is Maria (Brigitte Helm), a teacher who has bought her class of children to see the gardens above the ground.

Captivated, Freder, follows Maria as she returns below, he has no inkling that anyone lived under the city – having only ever seen the pristine environs of the elevated. He is the son of The Master of Metropolis, Joh Fredersen (Alfred Abel) and has no inkling that his father maintains the city in ruthless fashion…

Gustav Fröhlich and Brigitte Helm

As Freder explores the world below he finds a dispirited mass of workers regimented to the level of machines used to feed the immense foundries that bring light to the gleaming spires above.

Maria is one of those who bring hope, imploring her fellow workers to pray for their saviour: someone who will provide the heart to link the head in the clouds to the hands in the dirt. They meet in darkened caves as she preaches in front of a collection of crosses: has religion been outlawed in the future… driven underground.

Herr Rasp and Alfred Abel

But Joh Fredersen has no intention of sharing power or loosening his grip on the populace – he rules with authoritarian efficiency using a network of spies and secret policemen such as the sinister Thin Man (Fritz Rasp… has ever an actor been so perfectly type-cast by their name?). They rely on surveillance and betrayal to keep order… sadly this was to be the real future.

But order starts to break down as Freder becomes radicalised by what he sees underground and driven by his growing love for Maria returns to the underworld. Realising this, a desperate Joh Fredersen enlists the aid of Rotwang (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) – the maddest of mad scientists who still mourns the love of his life Hel, the woman who died giving birth to Joh’s son Freder.

Jon and Rotwang hatch a plan

Rotwang has built a robot – Maschinenmensch - intended to give some kind of life to his beloved but which he now turns to another purpose: the corruption and destruction of the City. He will turn the worker’s hope into a catalyst for their hate whilst at the same time using her facsimile to push those over ground into a frenzy of lust and greed.

It’s going to be a long night.

I watched the BFI Blu-ray which features the Argentine footage found in 2008 which makes the story almost complete and much more understandable. The original score from Gottfried Huppertz is revived in stirring form and it’s wonderful to hear the original soundtrack for a silent film of this magnitude.

The most expensive film ever made by UFA and one to rival Hollywood’s excesses, Metropolis turned out to be a flop at the time – even 7500 extras couldn’t guarantee success… but this wasn’t entirely the fault of Lang’s vision. The American’s cut it down for being too long whilst certain, more communistic sections were excised in Germany. The Argentine film was a complete copy but two scenes featuring a monk preaching in the cathedral and the fight between Rotwang and Joh Fredersen were too badly damaged to resurrect.

What remains is now almost whole and one of the genuinely great silent films: a fable about the future from the past that says so much about the present in which it was made. By 1933 Thea von Harbou had joined a party intent on mediating from the head through the heart to the hands… She and Lang divorced and he headed off the America: the land of the free and the home of the high-rise.

The BFI Blu-ray/DVD is readily available direct or from Movie Mail and those Amazons… but you’ve probably already got it.