Post by Hedvig on Aug 12, 2010 16:27:19 GMT -6
I finally inspired someone to form an interest in silent movies. Yay me! My brother suddenly became intrigued with the German silents. He's always been interested in fantasy and mythologies, and wanted to see Nosferatu for some time. So I've ordered a DVD that hopefully doesn't have a heavy metal score... At any rate, We watched the first part of Fritz Lang's Nibelungen-film some time ago, and yesterday we saw the second part: Kriemhild's Revenge. (1924)
If anything, this movie reminds me of the Korean movie Musa. Or of the siege of Troy perhaps, although it is somehow darker, because while the characters do everything in the name of loyalty, I don't get the feeling that we are supposed to admire them for it. They certainly don't appear to admire each other! This movie explores a woman's quest to avenge the cowardly murder of her husband, and how she manages to injure more and more innocent people in the process.
Her bloodlust grows out of proportion. She marries Atilla the Hun, and commands his army against the army of her brothers. Eventually one of the Nibelungens asks her whether she is human or not, to which she replies that no, Kriemhild died when her husband Siegfried died. And no wonder! None of the other principal characters, including Kriemhild's own brothers, ever showed much sympathy for her loss, and it seems strange for this modern viewer that they should first be so coldly unsympathetic towards her, and then act surprised when she goes on a justice-seeking rampage. According to the logic of this film's world, that is.
I don't know how the original Nibelungenlied tells it, but Fritz Lang portrays Kriemhild's brother Gunther, who orders Siegfried's murder, as a weakling who can not match up to the hero, and resents it. And the assassin who speared Siegfried in the back later murders Kriemhild's defenseless baby for no apparent reason. Kriemhild's second brother is portrayed more sympathetically, but we don't see much of him. Yet these men are named as "heroes" and their demise seems to be presented as something of a glorious tragedy. Are we meant to automatically think of them as heroes because they're men, and German, while Kriemhild is a woman and her army is Asian? Hitler and his cronies reportedly cried at screenings of this film, and they must certainly have thought that way. But I think they might perhaps have misunderstood the movie's message...
I wonder what the audiences of the time would have thought of this film. I think I read somewhere that this followup was not such a success as part one had been. Perhaps it didn't tell people what they wanted to hear. Siegfried was a heroic myth. It may have ended with its hero getting stabbed in the back, but that too fit into one accepted model of German history at the time, in 1924: Germany's symbol Siegfried had been stabbed in the back, just like Germany was stabbed in the back with the treaty of Versailles. However, the followup, Kriemhild, ends with a horrifying massacre - and this sequence hasn't lost its power today. The horror of it still gets under your skin. Mind you, I'm of my time too much to fully know how audiences of that time would have reacted to it, but it looks to me like the horror of the battle is exploited so fully that there is little romance left in the story afterward. Only a pacifist message remains. It must have disillusioned its audience. You get a strong feeling that all this bloodshed is wrong, more than anything else, and that you're not meant to admire the Nibelungens' insistence on it. It's as effective that way as any silent WWI-movie out of Hollywood. I would put Kriemhild into the category of an anti-war movie rather than a nationalist melodrama, but that's just my point of view.
If anything, this movie reminds me of the Korean movie Musa. Or of the siege of Troy perhaps, although it is somehow darker, because while the characters do everything in the name of loyalty, I don't get the feeling that we are supposed to admire them for it. They certainly don't appear to admire each other! This movie explores a woman's quest to avenge the cowardly murder of her husband, and how she manages to injure more and more innocent people in the process.
Her bloodlust grows out of proportion. She marries Atilla the Hun, and commands his army against the army of her brothers. Eventually one of the Nibelungens asks her whether she is human or not, to which she replies that no, Kriemhild died when her husband Siegfried died. And no wonder! None of the other principal characters, including Kriemhild's own brothers, ever showed much sympathy for her loss, and it seems strange for this modern viewer that they should first be so coldly unsympathetic towards her, and then act surprised when she goes on a justice-seeking rampage. According to the logic of this film's world, that is.
I don't know how the original Nibelungenlied tells it, but Fritz Lang portrays Kriemhild's brother Gunther, who orders Siegfried's murder, as a weakling who can not match up to the hero, and resents it. And the assassin who speared Siegfried in the back later murders Kriemhild's defenseless baby for no apparent reason. Kriemhild's second brother is portrayed more sympathetically, but we don't see much of him. Yet these men are named as "heroes" and their demise seems to be presented as something of a glorious tragedy. Are we meant to automatically think of them as heroes because they're men, and German, while Kriemhild is a woman and her army is Asian? Hitler and his cronies reportedly cried at screenings of this film, and they must certainly have thought that way. But I think they might perhaps have misunderstood the movie's message...
I wonder what the audiences of the time would have thought of this film. I think I read somewhere that this followup was not such a success as part one had been. Perhaps it didn't tell people what they wanted to hear. Siegfried was a heroic myth. It may have ended with its hero getting stabbed in the back, but that too fit into one accepted model of German history at the time, in 1924: Germany's symbol Siegfried had been stabbed in the back, just like Germany was stabbed in the back with the treaty of Versailles. However, the followup, Kriemhild, ends with a horrifying massacre - and this sequence hasn't lost its power today. The horror of it still gets under your skin. Mind you, I'm of my time too much to fully know how audiences of that time would have reacted to it, but it looks to me like the horror of the battle is exploited so fully that there is little romance left in the story afterward. Only a pacifist message remains. It must have disillusioned its audience. You get a strong feeling that all this bloodshed is wrong, more than anything else, and that you're not meant to admire the Nibelungens' insistence on it. It's as effective that way as any silent WWI-movie out of Hollywood. I would put Kriemhild into the category of an anti-war movie rather than a nationalist melodrama, but that's just my point of view.
