DIE NIBELUNGEN (Masters of Cinema) (BLU-RAY) [1924]

Die Nibelungen was a blind-buy for me after just seeing a few stills and a trailer and I am happy to state here that it proved extremely fortunate. Like the recent LoTR films by Peter Jackson, DN represents an epic story in two installments: Siegfried & Kriemhild's Revenge. The first shows the rise and eventual fall of a hero to forces that betray him for their own reasons. The second shows the savage retribution extracted by his beloved on the people responsible for his demise. The difference of DN from other fantasy films is that the supporting characters are nicely etched and all their actions, even those of betrayal and murder, are justified from their point of view. The films have some great drama. The second installment especially dives into the darkest regions of the human heart, challenging our perceptions of the characters. This is grand storytelling. And the film is a feast for the eyes and ears. The production design is sumptuous and the screen is filled with constantly arresting visual patterns and motifs. The score has been resurrected respectfully from composer Gottfried Huppertz original notations and is an inseparable component of the film, marvelous in its own right.
It is not fair to expect a film of this vintage to have pristine and eye-popping HD visuals. The Murnau-Stiftung foundation have done a fantastic job of meticulously restoring the film from the original negatives and tinting it a lovely golden shade as per the original intent (This adds to the mythical feel of the story). Of course, there are scratches and damage marks, but they are in most instances minor and not distracting. Some shots, taken from a different print, have lower quality, but these are momentary. The bulk of the presentation is remarkable. The score of course is newly recorded and sounds wonderful.
Eureka have given region B cinema fans a fantastic package with each installment of the saga occupying a separate blu-ray. On the second disc there is also an interesting documentary on the history of the film's production, the perversion of its intent by the Nazi party and the fate of its nitrate elements eventually leading to a description of the arduous restoration undertaken to give us the wonderful experience we have now. Please do not hesitate to add this to your collection ASAP.

I had little understanding of the epic restoration work that had been done for Die Nibelungen. Filmed in 1924 and yet wonderful to watch.

I'm assuming that 99.9% of Amazon shoppers will never consider this and it's only for a small niche market. I did not think I was that kinda guy, but it looks like I am. It was one of those strange things where I literally could not drag my eyes from the screen and almost had embarrassing comfort errors.

I just can not begin to understand how this was made, the audience reaction back in the day, so many many things. It's opened a huge box of questions I want to find out about. Wonderful. CW

This movie is stunning in its restored version, with symphonic score and rich colour tinting, so that one sees the legendary action as through golden afternoon light coming through a stained-glass window. Sharp detail and sparkling notes give the image depth, definition and brilliance. It makes one wonder why colour film was ever invented. And what costumes! Well done Herrs Guderian and Willkomm. Hagen (Hans Adalbert Schlettow) has black armour and an eagle-wing helmet; a kind of exploded and deconstructed version of elite-regiment Wilhelmine military uniforms. The super-civilised Burgundians and the nomadic Huns are given opposite costuming and gestural codes. The former, in geometric patterned clothes like Byzantine frescos, move slowly and in straight lines, and live in a modernistic Bauhaus styled square-towered castle. The skin-clad Huns favour scampering animalistically on all fours and build their huts and palaces of straw (warning - fire hazard!). The Burgundians' lofty bard Volker sings their heroic exploits to doubtless monotonously tasteful music, while the Huns also have their bards whose energetic folk songs cause everyone to dance joyously, and probably to better tunes too.

The values of these two groups do not easily fall into opposites. 'You don't understand the German Soul!', a Burgundian tells the Hun king Etzel. Me neither, mate! King Gunther (Theodor Loos) is weak and shifty, and it takes a lot of Hagen's ruthlessness and 'Nordic Guile' (lying to most of us) and Siegfried's over-cooked valour to shore him up. The German Soul in this version seems to consist of swearing blood oaths and then standing by them to the very death, even in extreme and morally ambiguous situations when most people would have stopped to rethink. Hence, Hagen in his death-glamour kit is protected to the very end by the deaths of far worthier men. He even gloats to Kreimhild that, while her innocent brothers and court have all fallen, so what, he has survived, and managed to protect to the end his weak-kneed and erratic king. I couldn't help but think of the recent war when 'national honour' was felt so important that at the end, young boys and old men were sent out to defend the military's self-image as magically undefeatable. Meanwhile the Huns, who one might expect to be barbarous, prove upon further acquaintance a reasonable and honest lot, lacking the ruthless Byzantine plotting and lofty honour codes which so fatally combine in the Burgundians. King Etzel (Klein-Rogge), to whom soap is clearly a stranger, could certainly do with a good cleaning-up (as could his court generally) yet he turns out to be both a loyal husband and doting dad. Compare him with Brunhild, who doesn't care who she destroys or even why. Yet she is the idealised bride whom Gunther yearns for and cheats to obtain, another of his fatal choices. It is one of the film's interesting complexities that the two most sympathetic characters (for my money) are the passionate and fundamentally decent King Etzel, who puts his emotions on show, and the ill-fated and rather likeable dragon who wasn't bothering anybody until Siegfried came along.

It being a Lang-von Harbou show, the women are equally strong and they propel the plot along, more so than the self-aggrandising quest of the hero Siegfried. Brunhild (Hanna Ralph) is the ice princess in her wonderful Arctic-lights castle (she shares with Hagen a taste in extravagant fetish headgear, which is a bit of an indication that they are both basically destructive). The principal character is statuesque Kriemhild (Margarete Schon) who creates a wonderful presence by just standing still and looking, her luminous eyes and subtle gestures suggesting the boiling passions and grief beneath. She too is one of the German-Soul absolutists. The final conflagration is magnificent, and the extra documentary features on the disc show this scene being filmed one dark night in the presence of the delighted locals.

What can one add about the brilliance of the visuals in a film where every frame is composed as a work of art. The moral? Don't blab out secrets, and be very careful about taking blood oaths. Either can bring the whole thing crashing down to catastrophe.