Die Nibelungen (1924) (review)

Myth, murder, and revenge fueled by honor, deceit, and betrayal foreshadow a bloody and tragic end in Fritz Lang’s two films Siegfried (1924) and Kriemhilds Rache (Kriemhild’s Revenge; 1924). Collectively titled Die Nibelungen, the films stand with D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance (1916) and Abel Gance’s Napoleon (1927) among the great epics of the silent era. Basing them on the heroic thirteenth-century poem of the same name,¹ Lang dedicated the films “to the German people” and envisioned his treatment of the Teutonic Iliad as a means of turning national attention away from wartime defeat and toward the mythologized ideals enshrined in the epic. According to Anton Kaes, Lang intended that “Nibelungen would revive Germany’s founding myth, which was imbued with epic themes—loyalty, high ideals, heroism in defeat—that resonated with the historical events of the past decade.”² Producer Erich Pommer surrounded Lang with an assemblage of Germany’s greatest filmmaking talents, including Lang’s wife, writer Thea von Harbou; cinematographers Carl Hoffman, Günther Rittau, and Walter Ruttmann; art directors Otto Hunte and Karl Vollbrecht; and a cast that included Ufa stars such as Paul Richter, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Hanna Ralph, Theador Loos, and Bernhard Goetzke.

Production began in 1922 and required two years to complete, including thirty-one weeks of photography. The films were marketed as the most expensive in European history, and Siegfried, the first of the two parts to be released, took honors as the highest-grossing German film of 1924.

Thea von Harbou’s script for Die Nibelungen hews close to the organizational framework of the original saga. Each film is subdivided into seven two-reel “cantos,” episodic chapters such as “How Siegfried Slayed the Dragon” and “How Siegfried Won Brunhild for Gunther.” Siegfried, which premiered in Berlin on February 14, 1924, begins with Siegfried forging his sword at the anvil of the wretched Mime from whom he learns of Burgundy and the princess Kriemhild who lives there. Siegfried sets off to gain her hand and is directed through the dangerous Wood of Woden, where he discovers and slays a dragon and bathes in its blood, thereby making himself invincible, save for a single vulnerable spot between his shoulder blades. Later is he attacked by Alberich, King of the Dwarves, whom he defeats and thereby gains a mesh of invisibility and transformation. Conquering twelve kingdoms along the way, Siegfried arrives in Burgundy as a king and possessor of the great treasure of the Nibelungen. Siegfried wins the allegiance of King Gunther by using the invisibility mesh to help Gunther in his conquest of Brunhild, Queen of Iceland. Returning to Burgundy, Gunther weds Brunhild and Siegfried marries Kriemhild. Kriemhild learns of Siegfried’s deception with the mesh, and out of spite, she exposes the secret to Brunhild. Brunhild demands Siegfried’s life, and Gunther and his advisor Hagen conspire to arrange the murder. Kriemhild naively reveals the location of Siegfried’s vulnerability to Hagen, who kills Siegfried by spearing him through the back. At Siegfried’s bier, Kriemhild finds that Brunhild has killed herself at the feet of the hero’s corpse, and she swears revenge against Hagen.

Kriemhild’s Revenge premiered two months later on April 26, 1924. The narrative resumes in a less complicated fashion with the grieving Kriemhild plotting vengeance against Hagen, Siegfried’s killer, to whom Gunther and her kin have pledged their loyalty. Isolated in her grief and thirsting for revenge, Kriemhild travels to the land of the Huns, where she marries King Etzel (Attila), thereby securing domain over an army and setting into motion the orgy of fire and death that consumes the film’s concluding reels.

Siegfried and Kriemhild’s Revenge have both long been available in various home-viewing incarnations. Until recently, the best available edition has been the 2002 DVD release from Kino International based on source materials from Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung. At the time of its release, the two-disc black-and-white transfer of the then best available material proclaimed itself to...