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Rating: In an unspecified century, created by the imagination of Our Lord, the deeds of the Nibelungen unfold, an epic manuscript by an unknown author and transformed into images by the great master Fritz Lang. The film work of the Austrian genius is divided into two masterfully crafted acts endowed with a charm that is difficult to describe. The chapters in question are "Siegfried", that is the deeds of Sigfrido, and "Kriemhilds Rache", meaning the revenge of Crimilde. I will attempt the endeavor.
Siegfried - From the blacksmith's cave, the warrior Sigfrido is forging a sword of eloquent power when he hears of the beauty of Crimilde, sister of King Gunther of the Burgundian kingdom, deciding to want her as his wife. On the other hand, Crimilde is reluctant to marry as a premonitory dream had prophesied the early death of a potential husband. Sigfrido, to give credit to his qualities, slays a dragon and exploits the blood gushing from the lethal blow to acquire immortality. The last spasms of the monster will drop a leaf which will fall between the warrior's shoulder blades, highlighting, as with Achilles, a single weak point. This results in an encounter, in a ghostly landscape, with Alberich, king of the dwarves. After eliminating him, he seizes the magic sword Balmung and a crown that makes him invisible. Arriving at Worms, at the king's court, he helps, with the acquired invisibility, to defeat the fierce Brunilde, queen of Iceland, obtaining their marriage.
During the first night Brunilde refuses Gunther, who is once again helped by Sigfrido, who, becoming invisible, persuades the woman by taking from her, moreover, a ring and a belt, symbols of defloration, and then handing them to Crimilde. At this point, Gunther grants the marriage between Sigfrido and Crimilde, but the latter, unaware of the agreement with theft between her husband and the king, shows Brunilde the corpus delicti of consummated intercourse, thus revealing an allusive carnal union, which in the end never took place, between the latter and Sigfrido. Hagen, vassal of Gunther, offended by the event, will convince Crimilde, through deception, to have the critical point of her husband's immunity revealed, which she highlights by sewing an "x" on his mail shirt. It will be the proposal of a run competition to reach a water source, the despicable method with which Hagen will trick Sigfrido to kill him, piercing him with a precise spear blow at his weak point.
Lang, in this episode, employs a technique based on a meticulous dosing of contrast, where the transition between white and black, within each frame, manages to slide fluidly, imperceptibly, at some points mimetic, (see Brunilde's dress with inverted triangles among the curtains) without creating any discord in the form of sharp markings. Unlike Eisenstein, Pudovkin, and even earlier Griffith, he fixes the camera in a well-defined, frontal point, with very few transversal shots, a predominantly dimensionless reference, where, giving importance to secondary elements by placing them in the foreground, he manages to annul any perception of distances, or in any case make depths indefinite. See the passage of the ladies before the framed knights, Sigfrido's waiting on the bridge suspended over the chasm and the interior shots, where the arches, colonnades, wall openings, curtains, and bushes serve as pilot images, if we want as a frame.
Superb visual effects, in my opinion second only to Murnau's Faust, (Metropolis, still his, dwells on another planet) achieved through superimposition of images or animation of dead figures by means of an absolutely perfect montage. See Crimilde's dream, the fade of the fire at the passage of Sigfrido's militias, the petrification of the dwarves, the bush turning into a skull, the lights emitted by the fantastic aurora behind the gloomy castle and we are just in 1924 (!!!) The makeup is marked but not overdone as in Wiene's works and this deliberately renders rough and angular the expressions and faces that perhaps could not be otherwise. Idolized by the sinister Nazis, it is undeniably a colossal film and in every respect.
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