DIE NIBELUNGEN: KRIEMHILD’S REVENGE. (1924) A FRITZ LANG CLASSIC REVIEWED BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

DIE NIBELUNGEN PART TWO: KRIEMHILD’S REVENGE OR KRIEMHILDS RACHE. (1924) BASED ON THE EPIC POEM ‘NIBELUNGLIED,’ BY ANONYMOUS.

DIRECTED BY FRITZ LANG. SCREENPLAY BY FRITZ LANG AND THEA VON HARBOU.

STARRING MARGARETE SCHŐN, THEODOR LOOS, RUDOLF KLEIN-ROGGE, RUDOLF RITTNER AND HANS ADALBERT SCHLETTOW.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

This magnificent movie, the sequel in Fritz Lang’s two-film epic drama, DIE NIBELUNGEN, based on an equally epic poem penned in about the year 1200 in the language known as Middle High German, will take your breath away. I like it even more than Part One, SIEGFRIED.

In Part Two, and it’s called KRIEMHILD’S REVENGE for an excellent reason, Queen Kriemhild of the Burgundian royal family is still devastated by the murder of her beloved husband, Siegfried, by Hagen Tronje, the fearsome one-eyed, bearded warrior of the Burgundian kingdom.

Hagen Tronje is endlessly loyal (even unto death) to the King of Burgundy, Kriemhild’s rather wimpy brother Gunther. Gunther refuses to have Hagen Tronje killed for Siegfried’s murder, and, in fact, the whole family of royal Burgundian brothers close ranks around Hagen Tronje to protect him.

Kriemhild is so disgusted that, when Margrave Rűdiger of Bechlarn comes to Burgundy to tell her that his King, Attila of the Huns, wants to marry her, she accepts. Especially when Rűdiger assures her of Attila’s warlike nature and the fact that he would avenge a hundredfold any wrongs done to Kriemhild by any man…

Her little feminine brain starts working overtime. Could Attila possibly be the one to avenge her poor fallen Siegfried? She tells Rűdiger she’ll marry his king, and they set out immediately for the kingdom of the Huns, a warlike, nomadic people who were ruled in real life by Attila the Hun for the relatively short time of 434-453.

The Huns are portrayed as proper savages in the film, compared to the relative sophistication of the Burgundians, who sleep in proper beds and have nice fancy chainmail armour and huge stone castles and stuff.

The Huns crouch in trees like monkeys and whoop, shriek and chatter like monkeys too, they wear animal skins to (just about) clothe their nakedness and they sleep on animal skins, on the mud floors of their straw huts. They have dark skin, wild hair and wild staring eyes, and this includes the women, of whom we see very little.

I don’t think that women featured very prominently in real life Hun households of the time. They probably stayed home, cooked the food, submitted to animalistic sex and the odd thump and died in childbirth, judging by the look of the place and its primitive peoples.

The men were the important ones, the warriors, the providers, the hunter-gatherers, the ones who got the biggest chunks of meat and the most comfortable spot on the dirt floor for sleeping.

The Huns’ eyes are out on stalks when they see Kriemhild. Tall, blonde, statuesque, with a beautiful cold face, huge expressive eyes and two plaits of hair that reach nearly to her ankles, she’s the polar opposite of their crouching, swarthy, simian-like semi-savagery.

(You’ll remember me mentioning when we reviewed DIE NIBELUNGEN PART ONE: SIEGFRIED that Hitler and Goebbels both loved this film. Can you see what I’m getting at here?)

King Attila, a fascinating character, is head-over-heels in love with her from the moment he first sets eyes on her. With his grotesquely large, mis-shapen head atop a short, wiry body and his ferocious-looking face deeply scored with battle scars that even criss-cross through his cruel mouth, he’d be enough to give any young virgin the heebie-jeebies at the thought of having to go to bed with him.

Attila’s men later complain that the fearsome war king, who went to war at the drop of a hat and was never happier than when he was breaking in an unruly horse, has been made soft and ineffectual by his infatuation for ‘the white woman.’ ‘Her tresses bind up the horseman…’ Well, if they think he’s dotty for Kriemhild now and besotted with her, just wait till she presents him with a beautiful, curly-haired son…!

The ferocious war king is reduced to the level of a blob of ecstatically happy jelly to see his new baby boy. He’s pathetically grateful to Kriemhild on this joyous occasion, even though she’s been nothing but cold and distant towards him. She may have been obliged to give him her body, but her heart, which she keeps under lock and key, is frozen in ice and belongs only to the dead Siegfried.

I’ll happily grant you one wish as a thank you for this wonderful son, he tells Kriemhild, who replies, sweetly and innocently, with: Oh, I’d give anything to see my beloved brothers again. No problemo, says Attila, before swiftly despatching his own brother to Worms on the Rhine to ask Gunther, Giselher and Gerenot of Burgund to pop along to the kingdom of the Huns to visit their dear sister Kriemhild.

Kriemhild, of course, knows that her brothers never travel without their devoted bodyguard, Hagen Tronje, her hatred for whom has not abated one iota since she’s lived in the land of the Huns. Her desire for revenge is so strong that she’s prepared to see everyone she loves perish horribly before she eventually realises that she’s gone too far.

The dénouement is magnificent to look at, but sad, chilling and tragic in the extreme, with an eerie foreshadowing of the Holocaust in the hellish inferno of Kriemhild’s making.

Just look at her standing there with arms folded tightly, or one arm extended, or the closed fist beating on the breast, with her closed-off, unyielding face and ice-cold eyes unchanging in expression, and see who she reminds you of.

Poor, poor King Attila. He’ll rue the day he ever heard the lady’s name, all tied up in death and destruction as it is. What a narrative. What a musical score, what a visual experience, what a film! Book yourself some time off and watch it. End of transmission.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

Her debut romantic fiction novel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books.

DIE NIBELUNGEN: SIEGFRIED. (1924) A FRITZ LANG CLASSIC REVIEWED BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

DIE NIBELUNGEN PART ONE: SIEGFRIED. (1924) BASED ON THE EPIC POEM ‘NIBELUNGLIED,’ BY ANONYMOUS. DIRECTED BY FRITZ LANG. SCREENPLAY BY FRITZ LANG AND THEA VON HARBOU.

STARRING PAUL RICHTER, MARGARETE SCHŐN, THEODOR LOOS, HANNA RALPH AND HANS ADALBERT SCHLETTOW.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

This stunning two-part film series, based on an epic poem written anonymously around 1200 AD in Middle High German, is a fantasy saga and one of Fritz Lang’s finest films, which is really saying something, as he directed both ‘M’ and ‘METROPOLIS’ as well.

I had to watch each of the two films twice in order to be able to write this review, as there’s so much material and stuff to follow in each of them. The first instalment, SIEGFRIED, is two-and-a-half hours long and tells the story of the eponymous Siegfried, the muscular blonde son of King Sigmund of Xanten.

This film was a favourite of Hitler’s and Joseph Goebbels,’ his Propaganda minister. You’ll understand this when I tell you that Siegfried is tall, massively proportioned, blonde-haired, fair-skinned, healthy as a horse, with white gleaming teeth and a love of physical activity and combat. He is, in short, the perfect Aryan man, the German hero to put all other heroes in the shade. Can’t you just imagine Hitler and Goebbels clutching each other and ****ing themselves over such a perfect specimen of Aryan manhood?

Anyway, Siegried spends time in the forge of Mime the blacksmith, where he forges himself a sword so sharp it can cut a floating feather in half. Mighty pleased with himself, he decides to trot along to the Kingdom of Burgundy at Worms on the Rhine, where, he has been told, the royal kings are rich and powerful beyond all imaginings and there is a beautiful princess there, Kriemhild, who is ripe for the plucking.

En route through the forest, he kills a dragon and bathes in its blood. Why? A little bird told him it would make him invincible and it does, except for one spot on his left shoulder blade which is accidentally left covered by a falling linden leaf. Remember this fact, reader, as it will prove to be Siegfried’s undoing.

Next, he passes through the land of the Nibelungen, a race of dwarves, and is attacked by their king, Alberich, a dwarf with claw-like hands, a long pointed beard and a huge hooked nose that all give him an ‘unfavourably’ Jewish appearance, something that Hitler and Goebbels can’t have failed to notice. He is a hoarder of gold and money and treasure as well, again just like the Jews in anti-Semitic portrayals in literature and other media.

Siegfried spares him his life in return for a smashing veil of invisibilty and the treasure of the Nibelungen, although this is tainted somewhat by Alberich’s putting a curse on the treasure before he turns himself and his minions into stone. I mean, that’s the last thing you want when you come into an unexpected fortune, isn’t it? Still, Siegfried doesn’t hang about looking his gift dwarf- I mean, horse- in the mouth.

He toddles on, anyway, until he arrives at Worms, and finds that all there is pretty much as he has been told. He is hugely taken with Kriemhild and she with him and his blonde, bare-chested manliness, but before he can marry her, he has to perform a favour for her brother, the wimpy and indecisive King Gunther.

The favour is the brainchild of the ferociously bearded, one-eyed Hagen Tronje, Gunther’s closest friend, ally and protector. King Gunther wants to marry Brunhilde, the warrior queen of Iceland, Hagen Tronje tells Siegfried, but no man can marry her who has not bested her three times in games of skill and strength: the stone hurl, the long jump and the spear throw. This could be tricky, because she’s a fit, sporty bird who rules over a kingdom of Amazonian-type women and is generally reckoned to be a tough cookie.

No problemo, replies Siegfried confidently. I’ll best this queen for you, only I’ll wear the Tarnhelm, my veil of invisibility, to fool her into thinking it’s King Gunther alone who’s beaten her. The three men and their entourage travel to Iceland, and Gunther defeats Brunhilde as planned with an invisible Siegfried by his side, hurling the stone for him, actually carrying Gunther in the long jump, and throwing the spear for him too.

Brunhilde is a brunette Amazonian-type woman, as mentioned earlier, and she is truly devastated to be bested by the wimpy Gunther, who is so weedy he actually needs Siegfried to physically subdue her for him, in the guise of Gunther, on their wedding night before he can consummate their match. Now that’s wimpy, by anyone’s standards.

And poor Brunhilde! She has an abrasive and unlikeable personality, it’s true, but she’s basically being tricked into a marriage she doesn’t want to a man she despises and coerced into sex by a couple of conniving blokes, so I really think she deserves our sympathy.

By the way, Siegfried says later to Kriemhild (they’re married themselves by this stage), don’t say anything to Brunhilde about the way Gunther got me to help him to trick her into marriage, will you, because it could get us all in hot water.

A few scenes later, Kriemhild is shown spilling the beans unreservedly to a horrified Brunhild, because women can’t keep a secret to save their bloomin’ lives. Brunhild cares not for the taste of these poisoned, ruined beans and she wants revenge, and it’s Siegfried, not Gunther, she’s gunning for…

What unfolds next is a tragedy that leads nicely into the second of the two film instalments, KRIEMHILD’S RACHE or KRIEMHILD’S REVENGE. We won’t talk about it here, but it carries on the story from where it left off and ends almost in Gőtterdämmerung or Twilight of the Gods, both expressions originating from Wagner’s Ring cycle of music dramas (DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN) and signifying a burning and destruction of the world of gods and men.

You know the way that fantasy writers are always being suspected of having copied from J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy epic books, THE LORD OF THE RINGS and THE HOBBIT? Well, in DIE NIBELUNGEN: SIEGFRIED, we see that Mime’s blacksmiths look very like an early variation of orc, there’s a burning plain that resembles nothing so much as the road to Mordor from Sam and Frodo’s point of view and there’s also a tower that could pass for Saruman’s, where Christopher Lee as Saruman and Ian McKellen as Gandalf ended up (in the film) flinging each other around the place like sacks of flour, with total disregard for each others’ exalted wizarding statuses. I’m not accusing anyone of anything; I’m just saying that every idea was inspired by something else, and there’s no shame in that.

All the Burgundian men have terrible hair, by the way. Another by the way is this: the composer Richard Wagner (1813-1883) created four musical dramas commonly known as his RING cycle, or DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN (THE RING OF THE NIBELUNGEN). The plot involves a magic ring that grants the owner the power to rule the world, incidentally. Whoopsies. I’m going to sneeze. Aaaaaaaaa… Tolkien…tishoo…! Ahem. That’s better, lol.

Wagner composed this epic work long before the film was made, however, and took his inspiration from Norse sagas and the epic poem, NIBELUNGENLIED. Remember, the epic poem written anonymously around 1200 AD in Middle High German? Hitler was a massive fan of Wagner’s dramatic music. It’s kind of hard to watch Fritz Lang’s film or listen to Wagner’s RING cycle, both of which I’ve been doing a lot of lately, and not make that connection to ze Third Reich…!

The first film is a big commitment, time-wise, and it will take you five hours in total if you watch it twice, as I did. I admit I was a bit bemused by it first time around, so I read the accompanying booklet, then watched it again and was shocked to see how much I’d missed out on in the first viewing. I understood it much better second time around, as well.

It was so worth re-watching it though. You’ll need a block of free time to commit to this, so maybe when the wife is down the beauty parlour or the hubby’s in the bookies? Either way, they ain’t coming back any time soon…!

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

Her debut romantic fiction novel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books.