The music we heard was by Tchaikowsky, Bach and Handel, but it was under
the auspices of the Wagner Society of Washington, DC, which presented a
screening of Fritz Lang's *Siegfried*, a silent film from 1924.

I'd never seen the film before, although I had seen the second part,
*Kriemhild's Revenge*, also a silent film from the same year.  That, *The
Last Will of Dr.  Mabuse* (which I saw in French at NYC's Thalia theater on
West 95th Street many years ago), and *M*, which I've seen several times,
and I think *Metropolis* are the only Fritz Lang (1890-1976) films I know.
(So far as I'm concerned *M*, w/ Peter Lorre, like Ben Adhem's name, led
all the rest.)

The film was preceded by a short introduction by Professor Marie Travis of
George Washington University in DC, who told us that Lang was intended by
his parents for architecture, against which he rebelled; that he painted
and wrote but described music as the only art he didn't understand; that
he was shy but discovered women early, had many affairs, married Thea von
Harbou, the screen writer for Siegried, whom he divorced either for her
adultery or her having joined the Nazi Party.  When Lange's film *The
Testament of Dr. Mabuse*, a thinly veiled attack on the Nazis appeared, it
was banned and he was summoned by the authorities, not to face penalties
but to make films for the cause of the Third Reich.  Rather than comply,
Lange (somewhat like Conrad Veit) skipped the country and found his way to
the U.S.  w/ Eric Pommer.  Professor Travis called our attention to some of
Lang's techniques and effects in a studio of relatively limited resources,
such as the geometrically arranged rows of soldiers w/ their backs to the
camera, the white-robed Kriemhilde and her entourage confronting the
black-robed Brunhilde and hers at the steps to the cathedral, an artfully
constructed rainbow (in black and white), ground mist created by fire
extinguishers, the petrification of the dwarfs upon Alberich's death,
starting w/ their feet and legs, and the dragon that Lang didn't want to
move like an old man and as a result almost broke the legs of the actor
playing Siegfried with a swipe of its tail.  I thought the way the Tarnhelm
made its wearer invisible when it didn't change his appearance was cool
too.

Other than that it's the tale upon which Wagner can be said to have based
his Ring cycle, I don't see why the Wagner Society presented the film.
Based upon what I recall of my own reading of the German and Norse legends
when I was a boy, the opera seemed more based upon the Volsung saga than
upon the Nibelungenlied, although Wagner retained the Nibelungen names like
Siegfried and Hagen rather than Sigurd and Hogni.

The film was probably originally prepared w/out any sound track and
music was added on the basis of what was available and not entirely
inappropriate.  That's why the film started w/ music from Swan Lake.
(After all the hero in that ballet is also called Siegfried.) After
Siegfried kills the dragon, whose blood gushes out like from a
kosher-slaughtered beast, the music changes to the Brandenburg Concerti,
beginning w/ the First.  It actually accompanies a scene shift to Gunter's
castle in Burgundy, where Volker (a fascinating character in the
Niebelungenlied, a musician and Hagen's only friend, who doesn't appear at
all in the Ring) is singing of Siegfried's heroic deeds while Gunther and
Kriemhilde (Gutrune in the Ring) listen.  Back to Siegfried on his quest to
woo Kriemhilde of whom he's heard, where he meets up w/ Alberich who,
rendered invisible by the Tarnhelm tries to kill him.  Siegfried wrests him
off and gets hold of the Tarnhelm revealing an Alberich who looks like
something straight out of Julius Streicher's carricatures of Jews in "Der
Stuermer", and this in 1924.  Siegfried exacts from Alberich the Tarnhelm
and the Niebelungen hoard (treasure) in exchange for his life and kills him
anyway whereupon the dwarfs serving Alberich turn to stone.

Siegfried finally makes it to Gunter's court where he states his suit to
which Gunther assents on condition that Siegfried help him woo and win
Brunhilde, a woman w/ the strength of many men, who will not marry any man
who cannot subdue her in tests of physical strength.  W/ the aid of the
Tarnhelm, Siegfried accomplishes this while having it appear that it is
Gunther whose prowess is exceeding that of Brunhilde.  She reluctantly
follows Gunther to Burgundy across a bridge supported on the shoulders of
Burgundian soldiers and the music becomes Tchaikowsky again, right in the
middle of the Third Brandenburg Concerto.  The bridal bedroom scene where
Gunter, at first unassisted by any tarnhelmed Siegfried, is totally subdued
by Brunhilde, trussed up and hung from a closet hook, is greatly cleaned
up.  Somewhere along the line in the story the music changes to Handel...I
think it's the Royal Fireworks Music.  In one of the final scenes, Gunter's
castle, seen in soft focus outline, looks like art deco or maybe Bauhaus.

We agreed at the end of the film that it was quite different from the
opera.  I liked the book (and in its own way, the opera) better.

Walter Meyer