Sebastian Fischer is Sigfrido in SIGFRIDO (1957)
This film is really, eh, eccentric. I love it and it's very creative but the film has an earnest & poky quality to it which would make today's viewers scratch their heads or laugh out loud. It's sad but it's true. German mythology is somehow difficult to bring to the screen. I prefer this Italian adaptation over the lugubrious 2 parter that was made in Germany in the 1960s. The film is not available anywhere in English.
The 1924 Siegfried directed by Fritz Lang is considered to be a silent classic.
ReplyDeleteI have never seen the whole movie, but clips showing Siegfried's fight with the dragon indicate quite high production values.
However, I suspect you are correct that German/Norse mythology generally does not transfer well to the cinema.
Viking tales or Norse mythology would probably look great on screen if someone just adapted the original material properly. There's been a spike in Viking films now, probbaly because of the TV series "Vikings", but I have yet to see one film that actually depicts history as it was, or at least as accurately as we can tell. Most Viking films of later years quickly goes into nihilistic mode and showers gory brutal action scenes on the audience. There's more to my Norse ancestors than that. Also, I'm frequently annoyed by inacuracies in clothing and weapons. "Viking" films are generally just generic Dark Age films.
ReplyDeleteAs for the Tutonic myths and heroic tales, they're so closely knit into the fabric of Wagnerian opera fantasy, that it's probably hard to untangle it. But I don't mind. It sure looks pretty, and the vivaciousness of the operaverse is usually carried over into the films. I have only seen snippets of "Sigfrido" but would love to see all of it.