Die Nibelungen (1924)
This second half of Fritz Lang's saga follows the widowed Kriemhild as she marries Attila the Hun to gain an army, then lures her own brothers and their vassal Hagen, her first husband's killer, into a Hunnish court that becomes a trap and a slaughter.
This entry preserves Kriemhild’s Revenge, the second half of Fritz Lang’s two-part Die Nibelungen, a UFA super-production whose severe, monumental compositions Lang and production designer Otto Hunte built directly out of German Expressionist stagecraft — imagery the Nazi regime would later appropriate for its own mythmaking, to Lang’s lasting disgust.
Background
This film preserves Kriemhild’s Revenge, the second half of Fritz Lang’s two-part silent epic Die Nibelungen, made for the German studio UFA on an unusually large budget and scale for the period. The story follows the widowed Kriemhild as she marries Attila the Hun to gain the military power needed to avenge her first husband’s murder, luring her own brothers and the man who killed him into a trap. Lang worked with production designer Otto Hunte to build severe, monumental sets drawing directly on German Expressionist stagecraft.
What to watch for
Watch for the film’s formal, almost architectural compositions, long symmetrical shots and large-scale set pieces that emphasize scale and ritual over naturalistic performance. The imagery and mythic material Lang drew on here was later appropriated by the Nazi regime for its own propaganda purposes, a use Lang found deeply objectionable and that contributed to his decision to leave Germany in the 1930s. The film remains a landmark of large-scale silent-era production design.
