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New 'Ring Of The Nibelungenlied' Film In The Works

MrRING

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That's right, fantasy fans - some 80 odd years after Fritz "The Man" Lang's version of the Ring, we're going to have a new mid-budget film based on the legend! It will be directed by Uli Edel, who made the world safe for The Little Vampire, made the TBS original Evil Never Dies, the feminist retelling of Arthur "Mists of Avalon" mini & an episode of Twin Peaks.

Benno Fürmann will be Siegfried, all-around manly hero, and Kristanna Loken will be the vengeful Brunnhild. Alicia Witt, Julian Sands, and Max Von Sydow will be appearing as well.

Here's what IMDB said about the plot - see how LoTR was probably used as a selling point for the film....

Based on the Germanic myth "Das Nibelungenlied" and the Nordic "Volsunga Saga" which also inspired the four-opera cycle by Richard Wagner and J.R.R. Tolkien's epic "The Lord of the Rings", this is the story of the young blacksmith Siegfried, who, not knowing that he is heir to a conquered kingdom, becomes popular with the Burgunds by slaying their bane, the dragon Fafnir. When the reward seems to be a huge treasure, Siegfried ignores the curse that lies on the hoard - which now seems to endanger his love to beautiful Norse warrior queen Brunhild.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387541/maindetails
 
Re: New "Ring of the Nibelungenlied" Film In The W

Mr. R.I.N.G. said:
That's right, fantasy fans - some 80 odd years after Fritz "The Man" Lang's version of the Ring, we're going to have a new mid-budget film based on the legend! It will be directed by Uli Edel, who made the world safe for The Little Vampire, made the TBS original Evil Never Dies, the feminist retelling of Arthur "Mists of Avalon" mini & an episode of Twin Peaks.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387541/maindetails

Being a Wagner fan since I was a precosious nine years old!!! this is phenominal news indeed!!!!

Let's hope it's good. Anyone read P Craig Russels comic book adaptation of the Nibelungenlied? A mate of mine said the Gill Kane version was better. yuck!!!! P Craig Russel hit the nail on the head for me, as he did with Stormbringer AND Magic Flute!
 
Comparing LotR and Die Nibelung? Man, JRRT is gonna FREAK!!
 
I love the Nibelung cycle and this is great news for me. Anybody knows if it's going to be a movie with normal dialogue or operatic singing? It woul rock with Opera singers:D
 
Mr. R.I.N.G. said:
More info, interviews with one of the screenwriters, and PIX for the film (now called Kingdom in Twilight) right here:

KINGDOM IN TWILIGHT

So, no opera singers, but the Terminator girl instead. I just hope it doesn't end as a cheesy movie.
 
Didn't Channel 4 film Wagners ring complete with video effects in the late 80s? I can't find any reference to it on the web - only the cartoon version which is more recent.

Brunhilda throws the ring onto her lovers pyre before jumping onto her horse and riding into the flames herself, the Rhine bursts bursts its banks and as it flows through the halls od Valhalla a nymph pluckss the ring from the flames. The waters retreat, the flames are unextinguished and spread to burn down the home of the gods, plunging the world into eternal night.

Now that really does need good CGI!
 
Siegfried, who, not knowing that he is heir to a conquered kingdom, becomes popular with the Burgunds by slaying their bane, the dragon Fafnir.



At a church at Maughold Head on the Isle of Man there is a collection of celtic stones which, tho' incredibly faded depict Norse stories. One of them shows the hero Sigund slaying the dragon Fafney.
This story is obviously a well told and much travelled one.
The stones are well worth a look if you get the chance to travel to the Island (as is the island itself).
 
Would love to go to Mann, last Year I tried to blag a free trip from the LT-General (or whatever his rank is)

Would you believe I have still never been to Mann??
 
Away from places like Douglas which is just like any other seaside town it is the most beautiful island.
There is a ring of ancient stone on the top called Cashtal-yn-aard and you can see for miles from there. Right over to England and Scotland. I used to think while standing up there what the original manx ppl must have felt like on their tiny island.
Sulby Glenn is breathtaking in summer, autumn or winter. From Peel castle you can see Ireland. There are seals and sharks in the Calf Sound.
It'll probably be a while before i get to visit again but oh, one of these days.......:hmm:
 
Austen: Didn't Channel 4 film Wagners ring complete with video effects in the late 80s?


The tv Ring cycle I recall was the early eighties Boulez-Bayreuth-Goetz Friedrich production which is still I think available on Philips DVDs. It got at least a couple of showings, in ten weekly sections but it was BBC 2 IIRC. But there could have been a later Channel 4 version. ??

Can't imagine either of those channels doing likewise now, alas.

Very few operas get filmed commercially, as opposed to filmed productions of stage versions which are legion. Zeffirelli did a few such as Traviata and Otello.

I wonder what happened to Syberberg's Parsifal? Come to that, fans of opera without music could look up his epic Hitler- A Film From Germany, which once similarly graced UK telly in the early eighties or late seventies. Very German and introspective but haunting - especially at a distance.

As an addict of recorded music, I can take or leave the visuals - most stage producers are f'wits, not to mince words. And no one has ever managed to make singing look anything but silly in close-up. It's also unfortunate that non-operatic classical music videos are so alienatingly posh. Dammit I am posh and still find them hateful!

Anyway back to dragons. :p
 
Homo Aves said:
Wasnt there one in the Opera of `Where the Wild Things Are`?
Yes, I think there was - I think I saw some of it on Blue Peter, so it must have been some years ago!
"The Turn of The Screw" was filmed for TV not so long ago - I can't remeber which channel though.
 
Just found AN INTERESTING SITE that argues that the Nibelungen story is a real history of sorts:
The Nibelungen: the historical truth

Note: This site is still under construction. Unfortunately, I think I'll have little time to expand it in the forseeable future. Therefore, it'll remain half finished for a while. Nonetheless, you can find interesting things here.

It is generally assumed that the great Germanic legendary heroes Dietrich von Bern and the Nibelungen have their counterparts in history: Theodoric the Great and the Burgundians of Late Antiquity.
Unfortunately, the stories told about these great heroes have no relation whatsoever to the known historical facts. In addition, the heroes might be identified in a radically different way.

Purpose of this site is to compare two theories:

* The traditional theory outlined above
* The new theory of Heinz Ritter-Schaumburg, who claims the Nibelungen were not the Burgundians and Dietrich von Bern was in fact a fifth century king of Bonn and not Theodoric the Great.

In 1981, Ritter published his book Die Nibelungen zogen nordwaerts, in which he concluded that the 13th-century Thidrekssaga has retained many place-names which can be traced to the 5th-century Rhineland, thus making Dietrich, the Nibelungen and Siegfried Rhinelandic princes of the era of the Great Migrations.

Despite Ritter's passionate plea for revising the traditional identifications, scholars have largely ignored his work.

If Ritter is right,

* the traditional identifications of the great heroes are incorrect.
* 5th-century Burgundian history must be partially rewritten, since modern historians have always assumed that the extirpation of the Burgundians in 436 is reflected in the Nibelungenlied and therefore has taken place on the Rhine (maybe near Worms).
* we are forced to conclude that two Attila's the Hun have existed.
* the (un)reliability of oral tradition must be reconsidered.
* we finally have a chance to look at the era of the Great Migrations through the eyes of the Germanic invaders.

All in all, enough points of interest to merit a website.

I advise new readers to follow the Introduction first, since the subsidiary pages sometimes deal with very specialized matters which can only be understood after reading all the introductory pages.

Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any comments, suggestions or extra literature. Also contact me when the site appears not to be working as it should.
 
I see the only previous mention of Hans-Jürgen Syberberg was in this thread nearly a dozen years ago.

He is one of the most Fortean of film-makers and still alive at eighty-one, though his later works have been theatre-based, since television money for experimental and controversial work dried up decades ago.

I am currently revisiting his seven-hour marathon "Our Hitler" - usually retitled "Hitler: A Film from Germany" abroad. It dates from 1977 and was first shown in the UK during August 1979 by the BBC, who had partly funded it.

Did I sit through all of it, then? It was shown on four evenings, the sections lasting between ninety minutes and two hours. It certainly left an indelible impression on this viewer, though Wagner-nerds had the advantage of recognizing the symbols as well as adjusting to the time-scale involved. I think I liked it enough to catch some of it again when it was repeated a few years later.

This is not a documentary. Some film clips are included but Syberberg filmed his micro-budgeted epic on a single sound-stage. It is part puppet-show, part cabaret, part guided museum tour. Despite which it manages not to be simply a filmed theatre-piece: the camera is mobile throughout, so we might be reminded of Wagner's intentions for the mobile scenery of Parsifal.

Even among Forteans, I can imagine the audience for this will be tiny. It is available for free on Youtube but only in an Italian version. Syberberg's own website also offers free downloads of the German print. English subtitle files can also be located for free. The director - or his webmaster - has also uploaded Susan Sontag's critique of the film, which is one of her most impressive essays. The essay may be a good place to start, as this is not a film where "spoilers" are going to have much effect.

Susan Sontag's Essay.

The Downloads in Four Parts.

The English Subtitles can be found on this page.

Now I'm off to watch Part Two. I may be some time.

Edit 09.30 pm
Part Two is generally regarded as the biggest challenge. This is the episode which runs 125 minutes and contains a monologue of over half-an-hour by an actor playing Hitler's valet. The subtitles gave out at certain points in the film but this was no great loss as the valet was clearly still rattling on about the Führers shoes and underwear. There is a certain grim humour underlying the Germanic thoroughness but it isn't really humour as generally understood or appreciated.

Edit 18.10.2016
Part Three is divided broadly into three parts. In the first section we watch Himmler's masseur at work as he annoints and stimulates Himmler's belly. This intimacy allows him to unburden himself about his inadequacies and compensating grandiose fantasies. This is intercut with scenes of Himmler's interest in occultism and pseudo-science. The middle section is devoted to Hitler's projectionist who weeps for the glory days when the Führer would watch films every night. Now he lives as a pornographer, working for a public he despises. In the final section, Hitler himself is featured as a ventriloquist's dummy, slowly stripped by his operator, though every disguise reveals another beneath. Hitler describes the triumph of his vision as he sees it in the world after his death.

Edit 19.10.2016
The final part dwells for the first half on moving images but these are back-projections, which are hard to take in, while reading the subtitles. Just how obstructively German can a film get! Our focus should, in any case, be upon the narrator whose troubled dreams the films represent. He worries a lot, as a good German should. In a half-way interlude, with a mainly darkened sky-scape on the screen, we hear - as contemporaries did - of the defeat of Germany. The most striking image of this Twilight of the Gods turns out to be the hideous dance of an incinerated corpse with an inflated love-doll. They twirl. Hitler's triumph is reasserted, this time by the narrator. Hitler is now a dumb wax-work in the theme-park arranged by the masseurs and projectionists of this world.
 
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Looking forward to the viewing.

It is an endurance test at times! The opposite of a user-friendly experience. With a smattering of German, the oneiric experience of so much loggerhea is something which has haunted me for years. It may be slightly less mysterious to a fluent speaker.

I have looked - so far in vain - for an online script or even a detailed scene-by-scene synopsis. I gather the subtitles do, at times, attribute texts which are unexplained in the original. Alas, the subtitles themselves give out for several sections and we are left to our own resources.

Syberberg is likely to be next in the news when he passes. Then what shall be said? Or will he be noticed at all? :(
 
I accept the challenge. Quite enjoy bridging the gaps in translation with some contexting. Mostly for my woeful Spanish when reading McCarthy, but I'll give the German a try.
 
I love the Völsunga saga, but don't really like Wagner (mainly because a lot of people think that the legends are the same as Wagner's version).* JRRT, my favourite author, actually wrote his own version in Eddic style. I found this article from 2014 and was going to start a new thread for it until I discovered this one.

I doubt it's Fáfnir's hoard. Where's the ring Andvaranaut?:p

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/21/nibelung-treasure-gold-silver-woods-germany_n_4826228.html


Legendary Nibelung Treasure May Have Been Found By A Guy With A Metal Detector

Sara Gates

A long-lost treasure may have finally been found.


An amateur archaeologist recently unearthed a trove of gold and silver in a wooded area in western Germany. The finding, estimated to be worth more than 1 million euros (about $1.37 million), has some wondering whether the jewels are part of the legendary Nibelung treasure, Germany’s The Local reports.


The enormous bounty was illegally dug up by a man with a metal detector in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate. Authorities seized the bounty after the man reportedly tried to sell the wares on the black market. Upon closer inspection, archaeologists realized the extravagant finding and the Nibelung treasure may be one and the same.

Yet, they’re not quite sure.

“In terms of timing and geography, the find fits in with the epoch of the Nibelung legend,” Axel von Berg, the state’s chief archaeologist said, according to Reuters. “But we cannot say whether it actually belongs to the Nibelung treasure.”

o-GOLD-HOARD-570.jpg


Golden pieces of jewelry of a ceremonial dress from late antiquity — part of a illegally excavated treasure — appear on display in Mainz, Germany.

Lost to time, the Nibelung riches are believed to have been buried somewhere along the Rhine — perhaps even at the bottom of the river that flows through Germany, as the epic poem “The Song of the Nibelungs“ describes. Modern-day treasure hunters have searched for the mythic treasure for decades but have never uncovered the priceless bounty of gold and jewels that once belonged to an ancient German king.

“It’s one of the few remaining adventures,” Hans Jörg Jacobi, a German architect who is obsessed with the Nibelung treasure, told Deutsche Welle last year, adding, “you have to believe in it.”

As legend goes, a German prince and dragon-slayer named Siegfried once possessed the Nibelung treasure, which was named after a race of dwarves. However, the riches were taken from him by Hagen von Tronje, a vassal of the Queen of Iceland who murdered Siegfried to avenge his empress.

After Hagen killed Siegfried and stole the Nibelung treasure, he is believed to have thrown it into the Rhine — but where exactly, no one knows. Whether the treasure sunk to the bottom of the German river or followed the current until it washed up somewhere, has been at the center of speculation for centuries.

Authorities have since launched an investigation into the man who illegally excavated the treasure.

*Wagner's plot for Siegfried is actually based on the Thiðrekssaga, a collection of stories about ancient Germanic heroes written in Norwegian in the 13th century.
 
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The films of Hans-Jürgen Syberberg (b. 1935) tend to divide audiences, to say the least. Some have condemned him as a second Hitler, though his most celebrated work, Hitler - A Film from Germany, 1977, used to be broadcast, albeit in episodes, on mainstream television in the UK - more than once, I think. I see that I attempted to describe it above.

Anyway . . .

This is just to whisper that Syberberg's elusive, 1982, filmed version of Wagner's Parsifal has turned up on Youtube, in two parts and with English subtitles. It's not exactly High Definition and may lack the director's stern warning about the proper aspect-ratio - which is honoured.

Part One is here, consisting of Acts I and II.

Part Two, consists of Act III.

I find myself gasping like a fish, in this territory: Sublime, Ridiculous, vase or face?

Surely Syberberg, aesthetically, is heir to Brecht as much as Hitler, whatever his politics.

Will there be obituaries? He is still with us. Standing so far from popularism, as he does, he seems unlikely to have much influence now.

A frightening magician, I think. :omr:
 
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