At a time when the Lord of the Rings didn't exist as a film
or a book trilogy, Fritz Lang created the 5-hour-long film
Die Nibelungen (The Nibelungs, 1924), based on the 13th-century poem Die Nibelungenlied (The Song of the Nibelungs). A short clip of
Siegfried slaying the dragon was used as a trailer for the restored edition of the film.
[more inside]
posted by ersatz
on Feb 3, 2013 -
28 comments
March 21, 1927, Marble Arch Pavilion, London. Fritz Lang's Metropolis receives its British premiere, and the audience was handed programs on their way into the auditorium. Today, only three copies are known to survive. Fortunately for us,
the entire program is available to read online.
posted by hippybear
on Jul 10, 2012 -
11 comments
Fritz Lang's last silent film,
Woman in the Moon, has just been released by
Kino Video in a lovingly restored and remastered edition, expanded to its original running time of 169 minutes. (Prior releases of the film in the US had as much as half of the original footage removed, with altered title cards that completely changed the storyline.)
Woman in the Moon is considered to be
the first real attempt to depict a flight to the moon in film that
wasn't completely fantastic, thanks to the technical input of
Hermann Oberth, who later went on play a key role in the development of the German
V-2 rocket. As a piece of futurism,
Woman in the Moon gets a few things wrong (the Moon of the film has a breathable atmosphere, for one thing), but it's also surprisingly prescient as well (the rocketship that voyages to the moon has multiple stages). Its most significant contribution to popular culture is the reverse countdown to blastoff, which was invented by the filmmakers as a dramatic device.
posted by Prospero
on Dec 19, 2004 -
10 comments
