Made in 1924, 13 years before Tolkien wrote The Hobbit, Die Nibelungen embodied the pinnacle of German Expressionism in Cinema.
Sure Wagner told the Siegfried story in his Ring Cycle, but he twisted and turned it to make it fit the Victorian mentality. Wagner picked and chose from a variety of myths to put together a story was completely alien to the mythic mentality. Lang is completely different.
Die Nibelungen is closely based on the 12th century epic poem The Nibelungenlied. The story is more transposed than adapted, without any moral judgment. It is presented in the horrifying context of the epic mind. Love, lust, rape, betrayal, conspiracy, greed, murder, infanticide and genocide are potrayed not in the human terms of Tragedy, but in the historical terms of necessity. And throughout are interwoven some of the most amazing images that have ever been recorded. If Gustav Klimt had made a film, it would have been this.
The influence it had on Tolkien is palpable. This sense that we are looking in on an alien world, at a brutal event that made us what we are, that Tolkien has taken from Lang. Also the whole turning invisible thing.
Here it is, at five hours long! Don't do it in one sitting, it is broken up into chapters.
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