Chaplin's Modern Times and prewar cinema: directors, messages, and social representation

¶ … Films

Cinema is a cyclical phenomenon of images, themes, stories, and visions yet each interpretation presented to viewers is unique and connects with them in a different manner. By studying the foundations of cinema, one can trace the influences of directors in modern cinema. Quentin Tarantino's most recent film, Django Unchained, is not only a postmodern film that draws influences from Fritz Lang's Die Nibelungen: Siegfried, an Expressionist film, and seamlessly intertwines the German legend with the Western genre. Through the film's narrative, structure, and mise-en-scene, one can see how early films and directors like Lang and Die Nibelungen: Siegfried have influenced contemporary directors like Tarantino and his film, Django Unchained.

Die Nibelungen: Siegfried is a 1924 silent fantasy film of the German Expressionist era. The film is based on the German legend of Siegfried who risks his life to help win Brunhilde's hand in marriage. Lang's film traces Siegfried's journey from a blacksmith's apprentice to hero, and chronicles the different obstacles he had to overcome to be successful in his quest. Not only does Siegfried defeat a dragon, which helps him to achieve a sort of invulnerability, he also defeats the king of dwarves, walks across of ring of fire to get to Brunhilde (Die Nibelungen: Siegfried). Lang's Die Nibelungen: Siegfried is set in the Middle Ages and attempts to remain faithful to The Song of the Nibelungs, which the film's narrative is based on (Ahearn).

While Lang's adaptation of the Siegfried follows the epic poem's narrative closely, Tarantino's neo-spaghetti Western version of the Siegfried legend is a loose translation of the Siegfried legend. In Tarantino's interpretation, set in 1858 in America, Django, a bounty hunter and a former slave, is on a quest to rescue his wife, Broomhilda, who was sold at a slave auction to an unknown individual, later revealed to be Calvin Candie, a wealthy plantation owner in Mississippi. Django assumes the role of Siegfried as he is ultimately the hero of the film and not only rescues his wife, but also kills Calvin Candie and destroys his plantation, a symbolic annihilation of the institution of slavery (Django Unchained). Dr. King Schultz, a bounty hunter and former dentist, also assumes the role of Siegfried to a lesser extent and it can also be argued that Tarantino incorporates elements of Dante's Inferno as Dr. Schultz becomes like Virgil guiding Dante through hell, in Tarantino's case, the antebellum South.

Lang's Die Nibelungen: Siegfried uses a narrative structure that divides Siegfried's accomplishments and the narrative into different chapters. Because the film is silent, intertitles help to explain what is occurring in the film. Each of these intertitles help Lang to divide the film into distinct Cantos, which enables Lang to structure the film like the epic poem. Tarantino also divides his film into various chapters, however, unlike Lang's Die Nibelungen: Siegfried, Django Unchained uses "chapters" to mark the passage of time and to allow the viewer to see how far Django and Dr. Schultz have had to travel. Moreover, these "chapters" are not clearly delineated in Django Unchained as they are in Tarantino's other films such as Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Inglourious Basterds, but rather are stylized visual aids that enable the viewer to better understand the film's narrative.

One of the most remarkable aspects of Lang's Die Nibelungen: Siegfried is its Expressionist mise-en-scene. Through Die Nibelungen: Siegfried, Lang "makes the film a study in symmetry, a vast, inexorably grand construct that leads to the massive blood letting of Kriemhild's Revenge" (Gianetti & Eyman 95). Like many Expressionist films, Lang's Die Nibelungen: Siegfried the realm of fantasy was depicted through the construction of a stylized set that used extreme angles to emphasize artificiality and arouse feelings of tension and unease. The immense amount of detail incorporated into the film, from the sets to the costumes, also adds to the artificiality and fantasy of the film. In Flashback: A Brief History of Film, Louis Gianetti and Scott Eyman write, "The studied artificiality created in the studio provides a sense of a total environment that could not have been captured so effectively on actual locations" (95). Furthermore, because the film is set during the Middle Ages, it was necessary for Lang to construct a world that was representative of this historical period.