For the rest, the momentum was tremendously slow and there was next to no tension in the many dramatic moments: Alberich snatched the small piece of coveted gold hidden from inside a rubber tire; the
Nibelungs dragged themselves about lethargically in a minimalist subterranean cavern; we had to imagine the serpent and the toad for ourselves.
Bettina Bildhauer persuasively argues for Quentin Tarantino's film Inglorious Basterds as an adaptation of the medieval epic poem Song of the
Nibelungs, concluding that through this medieval intertext, the film both participates in, and adapts, the association between the medieval and violence in contemporary culture.
Elsewhere, Egerton Sykes describes Bes, the Egyptian god of music and pleasure, as a "bandy-legged dwarf demigod" (Egerton 34), and Jung points out that Siegfried's foster parent in Wagner's The Ring of the
Nibelungs is "a chthonic god, Mime, a crippled dwarf" (Jung, Symbols 361; par.
Three Rhinemaidens guard the gold in the River Rhine which is stolen by Alberich, one of the dwarf-like
Nibelungs who live in the caverns below.
Chorus and dancers (including expressive students from the Elmhurst School of Dance as shrieking
Nibelungs) made important contributions, but we have to end with the cycle's most tragic character, Brunnhilde, exiled from Valhalla to await her fate at the hands of any human who comes along.
From fantasy and sci-fi to bestseller adaptations such as "Ring of the
Nibelungs," "Impact," "Lost City Raiders" and Ken Follett's "Pillars of the Earth" and "World Without End," the Munich company aims high, combining "American-style pacing and European sensibility in terms of the feeling and the story," says Bauer.
Mime has raised Siegfried to kill the dragon Fafner, who sits upon the hoard of the
Nibelungs, including on a magic ring that can make its owner master of the world.
And below, when Dunraven refers to the red gold of the
Nibelungs, there is an additional marginal reference, this time to Carlyle, III, 125.
Robert had also taken up amateur dramatics at the Barnes Theatre Company and, in 2004, made his television debut in Ring of the
Nibelungs and in the filmVanity Fair, although his scenes were deleted and only appear in the DVD version.
The "perils" promised by the title, however, are most evident in the hints of racism that underlie even the most benign discussion of "national character," let alone the Ring of the
Nibelungs. Burns dismisses the parallels with Richard Wagner's Ring in a footnote: "Tolkien, however, disliked Wagner's presentation of northern myths and resented being compared to him" (182 n.
Legend has it that the
Nibelungs hero Siegfried fought and slayed the dragon that haunted the Drachenfels rock, bathing in his blood to make himself invincible.
If one finds any similarities between this image and that of the
Nibelungs in Chereau's production of the Ring, that is because they do exist.