DER MÜDE TOD

SA, 4 SEP — 4 & 8 PM

»Destiny« (Der müde Tod) | LIVE-MUSIK STAATSKAPELLE WEIMAR CONDUCTOR Burkhard Götze COMPOSITION Richard Siedhoff (2021) // DCP format | tinted | Germany | 1921 | 100 min | age 12+

The Weimar Silent Film Retrospective is once again breathing melodious life into one of the milestones of Weimar cinema, in cooperation with the STAATSKAPELLE WEIMAR. Richard Siedhoff — winner of the inaugural prize for silent film, the DEUTSCHER STUMMFILM-PREIS 2020 — wrote a composition for small orchestra in the late Romantic style for Fritz Lang’s early masterpiece Destiny (Der müde Tod), allowing the four utterly disparate worlds of the film to be savoured through music.

The ‘Folk Song in Six Verses’ tells of a newlywed young woman’s struggle with death personified. Death has taken her beloved from her, but promises to give him back if she succeeds in saving one of three ‘life lights’ that are about to be extinguished. From there, various fairy-tale-like episodes unfold, taking place in the ancient Orient, Renaissance Venice and imperial China. But it seems that death remains undefeated, until a dramatic turn of events takes place. Together with author Thea von Harbou and set designer Walter Röhrig, Lang created a dense epic with elements of impressionism and expressionism. Authentic sets, allusions to Romantic painting, ornamentation and the elaborate title cards lend this film its unique visual and spatial drama: from the endless wall of the kingdom of the dead and the candlelit hall of life lights, right up to the images resembling tales from the Thousand and One Nights. Lang’s film, which brings in escapism to deal with the trauma of the First World War, was “a great hit” (F. Olimsky).

REGIE Fritz Lang DREHBUCH Thea von Harbou DARSTELLER*INNEN Lil Dagover | Bernhard Goetzke | Walter Janssen | Rudolf Klein-Rogge