Ludwig, Requiem für einen jungfräulichen König (1972 Hans Jürgen Syberberg)

Hans Jürgen Syberberg: Ludwig, Requiem für einen jungfräulichen König / Ludwig - Requiem for a Virgin King (DE 1972).

Ludwig - Requiem for a Virgin King / Ludwig - requiem neitsytkuninkaalle / Ludwig - requiem för en jungfrukung. Teil 1: Der Fluch. Teil 2: Ich war einmal. 

    DE 1972. PC: TMS Film GmbH / Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen. 

    D+SC: Hans Jürgen Syberberg. DP: Dietrich Lohmann. FX: Theon Nischwitz. PD: Chr. Dank, J. Hofmann, H. Döll, A. Quaglio, G. Dehn, H. Breling. Costumes by Barbara Baum, Chris Wilhelm. Make-up: Sybille Danzer, Wolfgang Schnurflein. M: Richard Wagner, conductors: Wilhelm Furtwängler (Tristan und Isolde, Lohengrin), Herbert von Karajan (Rheingold, Siegfried, Götterdämmerung). ED: Peter Przygodda. 

    Starring Harry Baer (Ludwig II), Ingrid Caven (Lola Montez), Oskar von Schab (Karl May), Edgar Murray (Winnetou), Gerhard Maertz (Richard Wagner). 

    134 min. 

    A brilliant print with e-subtitles in Finnish by Christoffer von Bonsdorff / Pro Kontext. 

    Viewed at Orion, Helsinki, 5 April 2005. 

SYBERBERG (BFI / EDINBURGH 1992): "That Syberberg chose to call his film a requiem was not merely because he wished to dedicate an epitaph to a dead king, however much Ludwig may still live in the popular imagination. The requiem referred more to a closed, aesthetic system, with analogies to music and musical forms, and to the director's concept of film as the music of the future. It was intended as a break away from the accepted view of film, the dialogue and action film, the techniques of commercial cinema dominated by Hollywood."

"As his alternative Syberberg worked with monologue-like speech, using block forms, still camerawork, unmoving tableaux, original opera sets as backdrops, epic clarity, alienation, irony and pathos, underlined by his use of music."

"The film is divided into two parts and chapters. The first part, The Curse, begins with the opening bars of Rhinegold. The curse of the three Norns and the curse of Lola Montez are cast on Ludwig and the Wittelsbacher. Central to the first part of the film is the handling of the Ludwig-Elisabeth (Sissi) sequence. Elisabeth of Austria warns Ludwig of the consequences of his self-immersion into Wagner which proves the cause of Ludwig's spiritual death. The second part of the film, Once Upon A Time I Was, deals with the nightmarish world finally surrounding Ludwig, projections of his own fantasies and at the same time projections of a frightening reality. Forced into the recognition of a new German Empire, with the Prussian King and Bismarck at its head, and the consequences it was to unfold for Europe, compelled to break with Wagner, drawn more and more into the isolation of unrealizable fantasies, we see the final death of Ludwig and his resurrection as a modern folk-hero. To the final bars of Wagner's Twilight of the Gods Ludwig as a child, with beard and moustache, emerges from the mists of Erda's earth grotto. The sublime and the Kitsch meet and are unified."

"Ludwig dies three deaths in the film, the classical royal death, the public, official death, and his spiritual death, a Liebestod. The stations of his life are recalled, the outward, historical stations such as the collaboration with Wagner, the building of his castles and palaces, the constitutional crises, European affairs, his antagonism to the growth of industrialism and Prussia; but also inner stations, the realization of fantastic landscapes, the flight from external manifestations of reality, and their 20th century consequences. The film is a complex visual, aural and historical collage. It is the story of a failed Utopia. Wagner, the three Norns, Ludwig XIV are as much part of this world as Hitler and the industrial civilization of our century. Physically and metaphysically they stand side by side." (Syberberg)

AA: MY OWN COMMENTS AFTER THE FILM: Having seen Ludwig, Hitler, and Parsifal in one week I'm impressed by the wealth and the depth of the cultural web of the films, and also by the often elegant and humoristic touch. Without a heavy production machine Syberberg handles material usually treated in epics and spectacles. Ludwig I may have watched more distractedly than the others, which is why it's wiser to postpone judgement. Syberberg belongs to the great essayists of the cinema together with Guitry, Welles, and Godard. He is also a good self-analyst; his own description above is quite illuminating.

Note: as in Parsifal, Wagner here is portrayed by a man and a woman.

http://www.syberberg.de