Wagner On Screen. The strange relationship between Richard Wagner and Film

There seems to be an endless supply of articles and books on how Wagner influenced the film sound track: from Loony Tunes to Apocalypse Now,  from Star Wars to The Lord of the Rings. Less in evident are articles that describe Wagner's treatment directly in film - how he and his music is presented. This article from the Guardian 2007 (to accompany an BFI season entitled "Wagner On Screen) addresses both issues but with emphasis on the latter. I


Continuous melody

From Fritz Lang to Bugs Bunny, countless movies have taken inspiration from Wagner. But how well has film served this most cinematic of composers, asks Ronald Bergen

Ronald Bergen
The Guardian, Saturday 6 October 2007

Sergei Eisenstein

In 1940, the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow invited the Russian film director Sergei Eisenstein to stage Richard Wagner's Die Walküre. He eagerly accepted the new challenge, as it presented him with an opportunity to apply Wagner's ideas of combining theatre, music, literature and myth in one medium, which concurred with his own vision of film as synthesis.

Eisenstein wanted "The Ride of the Valkyries" to "envelop the entire audience via a system of loudspeakers reverberating as if in flight from the rear of the stage to the back of the auditorium and back. And roll around the auditorium, up the steps and along the aisles and corridors. But I was not able to overcome the traditions of the opera theatre!" Eisenstein was anticipating "The Ride of the Valkyries" as used in the stereophonic Dolby system by Francis Ford Coppola in Apocalypse Now (the background to American helicopters bombing the hell out of the Vietcong) almost four decades later.

According to the American director and screenwriter Harmony Korine: "If Wagner lived today, he would probably work with film instead of music. He already knew back then that the Great Art Form would include a sort of fourth dimension; it was really film he was talking about."

It could be argued that if film resembles any other art form, it is closer to opera than theatre or literature; of the operatic composers, Wagner could lay claim to being the most "cinematic". For example, in the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth, the theatre built by Wagner specifically to present Der Ring des Nibelungen, a hidden orchestra was conceived so that the music could be heard like a soundtrack. Wagner also had all the house lights turned off, unusually for the 1870s. In addition, an illusion was created by a dual proscenium which, according to Wagner, "allows the performers to appear enlarged and on a superhuman scale" - the theatrical equivalent of the close-up.

A multitude of film scores rely on Wagnerian leitmotifs - a musical phrase, associated with some particular character or idea - and the edited flow of images could be likened to Wagner's "continuous melody". More comparisons could be made between Wagner and film, and there have been learned treatises on the influence of Wagner on movies from Fritz Lang's early epics, Die Nibelungen and The Testament of Dr Mabuse, to Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings. However, though bleeding chunks of his music have been heard in hundreds of movies, particularly the over(mis)used "The Ride of the Valkyries", the composer has been rather ill-served by the cinema. But, as Mark Twain once quipped, "Wagner's music is better than it sounds." In films, at least.

In 1960, Luis Buñuel added a musical soundtrack to his silent surrealist masterpiece, Un Chien Andalou (1928), including the mystically rapturous "Liebestod" from Tristan und Isolde. He used it again, even more brilliantly, in L'Age d'Or (1930) as accompaniment to a woman performing fellatio on the white toe of a marble statue and to a couple in the throes of "l'amour fou".

Preston Sturges's Unfaithfully Yours has a famous conductor (Rex Harrison) imagining, while conducting three different works, three different ways of taking revenge on his wife, whom he suspects of infidelity. The nature of his imaginings is dictated by that of the music: during Wagner's reconciliation theme from Tannhäuser, he fantasises about forgiving his wife and allowing her to run off with her young lover.

Naturally, Hollywood, always deeply suspicious of "high art", would mostly caricature Wagner's work. Whenever there is an opera scene in the movies, it's more than likely to show a giantess wearing a horned Viking helmet and belting out Wagner at the top of her lungs. In What's New, Pussycat?, Peter Sellers as the crazy psychiatrist Fritz Fassbender has to cope with "the wife that ate Europe", who is depicted as the stereotypical Wagnerian soprano.

10:26:00 pm | 0 comments | Read More

The Star Wars and Wagner's Ring

Given George Lucas' fascination with myth,  it's meaning and role within society and the psyche of the individual, perhaps such a comparison should not come as a surprise. This analysis by Kristian Evensen (only a small part of the opening is published here, follow the link for the whole thing) is fun and perhaps a good way to introduce people with no familiarity to the Ring to it's complexities.


Introduction
Disclaimer

This article is for entertainment only and makes no claims as to the scientific value or exactness of the contents! The research preceding the writing of this article utilised doubtful methods and was critisized heavily even by the author. Read on at own risk.....
Introduction

The film trilogy [N1] by George Lucas and John Williams, Star Wars, consisting of Star Wars, released in 1977 (sometimes referred to as A New Hope or Episode IV), The Empire Strikes Back (the Empire), released in 1980 and The Return of the Jedi (theJedi), released in 1983, represents major turning points in cinematography, as well as in film music, film sound, visual effects and other areas. The opera tetralogy by Richard Wagner, Der Ring des Nibelungen, consisting of Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfriedand Götterdämmerung, composed from 1848 to 1874 and produced theatrically for the first time in 1876, represents major turning points in the history of opera, as well as in orchestral music, the art of singing and the production of operas.

It may seem strange to connect two so very different works of "art". The one, Richard Wagner's Ring is undoubtedly the peak of musical romanticism, and by many praised as the greatest work of art ever produced. The other, the Star Wars film trilogy (which recently became a tetralogy, and is later to become a hexalogy) is a purely commercial product of the American film industry, by many not counted at all as a work of "art". It is obvious that the differences between these two cultural phenomena are many.The difference of the greatest magnitude may well be represented by the economic aspect: The Star Wars series are among the top box-office hitsin the history of the cinema. (Worldwide they are nos 2, 7 and 8 respectively, adjusted for inflation. [As of 09/2004][N2]). As such, they must be counted among the most commercial successful products ever. The Ring, on the other hand, lacks this sort of statistics, but it is unlikely that the work has ever raised any profit at all. In all probability, all productions of this work in its history has resulted in net deficits.

Many will count the Ring as high or high-brow art, and the Star Wars trilogy as low or low-brow art. This distinction will not be discussed here, as it seems to be irrelevant to the present discussion.

There is one central premise, however, that unites the two works: The interest in myths. Wagner's Ring was certainly an attempt to reinterpret, re-present, and even to analyse several of the Teutonic, northern European myths, as well as a tremendously successful attempt to create a new myth for the modern man. Star Wars may lack the analytic approach of Wagner, but it shares the goal of representation and creation of a new, accessible, mythical world. The enormous success and the huge cult following is proof enough that the film series to a large degree has succeeded in this. More than 20 years after the initial release of Episode IV, the Star Wars series is a daily, living presence in the minds of thousands of people; it has indeed become a modern myth.

If one accepts this interest in myth as a common, general premise for the two works, it becomes interesting to connect and compare the works, to investigate the possibility of common traits. As will be seen, there are quite a lot of those, and several of these concern points of the greatest importance to the respective works. Which specificmyths, historical and fictional material that has been sources of inspiration and interest from Wagner and Lucas, is not elaborated here.

This article will discuss connections on three different levels. First, the structural identities, both in the respective works, in their processes of production and in their reception. Second, the thematic identities, both in the use of sub-narrations and in the use of symbols. Third, the musical identities, both in the way the music is connected to the text and the action, and in the structure of the music itself.

Structural identities
The dimensions

Films and operas normally appear as single creations, they are conceived and produced as single objects. The idea of a connected series of operas, or of films, is not unheard of, but it is (at least until recently) very rare in the case of films and extremely rare in the case of operas.

The huge project of Der Ring des Nibelungen consists of four great (and three of them: long) operas, thematically connected and conceived as a single work - encompassing 15 or 16 hours of music and scenic action. This singular project was realised after years of planning and work. In the whole literature of important operas, through the whole of the history of music, there is nothing remotely like this project when it comes to temporal dimensions and ambitiousness of scope.

The project of Star Wars was originally conceived as a series of nine films (nonology), was soon realized as a trilogy, and is now, after years of planning and work, in the process of becoming a hexalogy (six films). Film trilogies (or longer series) are rare, and although they exist (The Godfather, Alien) they are almost never originally conceived, planned and realized as a thematic and narrative whole. The rule is more often that new films are added according to the expectation of more profit. A film series like Star Wars with ultimately six movies - encompassing maybe around 12 or 14 hours of film, must be unique at least in the context of major films.

Both the Ring and the Star Wars series share the unique positions in their respective media of projecting a thematic and narrative continuity over unprecedentedly long spans of time.
The non-linear realisation

It is no small feat just to realise works of this dimension. It is interesting to note that both processes of creation were undertaken in a non-linear, "U"–shaped way.
The film trilogy was initiated with Episodes IV , V and VI, whereafter Lucas worked himself backwards withEpisode I, more than two decades later, and is now planning to work forwards with Episodes II and III.
The opera tetralogy was started with the text for Götterdämmerung (originally: Siegfried's Tod), whereafter Wagner worked himself backwards with the texts, then forwards with the music until completion more than two decades later.
To create a World

Both works create their own World, both Worlds are supposedly in the past, the characters of both Worlds seem just the same known and contemporary to us. Both Worlds are richly endowed with details like different creatures, relations between these, descriptions of different societies and environments, stories and reports from the past, new and old conflicts, new and old hopes. In both cases we are without preparation thrown into such a World - which has to be, and generally will be, accepted unconditionally in order for us to join the "journey".

One obvious example of identity in this context is: A gallery of aliens = a gallery of gods, dwarves etc.
In Star Wars there is a large gallery of creatures and characters from different planets, with widely differing physical appearances and sets of behaviour. Examples are talking robots (C-3PO), a talking feline creature (the Wookie Chewbacca), the small, desert-dwelling Jawas, the large, evil Hutts (Jabba), the small, forest-dwelling Jedi (Yoda), the human heroes (Luke) etc.
In the Ring there is a large gallery of creatures and characters from different parts of the world, with widely differing physical appearances and sets of behaviour. Examples are the mermaid-like Rheintöchter (Rhinedaughters), dwarves (Alberich and Mime), giants (Fasolt and Fafner), gods (Wotan, Freia, Brünnhilde), half-god/half-element (Loge), half-god/half-human heroes (Siegmund, Sieglinde and Siegfried), human (Gunther, Gutrune and Brünnhilde again), half-dwarves (Hagen), dragons (Fafner again) etc.
The need for total control

Both Wagner, as composer and producer of his own operas, and Lucas, as screenwriter, director and producer of his films, show a need for total control with the end product.
Lucas creates his own film studio, his own company for creation of new and revolutionary visual effects (Industrial Light & Magic, founded in 1975) and his own standards for sound and image (THX).
Wagner creates his own theatre (the Feststpielhaus in Bayreuth) in order to realize his ideals concerning the visual and auditive effects.

In Star Wars Lucas uses newly developed computer techniques to create special visual and auditive effects.Star Wars was the first film with a world-wide distribution to use the new Dolby stereo-optical sound system, a system which later has made possible the many surround systems.
In the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth, the theatre built to present the Ring in the best possible way, Wagner hides the orchestra, both to create a new "sound" and to achieve a better balance between singers and orchestra. By hiding the orchestra and by turning out the lights in the theatre, Wagner also ensured a much better visual illusion than what previously was possible in theatres. He also introduced a whole range of new sound effects, from hidden bells to construction of new horns (the Wagner tuba), from the masterful balancing of voice and orchestra by orchestration to the special architecture of the hall. (Again, the hidden orchestra, and the wooden construction turning the hall into a huge musical instrument with the audience inside!) Bayreuth was the first, and is still the only place with such a placement of the orchestra.

Lucas' need to establish new standards for sound and picture has led him to develop the THX standard for reproduction of sound and picture in cinemas and in home video systems. This is a clear parallel to Wagner's need to control the quality and balance of sound, and the quality of visual presentation in his opera house in Bayreuth.

The cult following

The Ring and the Star Wars series represents important cultural phenomena. Indications of this is the tremendous cult following of to both. An expression of this cult following is the fact that a large number of people were willing to pay the entrance fee for some random film, only to watch the trailer for Star Wars Episode I, and thereafter leave the cinema hall. This was done waiting for and in expectation of the real thing. The parallel here is Wagner's presentation of parts of the Ring as one man shows for an inner circle of friends and followers. This was also done waiting for and in expectation of the real thing.

Another example: Tickets were bought weeks in advance of the premiere of Episode I, and hundreds of persons slept out in queues for several days in order to secure tickets. This compares with the need to order tickets for Bayreuth several years in advance, and the hour-long queues with persons having only a little hope of getting a return ticket for an already sold-out performance.

Activities are one thing, reception is another. It is an easily observable fact that supporters of the Star Wars series tend to count these films as the best films ever made. An example of this is a poll taken among Norwegian internet users recently: The question was, which film did one count as the best ever? Of those who took the trouble to cast their vote, the overwhelming majority voted for Star Wars! It goes almost without saying that many of those who appreciate the music of Wagner count the Ring as the greatest work of music theatre, possibly the greatest work of music ever, - some would claim, even the greatest work of art ever!

Adherents of both works tend to be engulfed to such a degree that they seem to live in and identify with these, and they repeatedly relive the same works. The present author has tried this with both works and can confirm the subjective similarity in the form of extreme identification, the totality of and the extraordinary intensity of the experience and the need for repetition.

Thematic identities

This section will investigate some themes which are common to the two works in question. There are lots of parallels, not only in the general choice of themes, but in several interesting and significant details. Some parallels may be expected, others may be surprising. The level of detail where identities appear is entirely unexpected, and this is what prompted the present author to write this article.

The Old Sin which is Atoned by Youthful Heroism
Wotan has committed sins with world-destroying consequences:
a) He has cut off a branch of the world ash tree in order to make his spear, the spear of runes and of contracts - and in order to rule by these contracts and their protection by the spear.
b) He has made a deal with the Giants which he doesn't intend to keep: He has granted the goddess Freia as payment for their work of building Walhall.
Annakin Skywalker has committed sins with world-destroying consequences:
He has yielded to "the Dark side of the Force" and ended up as Darth Vader, a tool for the evil Emperor.

Wotan's daughter, Brünnhilde, and Wotan's grandson, Siegfried, have to compensate for Wotan's sins by going against his will. They succeed through their love for each other, and Wotan and the gods perish. Siegfried and Brünnhilde sacrifices their lives.
Annakin's daughter Leia and his son Luke, have to compensate for Annakin's sins by going against his will. They succeed through their love for each other and Vader and the Emperor perish. Luke and Leia are willing to sacrifice their lives, but they (surprise!) are spared.

Continue Reading

9:12:00 pm | 0 comments | Read More

Parsifal as Proto-SF: Wagner, Parsifal, Schopenhauer, Philip K Dick and The Matrix Trilogy

Time for more Wagner miscellanea? Already?

In the following highly entertaining eassy,  Andrew May, explains how Parsifal directly influenced the work of the legendary Science Fiction  author  Philip K Dick (If you are unfamiliar,  you may know Dick from such film adoptions of his work as: Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, and A Scanner Darkly - among others. Although none, apart from  Scanner perhaps, do justice to his literary style or the complexity of his work). May argues this influence is  found especially in Dick's novel "Valis". He also argues that Parsifal may have  influenced those thieves of anything "esoteric" the Wachowski brothers and their "Matrix Trilogy". An argument partly confirmed, as we shall see, by Don Davies (composer on all three Matrix films) who we discover "quotes" the Tristan Chord throughout the soundtrack of the final Matrix Movie

Parsifal as Proto-SF

by Andrew May

This paper was first presented at Interaction, the 63rd World Science Fiction Convention held in Glasgow in August 2005, as part of the academic track organized by the Science Fiction Foundation. The slides presented at the convention can be found in PDF format here.

Parsifal is an opera by Richard Wagner (1813 - 1883). It's a very unusual opera, which has baffled and intrigued audiences since it was first performed in 1882. Most operas are about larger-than-life human relationships and emotions, and Wagner's earlier works are no exception. But Parsifal is different. It's all about ideas -- very abstract ideas of philosophy, metaphysics and theology. I would argue that this places Parsifal firmly in the realm of speculative fiction. Moreover, the focus of speculation in Wagner's opera is remarkably similar to that found in the novels of Philip K Dick and in the Matrix trilogy.

Parsifal is discussed extensively in Philip K Dick's 1981 novel, Valis. Indeed, for some readers, Valis may be the only context they have ever encountered Parsifal. Chapter 8 of Valis contains a nice little précis of Wagner's opera, which we can use as a starting point:

The leader of the grail knights, Amfortas, has a wound which will not heal. Klingsor has wounded him with the spear which pierced Christ's side. Later, when Klingsor hurls the spear at Parsifal, the pure fool catches the spear - which has stopped in midair - and holds it up, making the sign of the Cross with it, at which Klingsor and his entire castle vanish. They were never there in the first place; they were a delusion, what the Greeks call dokos; what the Indians call the veil of maya. There is nothing that Parsifal cannot do. At the end of the opera, Parsifal touches the spear to Amfortas's wound and the wound heals
Expanding on that, an act-by-act synopsis would go something like this:

• Act 1: The knights of the Grail are miserable because of Amfortas's suffering. However, there is a ray of hope -- some mysterious writing has appeared on the surface of the Grail prophesying the coming of a redeemer, who is described as "the guileless fool". Right on cue, Parsifal turns up and starts behaving like a guileless fool. So much so, that the knights get fed up with him and kick him out.
• Act 2: Parsifal's wanderings take him to the castle of Klingsor, the evil sorcerer who has stolen the holy spear. Klingsor tries to destroy Parsifal by various means, eventually sending the witch Kundry to seduce him. However, as soon as Kundry kisses Parsifal, he becomes enlightened and understands everything. He sees through Klingsor's illusions and recovers the stolen spear.
• Act 3: Parsifal returns to the land of the Grail, where he uses the spear to cure Amfortas and absolve Kundry of her sins. The opera ends with the very strange words "the redeemer redeemed".

Fans of science fiction may perceive a number of striking parallels between the plot of Parsifal and that of The Matrix. I'm not sure if these parallels are a deliberate homage to Parsifal or just an accident. It's well known that the Wachowski brothers are avid readers of all kinds of things, and that a lot of their reading found its way into The Matrix in one form or another. Equally, I've seen The Matrix described as a kind of intellectual Rorschach test where you can find anything you want if you look hard enough! Whether they are coincidences or deliberate allusions, the plot parallels between Parsifal and The Matrix can be summarised as follows:

The connections between Parsifal and The Matrix go beyond similarities of plot. The music, if nothing else, contains deliberate references to Wagner, as the following quotation from Don Davies (composer on all three Matrix films) shows:

"When we were spotting [Matrix] Revolutions the word "Wagnerian" came up very often. And the reason was because, you know Wagner was very much a fan of Schopenhauer. He was actually obsessed with the Schopenhauer ideas of will and representation... And it was significant enough to both Larry and Andy [Wachowski] and myself that we felt working on the third part of this trilogy, which is significantly about philosophy -- no less Schopenhauer than Hegel and Kant and Heidegger and Kierkegaard, but still definitely Schopenhauerian and also Nietzsche, who was a close friend of Wagner's up until Parsifal, when they had a falling out. One of the things I did in acknowledging this Wagnerian tradition of philosophy in multi-media drama was that I quoted the Tristan chord over the Deus Ex Machina. [Quoted at music.ign.com]

That's a great phrase -- "this Wagnerian tradition of philosophy in multi-media drama"! Wagner's operas are certainly multi-media dramas, and Parsifal does have a lot of philosophy in it. And in that respect, The Matrix films are its direct lineal descendants.

The previous quotation mentioned Schopenhauer, who was certainly the biggest influence on Wagner at the time he was writing Parsifal. However, Wagner was an avid reader (a bit like the Wachowskis!) and he drew on many other sources as well. Some of the books he's known to have read in connection with Parsifal are as follows:

• Chrétien de Troyes: Perceval (12th century)
• Wolfram von Eschenbach: Parzival (13th century)
• Meister Eckhart: sermons (13th century)
• Hafez: poems (14th century)
• The Upanishads (translated by Duperron, 1804)
• Schopenhauer: The World as Will and Representation (1844)
• Burnouf: History of Indian Buddhism (1844)
• Ramayana (translated by Holtzmann, 1847)
• Spence Hardy: Manual of Buddhism (1853)
• Renan: Life of Jesus (1863)
• Sutta Nipata (translated by Coomaraswamy, 1874)

The Grail legends, mediaeval mysticism, Schopenhauer, Buddhism, Hinduism... all the subjects you would expect to find in the New Age section of Waterstones or Barnes & Noble in the 21st century! Yet here was Wagner reading these books way back in the 1860s and 70s! Even the Life of Jesus was an early example of the now-popular "Jesus the man" genre, rather than a straightforward New Testament commentary.

On the face of it, Parsifal is a Christian opera. The Grail is the cup of Christ, the spear is the weapon that pierced Christ's side, and Parsifal defeats Klingsor using the sign of the cross. But in Wagner's hands, Christianity is transformed into something distinctly unorthodox. Heavily influenced by Schopenhauer, Wagner believed that Christians no longer understood the true meaning of their own religion:

"This act of denying the will is the true action of the saint: That it is ultimately accomplished only in a total end to individual consciousness -- for there is no other consciousness except that which is personal and individual -- was lost sight of by the naïve saints of Christianity... This most profound of all instincts finds purer and more meaningful expression in the oldest and most sacred religion known to man, in Brahmin teaching, and especially in its final transfiguration in Buddhism. [Letter from Wagner to Franz Liszt, dated June 1855]"

There is probably very little truth in that statement, viewed in the light of modern scholarship -- but the important thing is that it's what Wagner believed to be true at the time he wrote Parsifal.

Wagner was impressed by the symbols of religion, even though he knew they were nothing more than symbols. He realised that a symbol such as the Grail could be very powerful even if there was no literal truth to it:

"An old legend existed in southern France telling how Joseph of Arimathea had once fled there with the sacred chalice that had been used at the Last Supper... I feel a very real admiration and sense of rapture at this splendid feature of Christian mythogenesis, which invented the most profound symbol that could ever have been invented as the content of the physical-spiritual kernel of any religion. [Letter from Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonck, dated May 1859]"

As he was putting the finishing touches to Parsifal, Wagner made his views on religious symbolism even more explicit in an essay entitled Religion and Art (1880):

"Whereas the priest is concerned only that the religious allegories should be regarded as factual truths, this is of no concern to the artist, since he presents his work frankly and openly as his invention."

Continue reading... 

12:19:00 pm | 0 comments | Read More