Cinemaventure

UNDER THE SEA      The year was 1914. Woodrow Wilson was President of the United States. George V sat on the throne of Great Britain; Franz Joseph was the Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; Wilhelm II was the Kaiser of Germany; and Nicholas II was the Czar of Russia. It was the end of an age and by 1918-1919 Franz Joseph, Welhelm, and Nicholas would be gone. The government of France was too much of a confused mess to bother with here.      The modern age was in the process of sweeping away the old. In the world of entertainment feature films were becoming popular as audiences warmed up to the longer films. Universal Picture Corp. jumped onto the bandwagon with several productions. Among these was a film of Jules Verne's novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea . This is possibly the first Science Fiction feature film, although the term had not yet been coined. The generally accepted term was " Scientific Romance" with romance meaning " a novel or other ...

Back in Ancient Times when I collected movies on honest-to-goodness film one that always proved to expensive for me was Fritz Lang's 1924 epic Siegfried , the first part of Die Nibelungen .  This ancient Germanic story featured an almost invulnerable hero, dwarfs, heroics, treachery, and, best of all, a dragon.      Elements of the original story appeared through the centuries in various forms.  The original myth served as the basis of Wagner's Ring Cycle or operas.  A sword broken was made whole again and appeared in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings .  There was an invisibility cloak (more like a head cover) that enabled the hero to win over opposition and used by boy wizard Harry Potter a few centuries later.       The second part was called Kriemhild's Revenge , but more on this later.      Finally this long sought treasure came within my grasp thanks to its release on DVD by Kino.  Their catalo...