Looking at Siegfried in 1950, a quarter of a century after it was made, one is aware of the outstandingly good and bad elements in it after as little as twenty minutes' screening…. The so-called "expressionist" style in German silent cinema, which encouraged directors and designers to stylise both décor and acting, rapidly passed out of fashion. Siegfried seems farther away from present day film-making than the silent films of [D. W.] Griffith or [Sergei] Eisenstein because of this excessive stylisation.

First of all the action of Lang's film is taken at a pace which is much too slow for the modern viewer, so that in almost every shot one accepts the implications of the scene long before the actors complete it. Every emotion is registered with emphatic gestures and facial expression in the manner common to the films of the period, except in the work of a...