An intriguing if not always successful work, Zur Chronik von Grieshuus offers what might be described as a merger between the styles of Fritz Lang and D.W. Griffith. While I wouldn't compare it qualitatively to even lesser works by those two directors, it holds something of the love pastoral peasant life and natural landscapes one associates with Griffith coupled with the expressionistic sweep and stylized world of a silent Lang. The similarities with Lang could easily come from Thea von Harbou's script for Grieshuus. Von Harbou was Lang's wife, who co-wrote most of his German pictures before the two split over disagreements regarding the Nazi party (Von Harbou was a supporter, Lang was not).
Grieshuus tells the story of the conflict between Hinrich and Detlev, two brothers who are the airs to the ruler ship of the titular Grey House, a castle and small town somewhere in rural Germany. The film has two definite arcs. The first tells how Hinrich falls out of favor with his father by marrying a maid (whom he meets while saving her from gang rape by a group of crazed nomads, in one of the first sections most inspired sequences as well as one of its most Griffith-esque), and has himself written out of the inheritance. The vain and aristocratic Detlev returns just in time for their father to have a heart attack. The two brothers spar over control of the castle and land, with the local surfs on Hinrich's side and the law on Detlev's. The conflict swirls out of control, and after the death of Hinrich's young wife, the “good” son Hinrich finally loses any semblance of sanity and brutally kills Detlev on a windy hill. Hinrich, now a fugitive, disappears. The second arc begins a decade or so later, where Hinrich's son has been raised and groomed by the surfs to eventually take over the now shuttered Grey House. Detlev's widow has returned and plans to kidnap the child and take over the land herself, but Hinrich has also wandered back to his old home town, now worn and aged. The Ghost of Hinrich's wife appears and allows for a miraculous rescue by both frightening Detlev's widow and alerting Hinrich to the danger their son is in. Hinrich dies saving his sons life, and we assume as the film fades to black that the child will become a benevolent ruler of Grey House.
If this all sounds like warmed over folklore by way of melodrama, that's because it is. But it hardly matters, because Grieshuus is not a film about narrative. It is a film about textures. It's narrative becomes almost inconsequential in relation to its images. This is not to say that one does not follow and is not engaged by the story of Heinrich's rise, fall and return, but that it serves as a kind of decoration, a structure which allows the textures and images of the world to exist. Spectacle and narrative content do not work in unison à la Griffith or Lang; rather spectacle replaces narrative content as the films subject, while the narrative content exists to illustrate and enable the spectacle. While this failure to establish connection between style and content prevents Grieshuus from being a great film, it also prevents it from being a dull one. At no one point does it bore the eye; there is always a dank castle wall, angular trees, or rolling mist to observe. The films aesthetic peak is surely the arrival of the ghost of Hinrich's wife. She is simply superimposed with slight transparency, as was standard for the appearance of ghosts in silent cinema. What is unique about this ghost is the textures that lurk behind her. As her figure floats across a field at dusk, we see the tall waving grass and shaking leaves, visible through her drifting body. It's a little bit difficult to explain the effect of this visual, or why that effect is important. But then, it's not a film about explanations.
Recommended, if you can track it down. It does not appear to have ever had a home video release, and has only been screen sporadically since its initial release.
Viewed at the Museum of Modern Art, NYC 01/24/2011
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