CINEMA CYCLE
(Cardio Workout And Reviewing Movies At The Same Time)
DATE: 10/10/2014
TITLE: Der Fliegende Hollander (The Flying Dutchman)
FORMAT: LaserDisc
TIME RIDDEN / FILM LENGTH: 2 hours 34 minutes
DISTANCE RIDDEN WHILE VIEWING: 29.6 miles
TOTAL CINEMA MILES LOGGED: 565.1 miles
SYNOPSIS: (from wikipedia): Wagner claimed in his 1870 autobiography Mein Leben that he had been inspired to write the opera following a stormy sea crossing he made from Riga to London in July and August 1839. In his 1843 Autobiographic Sketch, Wagner acknowledged he had taken the story from Heinrich Heine's retelling of the legend in his 1833 satirical novel The Memoirs of Mister von Schnabelewopski (Aus den Memoiren des Herrn von Schnabelewopski).[1] The central theme is redemption through love.
CONCEPT IN RELATION TO THE VIEWER: Life moves very slowly and is something that is preordained. We all have a destiny and our fates cannot be changed.
PROS AND CONS: One of my goals with this whole project is to finally get around to watching some of the many opera discs that I have in my collection. This is the first one that came up for review. It is interesting and entertaining, more so for its historical significance and staging than for its story.
Prior to mass media, radio, internet, television, etc., art was something that was carefully thought out, staged and presented to an audience as something very special and profound. Such is the case here. This is Wagner and this is an Opera, so it is a slow and pondering piece where a rather simple storyline is told in great detail.
The work centers around redemption, love and doing the right thing. The plot is about an arranged marriage to a ship captain who is cursed to forever sail the seas until he finds true love. In the end, the heroine commits suicide to save the soul of someone that she barely knows. The love referenced here is the love of obedience, duty and purity, not the sort of lustful, fulfilling love that we think of today.
This film is a part of my LaserDisc Collection.
Clicking on the title will take you to the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) entry for this film. [Not available for this title]
This film was viewed while exercising on my recumbent cycle. A summary of my time spent working out on my journey through movie-land can be found on Strava.com.
The summary of the project and a glimpse of what is coming up next can be found on my public LaserDisc spreadsheet.
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