PARSIFAL (1912)
Article 4973 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 10-30-2015
Directed by Mario Caserini
Featuring Mario Bonnard, Maria Caserini, Filippo Castamagna
Country: Italy
What it is: Arthurian quest

The story of Parsifal’s quest for the holy grail is told.

Here’s another title that ended up on my “ones that got away” list, but finally popped up on YouTube; it’s a silent film adaptation of an opera by Wagner. The copy I found had only Dutch intertitles, so I found it rather difficult to follow, so I read a summary of the story of the opera, and this fifty-minute movie obviously did a lot of condensation of the story. There’s quite a bit of fantastic content to be found, what with various mystical manifestations and the appearance of a couple of wizards who appear to be thwarting Parsifal in his quest. It’s hard to evaluate how effectively the story is told, but the visual elements are nicely done, and even with being unable to to follow the story fully, I found it entertaining.