THE WONDERFUL HORRIBLE LIFE OF LENI RIEFENSTAHL
A film review by Guy Berliner
Copyright 1994 Guy Berliner
Note: This film has also appeared in American theaters under the title, THE WONDERFUL, HORRIBLE LIFE OF LENI RIEFENSTAHL (1994). The original German title, DIE MACHT DER BILDER: LENI RIEFENSTAHL (1993)
Ray Muller has created in DIE MACHT DER BILDER: LENI RIEFENSTAHL (LENI RIEFENSTAHL: THE POWER OF THE IMAGE), a sweeping documentary on the life of the world's most famous woman film director. Leni Riefenstahl is an extraordinary and enigmatic woman by any measure. Starting as a dancer in the 1920's Weimar Republic, she was inspired by a poster for Fanck's DER BERG DES SCHICKSALS (MOUNTAIN OF DESTINY) to see the film, and became so captivated by this new genre of epic mountaineering films that she begged for a role from the director. >From this she went on to direct her own films in this genre, among them DAS BLAUE LICHT (THE BLUE LIGHT). As the Third Reich took hold over Germany in the '30's, the talented, attractive young lady director did not escape the attention of the luminaries of the new regime. As Riefenstahl watched many of her friends and colleagues in pre-Hitler German filmmaking leave the country, she stayed on, seemingly unaware of the turmoil that was to come. Muller does a good job of probing Riefenstahl's perceptions of this period. Riefenstahl viewed Hitler as just a good patriot who would bring the economy around, put Germans back to work, and follow egalitarian social policies. She completely overlooked the "master race" rhetoric, and chose to believe that that was not really a central component of Hitler's ideology. Through Muller's questioning, we see a defensive Riefenstahl, whose political naivete is convincing. But we also see a Riefenstahl who has still not come to terms with her own moral duplicity. Riefenstahl convinces us that she never liked Hitler's more odious propaganda or his vicious agenda for German supremacy. In 1934, Riefenstahl made one of the most famous propaganda films of all times, DER TRIUMPH DES WILLENS (Triumph of the Will), on the occasion of a Nazi party congress in Nuremberg. She points out correctly that this film was the only major propaganda piece she ever produced for the Nazis, and only after much resistance on her part and the personal pleading of Hitler himself. She also demonstrates that the film contained no references to race propaganda and, far from proclaiming Hitler's belligerent demands for "Lebensraum," portrays a Hitler who calls for "peace and brotherhood." She even plausibly defends herself when Muller confronts her with a telegram she wired to Hitler on the occasion of his lightning conquest of France in 1940. The telegram is filled with rapturous praise and the words, "My fuehrer, no one can equal the greatness of your deeds!" Riefenstahl, in an interview with Muller, says: "I was ecstatic because I thought this terrible war would be ended by this stroke! I just wanted peace and I thought this would bring it!"
But while Riefenstahl offers us a plausible defense when confronted with some questions, she is less willing to admit to that central human failing: ambition, and the complicity in the crimes of a murderous regime that it can lead to. Muller quotes for her extensive passages from the diaries, dated circa 1932-33, of Josef Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda minister, detailing his intimate hobnobbing with various noted German celebrities, including the attractive young Fraulein Riefenstahl. When confronted with this evidence, Riefenstahl outright denies she had anything to do with Goebbels. She says she loathed Goebbels, and made early enemies with him, and that all the quoted passages are fabrications of Goebbels' fevered imagination, or lies. These are obviously none too credible charges in light of the elaborate details Goebbels includes, and the fact that these diaries were never intended for public consumption.
Through it all, though, the central theme of Muller's film is not politics, but aesthetics. We are convinced by Riefenstahl because she is a person who is obviously too obsessed with art and aesthetic perfection to give politics much attention. As she describes DER TRIUMPH DES WILLENS, probably her most famous film, she talks mainly of the many small details which make it the artistic masterpiece that, ironically, garnered top prize at the Paris Film Festival for that year. The politics of the film are, for her, mainly an afterthought. Having been finally convinced to make the film after great reluctance, she threw herself into the task with all her creative energies. Her "triumph" in this film was in turning what was, after all, mainly a parade of talking heads, yelling, screaming, and marching--maybe exciting if you were there but not a recipe for an exciting film--into an epic drama of movement.
Her next great epic documentary, made for the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, was OLYMPIA, another international award-winning film. She describes the techniques she used to bring to life the toil of the athletes, the astounding perseverance of the runners, continuing on and on in the face of utter physical exhaustion. In the clips shown, we see some of the most powerful imagery in the history of sports. She describes how she used daring and unprecedented techniques to get these shots: the trenches she dug in the fields to get unusual angles, the reversal of the film at certain points to give the divers the extraordinary appearance of effortless flight, and so on. This is a fascinating inside look at the methods of one the great pioneers of documentary filmmaking.
Finally, we are ever amazed at the breadth of this woman who, suffering ostracism and universal scorn in the postwar era as a "collaborator," managed to pull off a second birth as world traveler, ethnographer, and underwater photographer. In the sixties, Riefenstahl took an abiding interest in the lives and art of the native peoples of the Sudan. Taking many trips and eventually spending several years living full time among the Nuba tribespeople, she captured rare archival footage of Nuba life and became acquainted first hand with these people as no European or other outsider had done before. At the age of seventy (she is now in her nineties), she got her scuba certification so she could photograph rare marine life in exotic places around the world. Probably the oldest scuba diver in the world, she had to lie about her age to get her certification! Concerned about the perils of pollution, overfishing, and environmental degradation on the world's sea life, she has joined Greenpeace.
Muller himself, appropriately enough, has made a documentary worthy of one of the world's great documentarians. This film's own striking attributes include an unforgettable opening scene which is surely one of the most discordant and dramatic to appear in a documentary.
Guy Berliner
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