Leni Riefenstahl

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Riefenstahl, 1931
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Riefenstahl, 1931

Helene Bertha Amalie "Leni" Riefenstahl (August 22, 1902 – September 8, 2003) was a German dancer, actress, and film director widely noted for her aesthetics and advances in film technique.

Her most famous works are documentary propaganda films for the German Nazi Party. Riefenstahl is renowned in film history for developing new aesthetics in film, especially in relation to nude bodies. While the propaganda value of her early films repels many, their aesthetics are cited by many filmmakers as outstanding.

Rejected by the film industry after World War II, she later pursued still photography and continued to make films of marine life as well as a failed attempt to make a documentary of an African tribe.

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[edit] Biography

[edit] Dancer and actress

Born in Berlin, Riefenstahl began her career as a self-styled and well-known interpretive dancer. (In a 2002 interview, she said dancing made her truly happy.) After injuring a knee, she attended a viewing of a nature film about mountains, and became fascinated with the possibilities of the medium. She went to the Alps for about a year and when she returned, confidentially approached Arnold Fanck, the director of the film she'd seen earlier, asking for a role in his next project. Riefenstahl went on to star in a number of Fanck's bergfilme, presenting herself as an athletic and adventurous young woman with suggestive appeal. Riefenstahl's career as an actor in silent films was prolific, and she became highly regarded by directors and publicly popular with German film-goers. When presented with the opportunity to direct Das Blaue Licht in 1932, she took it. Her main interest at first was in fictional films. Her last acting role before moving to directing was in the 1933 film SOS Eisberg (U.S. title SOS Iceberg); this film was released on DVD in the U.S. in November 2005.

[edit] Documentary filmmaker

Riefenstahl influenced how later movies were made with her innovative filming techniques (here shown during the production of Olympia)
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Riefenstahl influenced how later movies were made with her innovative filming techniques (here shown during the production of Olympia)

Riefenstahl heard Adolf Hitler speak at a rally in 1932 and was mesmerized by his powers as a public speaker. Upon meeting Riefenstahl, Hitler, himself an artist, saw the chance to hire a visionary who could create the image of a strong, proud Wagnerian Germany radiating beauty, power, strength, and defiance, an image he could sell to the world. During a personal meeting he asked Riefenstahl to make a documentary and, in 1933, she directed the short film Der Sieg des Glaubens (Victory of Faith), an hour-long feature about the Nazi party rally at Nuremberg in 1933 (released on DVD in 2003). Reports vary as to whether she ever had a close relationship with Hitler [1] but, impressed with her work, he then asked her to film the upcoming 1934 Party rally in Nuremberg. After initially turning down the project because she did not want to make "a prescribed film", Riefenstahl began making another film titled Tiefland. She hired Walter Ruttmann to direct it in her place. When she fell ill, Tiefland was cancelled. Upon her recovery, she reviewed Ruttmann's initial footage and found it to be terrible. She eventually relented to Hitler's pressure, and resumed her role as director of the film. She was given unlimited resources, camera crews, budget, complete artistic control and final cut of the film. Triumph of the Will was a documentary glorifying Hitler and widely regarded as one of the most effective pieces of propaganda ever produced. It is generally regarded as a masterful, epic, innovative work of documentary filmmaking. Because it was commissioned by the Nazi party and used as propaganda, however, critics have said it is nearly impossible to separate the subject from the artist behind it. Triumph of the Will was a rousing success in Europe, but widely banned in America.

Triumph of the Will won many international awards as a ground-breaking example of filmmaking. She went on to make a film about the German Wehrmacht, released in 1935 as Tag der Freiheit (Day of Freedom).

In 1936 Riefenstahl qualified as an athlete to represent Germany in cross-country skiing for the Olympics but decided to film the event instead. This material became Olympia, a film widely noted for its technical and aesthetic achievements. She was the first to put a camera on rails, a technique which is commonly called a tracking shot, used to film the crowds in the stadium as well as the movement of the runners in track and field events. Riefenstahl's achievements in the making of Olympia have proved to be a major influence in modern sports photography. Still today her influence is seen in government "photo ops", major movies, television, and advertisement.

[edit] World War II

During the Invasion of Poland Leni Riefenstahl, wearing a Waffen-SS uniform and a pistol on her belt,[2] accompanied German soldiers in Poland. On 12 September 1939 she was present in the town of Końskie during an execution of 30 civilians carried out in retaliation of an unspecified attack on German soldiers by "bandits". According to her memoir when she tried to intervene a furious German soldier held her at gun point and threatened to shoot her on the spot. There are close-up pictures showing a despaired Leni from that day. As a result of the events Riefenstahl left her work and immediately went to meet Hitler who at that time was in Zoppot (now Sopot, Poland) on the Baltic watching Battle of Hel.

In Zoppot, Riefenstahl used her personal influences to demand an audience with Adolf Hitler. However, by 5 October 1939 Leni Riefenstahl was already back in occupied Poland and filming Hitler's victory parade in Warsaw.

[edit] After World War II

After World War II, she spent four years in a French detention camp. There were accusations she had used concentration camp inmates on her film sets, but those claims were not proven in court. Being unable to prove any culpable support of the Nazis, the court called her a sympathizer. In later interviews Riefenstahl maintained that she was "fascinated" by the Nazis but politically naïve and ignorant about the war crimes critics accused them of.

The History Channel, on its sister channel, History International, released a documentary entitled, Hitler's Women: Leni Riefensthal[2]. In it, the accusation is made that Riefenstahl was acutely aware that her films were propaganda. They point to evidence such as the fact that Hitler had a sit-down discussion between Riefenstahl and Hitler's propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels at her personal German villa, as seen in this picture, to resolve differences the two were having which were causing strife in Hitler's early regime. Even more damning are the film clips of Riefenstahl dining with Goebbels and Himmler, and other top men of both the Brownshirt and SS branches of NSDAP, intercut with interviews with German historians and WWII scholars questioning how any one could appear at state dinners with top Nazi officials (eating at the high table with them, no less) and be completely unaware of what politics they were supporting. Furthering the connection, they cite the fact that Riefenstahl sent a celebratory telegram to Hitler after the successful military campaign in France, "Your deeds exceed the power of human imagination. They are without equal in the history of mankind. How can we ever thank you?" [3].

Lastly, they detail interviews with actual Gypsy survivors of the Holocaust, who refute Riefensthal's claims that the concentration camp victims she used for filming were not killed [4].

The documentary comes to the conclusion that Riefenstahl suffered from a deep denial of her actual culpability, to the point that she even began to believe her own lies regarding her innocence.


[edit] Postwar career, legacy and personal life

Riefenstahl attempted to make films after the war but each attempt was met with resistance, protests, sharp criticisms and an inability to secure funding. In 1944, she married Peter Jacob, whom she later divorced, and in the 1960s took a man, Horst Kettner, who was forty years her junior. He remained her faithful companion to the end of her life. She became a photographer and was later the first to photograph rock star Mick Jagger and his wife Bianca as a couple holding hands after they were married, as they were both admirers. Jagger told Riefenstahl he had seen Triumph of the Will at least 15 times.

Later, embracing a cult of "primitivism", she became interested in the Nuba tribe in Sudan. Her books with photographs of the tribe were published in 1974 and 1976. She survived a helicopter crash in the Sudan in 2000.

In her late 70s, Riefenstahl lied about her age to get certified for scuba diving and started a career in underwater photography. She released a new film titled Impressionen unter Wasser (Underwater Impressions), an idealized documentary on life in the oceans, on her 100th birthday - August 22, 2002.

[edit] Death

Leni Riefenstahl died in her sleep on September 8, 2003, at her home in Pöcking, Germany a few weeks after her 101st birthday. She had been suffering from cancer. In her obituaries Riefenstahl was said to be the last famous figure of Germany's Nazi era to die.

[edit] Works

Riefenstahl in The Blue Light, 1931
Riefenstahl in The Blue Light, 1931

[edit] Actor

  • Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit - Ein Film über moderne Körperkultur (Ways to Strength and Beauty, 1926)
  • Der Heilige Berg (The Holy Mountain, 1926)
  • Der Große Sprung (The Great Leap, 1927)
  • Das Schicksal derer von Habsburg (The Destiny of the Habsburgs, 1928)
  • Der Weiße Hölle vom Piz Palü (The White Hell of Pitz Palu, 1929)
  • Stürme über dem Mont Blanc (Storm Over Mont Blanc, 1930)
  • Der Weiße Rausch (The White Smoke, 1931)
  • Das Blaue Licht (The Blue Light, 1932)
  • SOS Eisberg (SOS Iceberg, 1933)
  • Tiefland (Lowlands, 1954)

[edit] Director

[edit] Photographer

[edit] Author

First editions (in German):

  • Kampf in Schnee und Eis (Leipzig, 1933)
  • Hinter den Kulissen des Reichsparteitags-Films (München, 1935)
  • Schönheit im olympischen Kampf (Berlin, 1937)
  • Die Nuba (München, 1973)
  • Die Nuba von Kau (München, 1976)
  • Korallengärten (München, 1978)
  • Mein Afrika (München, 1982)
  • Memoiren (München, 1987)
  • Wunder unter Wasser (München, 1990)

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ See Infield, Glenn B. Eva and Adolf New York:1974--Grosset and Dunlap (Interviews with former SS officers who had been close to Hitler and Eva Braun) Page 128--It was reportedly revealed by Ernst Hanfstangl that Riefenstahl got the contract to film Triumph of the Will by dancing in the nude for Hitler in his bedroom (it was well known that Hitler liked use opera glasses to watch burlesque dancers strip).
  2. ^ Ścinki Taśmy, Polityka, 2003-10-05
  3. ^ See also obituary and other [1]
  4. ^ See also Gypsies' Fate Haunts Film Muse of Hitler, The Guardian, August 17, 2002.

[edit] Bibliographies

[edit] References

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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Films by Leni Riefenstahl
Das Blaue Licht (1932) | Der Sieg des Glaubens (1933) | Triumph of the Will (1934) | Tag der Freiheit (1935) | Olympia (1938) | Tiefland (1954) | Underwater Impressions (2002)
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