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Leni Riefenstahl

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File:Leni-Riefenstahl - Profile.jpg
Riefenstahl, 1931

Berta Helene Amalie "Leni" Riefenstahl (August 22, 1902 – September 8, 2003) was a German actress, director and filmmaker widely noted for her aesthetics and advances in film technique. Her most famous works are documentary propaganda films for the German Nazi Party. Rejected by the film industry after World War II, she later pursued still photography and continued to make films of marine life.

Biography

Dancer and actor

Born in Berlin, Riefenstahl began her career as a self-styled and well-known interpretive dancer. In a 2002 interview, she said dancing was what made her truly happy. After injuring a knee, she attended a 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.

Documentary filmmaker

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

She heard Adolf Hitler speak at a rally in 1932 and was mesmerized by his powers as a public speaker. Upon meeting Riefenstahl, Hitler, himself a frustrated 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 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 eventually relented to Hitler’s pressure and accepted the offer. 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, in this case to shoot the stadium crowd. Riefenstahl's achievements in the making of Olympia have proved to be a major influence in modern sportscasting.

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 she was fascinated by the Nazis but politically naïve and ignorant about the war crimes they committed.

In order to understand in a broader context the conclusions of the court, it's important to know that after the war, every German had to be “denazified”. For that purpose, every person's case was examined and his or her connections with the Nazi regime were linked to a degree of connection, from 1 (for the war criminals like Hermann Göring) to 5 (the latter meant completely innocent of any connection). Leni Riefenstahl belonged in group 4, not completely innocent but the lowest degree of relationship with the regime. Some other directors like Veit Harlan (who made the film Jud Süß (The Jew Süss) in 1940) were considered as to belong in category 5.

Post War Career, Legacy and Personal Life

File:RiefenstahlElevator.jpg
Riefenstahl used a wide array of cameras, such as this one in Triumph of the Will attached to the flagpole behind Hitler's podium.

Riefenstahl attempted to make films after the war but each attempt was met with resistance, protests, sharp criticisms and an inability to secure funding. Romantically she was never publically linked to any one individual, and was long believed to have been lesbian throughout her life. Still, in 1944 she enjoyed a short war-marriage, and in the 1960s took a man that was forty years her junior, but those may have been platonic relationships that, due to her celebrity in the former instance (and notoriety in the latter), were elevated to something other than what it was. She later 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 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.

In October 2002, German authorities decided to drop a case against her for Holocaust denial, citing her age and possible dementia. She had allegedly falsely claimed that "each and every one" of the Roma people which had been drawn from a concentration camp to appear in her film Tiefland had survived the war. A Gypsy group had filed the case, claiming she used them for the film and sent them back when she no longer needed them. In addition to Riefenstahl having signed a withdrawal of her claim, the prosecutor cited Riefenstahl's considerable age as a reason for dropping further action.

During one of the last interviews ever done with Riefenstahl, she blamed herself for much of the success of the Nazi party. She would in her latter years become very reluctant to speak about her works, claiming that it would have been better if she were never born, and hence have never made the movies she did.[citation needed]

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.

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.

Works

File:Leni Riefenstahl.jpg
Riefenstahl in The Blue Light, 1931

Actor

Director

Photographer

Author

original first editions in German

  • Kampf in Schnee und Eis (Leibzig, 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)

Bibliographies

References

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