This was an early attempt I made at analysing Leni:
Leni Riefenstahl is the single most controversial director in the history of film. To some she is an irredeemable monster, a master propagandist complicit in the horrors of the Nazis. Others see her as a naive artist, used by a foul regime but herself unaware of the ways in which her art could be exploited. To still others she is a feminist icon, a strong woman forced to make difficult moral choices while attempting to work in a male-dominated industry. What few doubt are the astonishing technical achievements of her work. Both her documentaries, Triumph Of The Will and Olympia, for good or ill, are milestones in movie history.
Leni Riefenstahl was born in Berlin in 1902. Her father, Alfred, a businessman who had elevated himself from poor beginnings to the respectability of Berlin's middle class, was something of a petty despot. Cold towards his children , he would fly into tempers if his authority was challenged in any way. There are those that speculate that maybe the distance between Leni and Arthur left her in need of a compensating father figure. Her mother, Bertha Sherlach, had been a part-time seamstress before she married. Their first child, Helene (Leni) Bertha Amalie Riefenstahl, was born on August 22, 1902 in the family's apartment on Prinz-Eugen-Straße in Berlin. Leni's younger brother, Heinz, was born three and a half years later. He died at the age of 38 during WWII at the Russian front.
Riefenstahl studied painting and started her artistic career as a dancer, but an injury of the knee put an end to her sensational career. After that, she became famous as an actress, a film director, a film producer and a film reporter. She became world-renowned as an actress, especially for her role in The Blue Light in 1932.
When Hitler came into her life, Riefenstahl was already an accomplished actress and director. Like many Germans living in economic despair at the time, she found the Fuhrer charismatic and lauded his efforts to build National Socialism, by her own words unaware of his ultimate intentions. Although Riefenstahl denied all accusations, there were rumours about a relationship between herself and Hitler.
She was granted the dream of every filmmaker, an unlimited budget, to photograph the annual Nazi Party rally of 1934, she created Triumph of the Will, an inestimable propaganda tool in building the myth of Hitler-as-saviour. This film brought her the greatest success but summed up one of the biggest problems Riefenstahl had in disassociating herself from the Nazis. It was brilliantly made and remains a model of documentary cinema technique. Triumph of the Will used an omniscient point-of-view, a fly-on-the-wall style common to many documentaries today. Aerial shots used in the film help achieve the effect that we are observing the majesty and power of the Nazi Party from the heavens. Riefenstahl's use of editing techniques, like the slow dissolve, also helps create what would become the Nazi myth of invulnerability. In one shot we slowly dissolve from an aerial shot of clouds to an overhead shot of the crowd, a transition that makes Hitler appear as someone descended from the heavens.
However, at the end of the war this film destroyed Riefenstahl's career, for it was no longer recognized as a piece of art but was condemned as a National Socialist propaganda film.
After Hitler saw the outcome of Triumph of the Will he convinced Riefenstahl to film the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. For this event which was to symbolize the spectacle and prowess of Nazi Germany, Riefenstahl used even more innovative and powerful techniques than in Triumph of the Will. She used the most sophisticated equipment and techniques of the day. She trained cameramen as divers and used underwater cameras to film the diving sequences. She had cameras mounted on balloons, airplanes, steel towers, and rafts. She also had trenches dug in the stadium turf in order to film the athletes from low angles.
The end result of the filming of the Olympics was titled Olympia. To her credit, even though Hitler ordered Riefenstahl to downplay the achievements of any non-white athletes, Riefenstahl's film focuses on the achievements of African American track star, Jesse Owens. Nonetheless, along with Triumph of the Will, many continue to view this documentary as a symbol of Nazi power and might. She defends herself in an interview in 1967, "It is always said that I worked for the Nazis, that the Nazis helped me. But I was not in the Party and they made only difficulties for me..." Yet we must make up our own mind on the political implications of the film. But it is hard to deny that Olympia, examined purely as a film, is one of the most beautiful and exciting works Riefenstahl has produced.
Olympia, and later her series of photography books on the Nuba tribe, brought criticism that Riefenstahl's image of the perfect body was a fascist ideal. On the other hand, her portrayals of the physical beauty of black tribesmen showed a contradiction with Hitler's pathological race theories.
In conclusion, Riefenstahl has largely been demonized for her connection with Hitler's Nazi Germany. After World War II ended, she was imprisoned by the Allies for three years. Her film equipment and much of her property were confiscated by the French government. Recently, the aged filmmaker hoped that a biography of her life and work would help clear her name and reputation as the best and biggest mouthpiece for Nazi propaganda. As the legendary filmmaker stated: "I wasn't welcome in America. I was a pariah. It would be nice to go back. All anyone ever asks about is the Nazis. There was so much more".
The often-imitated, seldom-honoured artist remained a controversial and unrepentant pariah up until her death on September 8, 2003. Ironically, her own well-crafted black-and-white motion-picture images of Hitler, Nazi pageantry, and the Jesse Owens Olympics helped keep both her genius and her past alive. In the words of Ray Müller, director of The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl, "Her talent was her tragedy."
AND AFTER HER DEATH LINGERS THE QUESTION: WAS LENI RIEFENSTAHLGUILTY, AND IF SO, OF WHAT?
It's no use looking to her for the answers. Throughout
questions about her role in the Nazi regime were deflected with
lies, obfuscation and, when they failed, numerous lawsuits. Her
autobiography is a stupendous 900-page concoction of evasion and half-
truths. A single example: at one point she airily ponders of her first
meeting with Hitler, "Was it accident or fate that we came together
Well, neither actually; it was the letter she sent to him in which she
fawned, "I was impressed by you and the enthusiasm of your audience.
My wish is to meet you personally" Just as she restaged speeches for
Triumph Of The Will or feats of athleticism for Olympia, she
constantly re-staged and re-invented her own life, perhaps for similar
reasons: to make it prettier, more perfect. She constantly denied she'd
been aware of Hitler's Final Solution or of the brutalities of the German
Army. And, in her defence, it's true she never joined the Party, citing
later her disgust at its racist ideology. But she had supported that regime
and flattered its ghastly leaders. She took their money and made films to
their specifications. Her history is inseparable from theirs, and while she
never committed an act of violence, perhaps those who did were inspired
to greater cruelty and vigour by her glorification of their ideas.
There is a single picture that gives the lie to her protestations of ignorance: a photographic smoking gun. It was taken on September 12, 1939, 12 days after the Nazis' invasion of Poland. Riefenstahl was in the small town following the 10th Army's advance. Two days before, four German soldiers had been killed. Military units responded by rounding up local Jews and marching them to the town marketplace, where they were ordered to dig graves — they were not informed whether they were to be for the soldiers or for themselves. At some point a shot was fired and the soldiers fired randomly into the crowd of unarmed villagers. Nineteen were killed. It was to be one of the first war crimes of World War II.
Though she denied she was present, a snapshot later surfaced of Riefenstahl the moment the shooting started. Beside her, distracted, is the face of a young Wehrmacht soldier; ironically it is the kind of attractive, youthful face she had romanticised in her films. Her face is contorted into a scream of anguish. It is the face of someone who understands what is happening and does nothing to try and stop it.
Last edited by thebest; 06-25-08 at 06:59 PM.