From the WSJ Opinion Archives
LEISURE & ARTS
Leni Riefenstahl,
Coy Propagandist
Of the Nazi Era
Hitler's filmmaker dies.
Four notions endure about Leni Riefenstahl, who died this week at age 101: She was the most influential woman in German cinema in the 20th century. She was the most prominent woman in the Third Reich. She lived a life of denial in the postwar years. She had such remarkable gifts--intelligence, energy, and an eye for visual images--that her talent cannot be disregarded, even though she put it at the service of a genocidal dictatorship.
Ms. Riefenstahl excelled as both an actor and a director. Although she is now mainly known as the latter, she was an important star in the 1920s, when Berlin rivaled Hollywood as the capital of the motion picture world. She was first known as a dancer--lithe, expressive, and stunningly beautiful. She gained even greater fame in a series of films set in the mountains which showed her to be both talented and brave. (She filmed many of the stunts herself.)
The opening scene, in which Hitler descends from the clouds in an airplane, accompanied by music from Wagner's "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg" (morphing into the Nazi party anthem, the "Horst Wessel Lied"), portrayed the dictator as a demigod. It also revealed the director's aspirations to create what the composer had called a Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art).
Ms. Riefenstahl demonstrated technical brilliance again in "Olympia" This, her 1938 film of the 1936 Berlin Olympic games, had moving cameras, montage sequences showing the grace and beauty of athletes, and a narrative structure that made it clear that Germany had won more medals in those games than any other nation.
Even though Ms. Riefenstahl could not finish "Low Land," her third monumental film during the Third Reich (she finished it in 1954),her place in cinematic history was already secure. Subsequent projects, including a 1974 study of the Nuba tribe in Africa and her final project on marine life, which she herself filmed underwater, confirmed her place as a gifted and innovative artist.
Upon coming to power in 1933, Hitler and Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels commissioned her to film that year's Nuremberg Rally--although the result was not a polished effort and served only as a trial run for "Triumph of the Will." Hitler, enamored with the glamorous Ms. Riefenstahl, invited her to dinners and other social functions. In many ways, she reciprocated these feelings. She not only glorified him in her work, but gave him gifts, such as the complete writings of the German philosopher (and early nationalist) Johann Fichte.
Ms. Riefenstahl never joined the Nazi party. Some would say she never needed to. She had direct access to Hitler, her own production company, and carte blanche on her projects. Even Goebbels, who was jealous of her power and fame, could do little against her. Ms. Riefenstahl dominated the press of Nazi Germany: She was the foremost female celebrity, and, indeed, a remarkably powerful woman in a misogynistic society.
Although Ms. Riefenstahl was inextricably linked with Nazi Germany, she denied ever having been politically active or having served Hitler and his interests. When asked by one interviewer if she believed that she had contributed to a Fascist aesthetic, she claimed not to understand the concept--a disingenuous statement for someone of her intelligence and visual acuity. Some viewed her work on the physically prepossessing Nuba to be a continuation of her work during the Third Reich, they shared the theme of racial superiority. Ms. Riefenstahl would hear none of this.
As she defended herself against various charges--that she witnessed the brutal German assault on Poland, had used Sinti ("Gypsy") concentration camp inmates as extras in "Low Land" and had profited handsomely by making propaganda--her responses sometimes veered into prevarication. Her memoirs, published in 1992, elicited many critical comments and in 2002, a Frankfurt prosecutor investigated charges of Holocaust denial when she claimed that all the Sinti extras she had used survived the war unscathed. (The charges were later dropped, even though some of the extras indeed perished at Auschwitz). Ms. Riefenstahl remained the doyenne of the old Nazis, who continued to revere her and even see her. She had retired to Lake Starnberg outside Munich, an area known as a favorite haunt of surviving Nazis.
The woman who charmed Hitler, danced with the Nuba, took up scuba diving in her 70s, and was rescued from a helicopter crash in the Sudan at age 97, possessed bedazzling qualities. No wonder Jodie Foster is working on a film about her. It's unlikely to be the last. Leni Riefenstahl, with her strength, talent, complexities, and problems, will continue to fascinate in the years to come--probably for longer than her 101 years.
Mr. Petropoulos is the John V. Croul Professor of European History at Claremont McKenna College and the author of "Art as Politics in the Third Reich."
