Leni Riefenstahl – Documentary “Riefenstahl” in the cinema: The ominous world of effects

A strange effect can be observed. It is also noticeable in Andres Veiel’s documentary “Riefenstahl”: On the one hand, Leni Riefenstahl is condemned morally today much more harshly for her personal involvement in the Nazi regime than years and decades ago and also refutes the legend that she herself spun up until her death , she was thoroughly apolitical as a filmmaker.

On the other hand, we are currently experiencing – rather silently – the renaissance of its aesthetics. Because Riefenstahl, whose films are characterized by the principle of body cult from beginning to end, – after her “leader” Adolf Hitler was dead, to whom she had paid homage with her Nuremberg Nazi party rally film “Triumph of the Will” from 1934 – always found new idols who glorified her with her films and photos. In a time when millions of dollars in sales are made from advertising that uses iconographic images, when “stars” are created simply by the way in which they are photographed, and even entire artificial worlds of images are staged – one should very fundamentally pay attention to the… Riefenstahl perfected the message of the pictures.

Especially in the USA, Riefenstahl was (and is) in demand again at the time of pop culture. In 1974, Mick and Bianca Jagger had their photo taken by her for a series in the Sunday Times, Andy Warhol wanted to meet her and the American director Quentin Tarantino told the Spiegel without any reservations: “She was the best director ever lived. You only have to watch their Olympic films to see that.”

Unfortunately, Veiel does not deal with this aesthetic of fatally beautiful appearance. Above all, he wants to destroy Riefenstahl’s self-image as an apolitical director and “unmask” her as a liar (as if she hadn’t done that herself again and again). She admired Hitler and read his “Mein Kampf” with enthusiasm – for this he searched through 700 boxes of estate, commissioned by the film’s producer, Sandra Maischberger, who gave a long, Riefenstahl’s last television interview on the director’s 100th birthday. So this isn’t news.

Riefenstahl bequeathed her estate to the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, where it has been open to research since the death of her partner in 2016. Many film and talk show snippets, phone calls recorded by Riefenstahl himself, notes, letters and trial files can be found there – but Veiel had the impression that this estate had been “pre-sorted” very thoroughly. In fact, in her obsession with control, Riefenstahl had tried to decide for herself what should be remembered and what should be forgotten about her. Something like that always awakens detective instincts, including Veiel. Did this do the film any good or not? With his artist film “Beuys” in 2017, Veiel succeeded in introducing us to Joseph Beuys’ artistic approach – which can only be understood from war and post-war history.

But in “Riefenstahl” he doesn’t bring anything close – which is probably also because Leni Riefenstahl is rather uninteresting as a person. Because with her there is no room for reflection, no reflection or hesitation, just always a self-righteousness that is difficult to bear. Like many other Germans, she was fascinated by the “Führer” and was prepared to follow him anywhere, even to ruin. And later she couldn’t remember it anymore.

But Veiel’s approach to unmasking falls short, especially when you look at books like “Riefenstahl – A German Career” (2002) by Jürgen Trimborn, in which all of this can be found in a much more systematic form than in the extremely erratic one presented by Veiel.

Riefenstahl worked as a filmmaker with sophisticated image montages and surprising cuts, radically revolutionizing film technology – but entirely in the spirit of her clients, Hitler and the NSDAP. As a person she was characterized by two characteristics: excessive ambition on the one hand and political opportunism on the other. With “Triumph of the Will” and the two Olympic films “Festival of the Nations” and “Festival of Beauty,” she gave the Nazi regime a positive image at home and abroad. She never felt any remorse about it later. She always tried to do what she had to do perfectly. If she later said in her defense that she would have made these films for the USA, the Soviet Union or others if she had been given the commission and the means to do so, then that is not entirely wrong. Because she was not a fanatic (not even a member of the NSDAP), but an opportunist who offered her skills to anyone who would pay for them.

In her obsession with control, Riefenstahl tried to decide for herself what should be remembered and what should be forgotten about her.

In 1932, Hitler fascinated her so much with a speech she heard in the Berlin Sports Palace that she trembled all over – and afterwards she wrote a letter to Hitler asking if she could meet him in person. This resulted in numerous meetings – but Riefenstahl’s main concern was always to secure orders. She didn’t tend to have any friendships with anyone; for her everything was a business relationship. For her, the others always remained her competitors against whom she tried to assert herself. This is also a constant in her life.

She never forgave bad reviews. Not even the one about “The Holy Mountain,” a silent film from 1926 directed by Arnold Fanck, who made her famous as an actress with his “mountain films.” Like everyone she no longer needed, she left him emotionless when she began making films for the National Socialists in 1933. In 1927, the film critic Siegfried Kracauer wrote a scathing review of “The Holy Mountain” in the “Frankfurter Zeitung”: “This one by Dr. The film, created by Arnold Fanck in a year and a half, is a gigantic composition of body cult fantasies, sun foolishness and cosmic nonsense.«

Of course, women who go their own way ruthlessly are by no means more likeable than men who do the same. Béla Balázs, the Hungarian film theorist, communist and Jew, worked as a writer and co-director on Riefenstahl’s first film from 1932, “The Blue Light”. The film flopped in Germany and quickly disappeared from cinemas. Soon afterwards, Balázs had to flee Germany for Soviet emigration without receiving his fee. When Riefenstahl was established as a director in the Nazi state in 1938, “The Blue Light” was shown again in the cinema – but Baláz’s name had disappeared from the opening credits.

It is not known that Riefenstahl ever stood up for persecuted colleagues (unlike Gustaf Gründgens, who was also involved in the Nazi regime and who repeatedly wrote letters of appeal for others). When her cameraman Willy Zielke, who had shot the “Prologue” to the Olympic films, collapsed from exhaustion shortly afterwards and was taken to the psychiatric hospital, he was sterilized there as a mentally ill person – without his director, who was kept up to date , intervention. No, she didn’t lift a finger for others.

But she couldn’t bear to witness the violence that her patrons Hitler and Goebbels had brought into the world. She was there with a camera crew during the invasion of Poland in 1939, but had to stop when she witnessed the atrocities committed by German soldiers. She witnessed a shooting of Jews in Konskie on September 12th – there are photos of her disbelief. But she herself would later say that she had nothing to do with these crimes. Instead, she made regular phone calls to Albert Speer (Hitler’s architect and armaments minister), who was released from prison in 1966. Because his “memories” had become a global success. She wanted to know what kind of performances he was doing. Both were made of the same stuff: not fanatics, but offering themselves to anyone who would promise to use their talents.

Yes, it’s unpleasant, but it doesn’t change the fact that as she got older she regularly visited the Nuba in Sudan and was fascinated by the big, muscular men – and of course made an effective illustrated book with her photos from them. The world of effects was hers – and it lives on in a disastrous way even after Riefenstahl’s death in 2003 at the age of 101.

»Riefenstahl«: Germany 2024. Director and script: Andres Veiel. 115 min. Now in the cinema.

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