(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Can a face be a mirror of the soul? In the German film and theater director and writer Andres Veiel's documentary film about Leni Riefenstahl, which was presented at the Venice Film Festival this year, the screen is filled with close-ups of the film's face. By subtly intertwining the film's ability to use close-ups as a narrative tool and man's age-old longing to be known by reading each other's faces, Veiel cleverly reveals the manipulative nature of the film medium.
The result of his thorough investigation and deep analysis is both disappointing and thought-provoking at the same time – the mystery surrounding Hitler's favorite film actor and the famous director of the Olympic documentary from Berlin in 1936 was mostly created arbitrarily by Riefenstahl herself.
Who was Leni Riefenstahl?
There is no better place for the world premiere of this film than the Venice Lido. It was there that Riefenstahl's career reached its peak in 1938, when she received the Coppa Mussolini (this was the name of the festival's main award until 1942) for Olympia as best foreign film. What followed was, we learn from Veiel, a desperate quest to live up to it. A historical sequence in Veiel's film shows Riefenstahl at the premiere of Olympia, where she proudly holds a bouquet of roses like Adolf Hitler have sent to Lido to her. This is in subtle contrast to her later glowing claims that she was an artist with no interest in politics, and that her contacts with the Third Reich authorities were purely formal.
Shameless distortion of the truth at will.
Similarly, recent recordings show Riefenstahl i East Africa where she walks up close to the Nuba warriors and photographs them as they perform their rituals. Later we hear her claim in an interview that she avoided influencing the Africans' traditional culture and only took pictures from a distance. Stephen Krumbiegel and his editing team have done an outstanding job quietly exposing Riefenstahl's shameless twisting of the truth at will.
Personal archive
In 2003, Riefenstahl died, aged 103. Veiel and his producer, Sandra Maischberger, were the first to gain access archivesa hers. 700 boxes with around 50 photos, hundreds of film cassettes, correspondence, calendars, sound recordings and private recordings of her partner Horst Kettner. A true treasure.
What exposed her was not what she said or did, but what she kept in her archives.
In the book Leni Riefenstahl, Career of a Perpetrator# (2020) forteller Nina Gladitz that Riefenstahl's neighbors from Kitzbuhel, where she lived at the end of the war, remember seeing her burning piles of celluloid film just before the Allied forces arrived. Veiel also notes early in the film that the archive has been edited. Several other details from Gladitz's book have also been confirmed, such as Riefenstahl's meticulous prosecution of any attempt to publish information she did not like. We also hear that she in the trial – where she denies that the Roma people she used as extras during the recording of Tiefland (1954), later killed in concentration camps – is convinced that the public will believe her and not "a handful of stragglers". Therefore, Veiel's decision to let the film's subject speak for itself is particularly smart.
Of course, this urge to excel at any cost has a dark side – such as contempt for the weak.
The 'morphing' of close-ups from her film roles, from Louis Trenker's 'mountain films' to the blue light, talk shows and interviews, is later confronted with the stream of transformations she demands as a condition for her public appearances. Orders for the camera to be moved and the lighting changed so that her wrinkles are not visible, but also fierce requests to stop filming when she asks. Of course, this urge to excel at any cost has a dark side – such as contempt for the weak, admiration for physical strength, absolute obedience and respect for a strong leader, in short, values that underlie it Nazie the ideology. As the film develops, it becomes clear that this permeated Riefenstahl's life and work.
Creepy voices
In the early 1930s, professional filmmakers left Germany due to the rise of the Nazis. The flourishing German film industry collapsed. Fritz Lang left the country in 1933, and Marlene Dietrich a few years later. By staying, Riefenstahl could have taken their place. However, Veiel reveals another aspect. She stayed not because of the opportunity it would have given to create a brilliant film career for herself (an opportunity she never took), but because she shared with her whole being the Nazi ideology.
What exposed her was not what she said or did, but what she kept in her archives. In the mid-1970s, for example, Riefenstahl appeared on a talk show together with Elfriede Kretschmer, a near contemporary who was an anti-Nazi activist during the war. Kretschmer made it clear that she did not believe that Riefenstahl was ignorant of the crimes of the Nazis. Riefenstahl was enraged and tearfully claimed that there were many Germans like her who suffered because of such baseless accusations. Here, Riefenstahl recorded the reactions of the public who called to comment, and stored them in her archive. These are full of contempt for Kretschmer and imbued with admiration for and support for her. One of the callers is convinced that the "plague" that hit Germany will soon pass, and that their time will come again.
Political parties and ideologies
Considering the worldwide rise of extremist political parties and ideologies, the film is very timely.
Veiel's film is not only about Riefenstahl, but also about the ambiguity of the values that permeated her life and work, and which are part of the world today. The glorification of political leaders, the contempt for the weak and marginalized, the celebration of physical beauty and strength. It is enough to think about the fear of immigrants and the fascination with celebrities and sports to see that it is not easy to draw a line. A bit in the same way that it is human to have a desire to read someone's face and be able to "see through" that person. But concluding about someone's character based solely on a selection of external features is part of the history of racial classification. I think this is what Veiel's documentary film, after all the interviews, films and books already written, reveals about Riefenstahl. Her insistence that she only made art and not politikk, did not work in the first instance, since the emphasis on the values that lay in the Nazi ideology was part of her appeal.
Riefenstahl was shown at the Venice Film Festival this year. Translated by editor.