Were there an award for Best Idiot Savant Filmmaker, Leni Riefenstahl would win hands down. Filmmaker for Hitler's Third Reich, she claims Adolf forced her to make the award-winning Triumph of the Will chronicling the Nazis' Sixth Party Congress at Nuremberg. Never mind that she initially requested a meeting with Hitler after hearing him give a speech in which "It seemed as if the earth's surface were spreading out...."
Riefenstahl is now 91 and has just published her autobiography, Leni Riefenstahl, A Memoir. Now is the time for Riefenstahl to set the script straight: She never was a Nazi, although she did find a particular SS leader terribly attractive during one of the party rallies; she didn't know what was going on with the Jews (extermination) until after the war; and she never slept with der Fuehrer, not that he didn't make an attempt. (Herr Goebbels made several, she claims.)
When Riefenstahl sticks to descriptions of her filmmaking, the book is good (although the writing is terribly cliched and replete with typos and untranslatable words - "medicaments" drove me nuts). A big surprise to me was the discovery that Riefenstahl, as early as the 1920s, was taking full advantage of multimedia - she was one of the first filmmakers to merge speech, music, images, and motion. She hired famous composers to write scores for her films, then synched the music with the film shot by shot. She also invented ingenious staging techniques - like tying helium balloons to dozens of cameras during the Berlin Olympics to get overhead shots of the games. Attached to the cameras were notes directing the finder to return the camera for a cash award - she didn't lose a single camera.
Whether one attributes them to naivete or deception, her accounts of political ignorance - "I had no inkling of the human tragedies taking place..." - definitely seem defensive and contrived. Although she admits her ignorance was inexcusable, she offers quite a few excuses, not the least of which are her work, her boyfriends (who all come across as the macho type), and her health problems (a permanently damaged bladder, depression, and injuries sustained climbing mountains, stalking ice fields, and roaming deserts). In only one chapter does the war seem to intrude on her life - when the Allies bombed her home in Berlin, and she was in it!
What amazed me most as I read this book - compulsively, from cover to cover - was how such a brilliant artist could lead such a self-delusionary life. Ironically, although she intended to write this book in order to clear up her political reputation, for those who already condemn her, this work will only confirm their point of view.
- Sylvia Paull
Leni Riefenstahl, A Memoir, US$35. St. Martin's Press: +1 (212) 674 5151.
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