By Graham Kelly
What drives someone to make a pact with the devil? How valid and legitimate are the fruits of that pact? Is it enough merely to abandon the agreement and renounce the individual in hindsight? Throughout her life, filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl has been forced to answer these questions time and time again.
Riefenstahl, who in her time has been a dancer, a screen idol, a photographer and most notably, Adolf Hitler’s favourite filmmaker, is the subject of a biographical documentary entitled The Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl, to air Feb. 22-23 on TVO. The film, directed by Ray Muller, follows her multi-faceted career through to the present (at 91, she now creates underwater films), focusing in particular on her two most wonderful, horrible achievements: “Triumph of the Will” (1934) and “Olympiad” (1938).
It was during the filming of “Triumph of the Will” that Riefenstahl made her self-described “pact with the devil;” for it was then that she formed a close relationship with Adolf Hilter. He hand-selected her to make the film, a record of the sixth Nazi Party Congress at Nuremburg. Because of its artistic depiction of young Nazis, its soundtrack of rousing German marches (in place of the usual staid narration), and its electric atmosphere, “Triumph” has been called the greatest propaganda film of all time. The question is, was Riefenstahl, as she claims, playing the role of the detached artist and simply presenting real life (albiet masterfully sculpted) images to the public? Or was she playing a deliberate hand in the advancement of the brutal Third Reich? Much of Muller’s film addresses this question.
Though she claims she was never actually a member of the Nazi Party, Riefenstahl has been defending her relationship with the party since the end of the war. “The only thing to make clear was at the beginning, one admired Hitler. But I have admired him along with millions of others. How am I guilty and others not? That is one thing. For this I can’t say I am guilty, because all around me were enthusiastic.”
The film’s treatment of Riefenstahl’s “Olympiad,” which covers the events during the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, is far enough removed from the Nazi imagery to allow an unencumbered view of the filmmaker’s remarkable creative process. We watch her creating strangely mythical images of faces and bodies, and see her experiment with innovative techniques that have now become standard practice.
But in the end, after skimming through Riefenstahl’s experiences with tribesmen in Africa, and her current deep-sea endeavours, the film reverts back to the same question: was it justifiable to embrace pure evil for the sake of art?
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