Term paper I wrote on Leni...

Fascinated by Fascism:
Perceptions of Leni Riefenstahl

The strong, angular shadows, the dynamic, ever-tilting skylines, the tens of thousands of devoted followers; children, adults, elderly, even kittens and statues watch rapt. And so do we. There is no denying, these highflying, massive tracking-shot images are mesmerizing. But once the trance fades and one’s cognitive capacity returns it becomes all too clear that something is wrong. Something is jaundiced. Something is evil . To watch Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will is a challenge for any American. There is a complex web of horror and humiliation that one is not supposed to express aloud. Too, there is a feeling of longing to belong, to be included, and even more deep-seeded feelings of abject emasculation that remain forbidden, especially for young men of Jewish heritage. But is hindsight on her career 20/20, or forced perspective?

This project began life as an entirely different paper. Initially I planned to write on Charlie Chaplin’s unconventional use of sound and the political undertones that this implied in his seminal City Lights. However, some basic research revealed that this topic is simultaneously too well covered and too oblique to hang a paper upon. From here, I expanded the topic to juxtapose the film against the political undertones of diegetic and non--diegetic sound in Renoir’s Rules of the Game. But, two examples were simply not enough. With no obvious third example in mind, I was forced to reconsider my topic. Concurrent to this, I found myself rather taken with Susan Sontag’s essay, “Fascinating Fascism” which detailed the post-war work of infamous Nazi filmmaker-cum-anthropological photographer Leni Riefenstahl and the contradictions within her art and her revisionist rhetoric. During section, I was introduced to her ethereal book of photography The Last of the Nuba. I had already seen both Olylimpa and Triumph of the Will several times. The works were deeply troubling, but also – to steal Sontag’s own wording – utterly fascinating. Too, I found her thesis that these films connected with audiences not just because of the crafts(wo)manship, rather because they express things that are meaningful and moving on a basic human level immediately illuminating as it worked to explain some of my own feelings toward fascist art and philosophers such as Fredric Nietzsche. Wanting to explore these ideas I began to outline a paper on Riefenstahl. However, it quickly became apparent that this too was problematic, not in the least because my thesis ultimately amounted to little more than “I think Susan Sontag is really cool”. But on the way I happened across a series of columns that exposed an entirely new side of Riefenstahl, a side that I could actually explore.

Riefenstahl is perhaps the most divisive figures in cinematic history, matched only controversy by the likes of Eli Kazan, D.W. Griffith, and Roman Polanski. While the moral shortcomings of Kazan and Griffith can be seen rather clearly, and the crimes of Polanski are incontrovertible , Riefenstahl remains a bit more obtuse. In the popular mind she is either a misunderstood genius, or a monster who all but sold her soul to the devil in exchange for unlimited budgets and close access to one of the most powerful, and evil, men in the history of the world. As Jugren Trimborn put it in the introduction to Leni Riefenstahl: A Life, “Every discussion of Riefenstahl has been limited either to automatically labeling her as a persona non gratis or unreflectively celebrating her as a great artist who is not to be measured by normal human standards, whose work must be considered from a more or less depoliticized standpoint” (Trimbone, IX).

This reading holds true in my research. Three of the four books not written by Riefenstahl herself that I read for this project fit comfortably into this dichotomy. There are the books written with her participation that seek to celebrate her while failing to double-check any of her claims about her past – A Portrait of Leni Riefenstahl by Audrey Salkeld and The Films of Leni Riefenstahl by David B. Hinton – and books like Leni Riefenstahl the Seduction of Genius by Rainer Rother, written without her direct assistance or approval that make ample use of raised-eyebrow quotation marks around words to imply a sense of incredulousness and moral superiority. This trend carried over to the various news articles, retrospectives and obituaries that I sifted through. Especially in these obituaries, it seemed as though the authors were fighting tooth and nail to have the final say on if Riefenstahl was a demon or an angel. So obvious was this split, that there were even news stories from the BBC covering the various approaches to her obituary (BBC). Only Trimbone’s tome made the effort to both interview Riefenstahl, and critically analyze her often-specious claims and historical redactions. Though there is no shortage of literature from reputable, scholarly sources on this topic, I have chosen to focus primarily on the work of gossip columnists as these catty tastemakers had a far greater impact on the average citizen’s perception of Riefenstahl and thus can be better used to chart her trajectory in the public sphere. To further narrow my scope to the world of Hollywood, as this is a film class, I have included only newspaper quotes from The Los Angeles Times.

While today the operative word in any article on Riefenstahl is “controversial” a quick glance at gossip stories detailing her visit to the US from November second, 1938 through January tenth, 1939 reveals a very different perception – one of glamour and “charm.” In fact, nearly every one of the articles on Riefenstahl’s visit uses the word. An LA Times columnist, using the pseudonym “Chatterbox” referred to Riefenstahl as “lovely” and gushed, “And we want to say here and now that to know her is to love her. She has C.h.a.r.m, [SIC] and spelled with a capital ‘C’,” (LA Times, p. A7, 1/10/1939). Though Hitler is referred to as a dictator intermittently, even articles detailing her possible romance with the Fuehrer are treated with the light, coy tone of a story discussing the latest teen romance between High School Musical co-stars (LA Times p. 1 11/10/1939, LA Times p. 7 6/20/1937).

Another interesting wrinkle appears in these articles when they are read back-to-back; there is a distinct disinterest in the international politics of Adolf Hitler’s Germany, pushing off any worry of war and out and out ignoring the fact that the Nazi regime had, with openness, been building a massive war machine since 1936. Several snippet reviews of Olyimpia display a shrugging confusion at how any of this work could be considered Anti-American or pro-Nazi. “It is regrettable that political issues should intrude to prevent the general distribution of the feature in America, because contrary to rumor, it is in no way a propaganda production, but simply a superfine camera analysis of great athletic events accomplished with art and imagination which are international in scope,” (LA Times, p. A7, 12/17/1939). The only openly negative article the LA Times wrote about her visit was a brief noting that Democratic Representative Andrew L. Sommers protested her presence in the US, (LA Times, p. 1, 11/6/1938). The reason for his protest in notably absent in the article which received less than one-fiftieth of the space afforded to lavishing praise on the director during and even after her visit.

The reason for this protest became all too clear three days later: Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass. Not seven days after Riefenstahl arrived in America, German citizens took to the streets destroying Jewish owned business, burning synagogues, and dragging men, women, and children out into the streets to be murdered. “’The Jewish question will now be brought to a solution,’ a high Nazi said,” (LA Times, p. 10, 11/9/1938). And with these words, the Nazi death machine roared to life.

“The Nazi reprisals included a ban on all Jewish newspapers, a ban on Jewish meetings of any kind, even cultural, notice that Jewish children no longer will be permitted to attend German primary schools. A demand by Der Angriff, organ of Propaganda Minister Paul Joseph Goebbels, who belongs to the radical anti-semitic wing of Nazism, for ‘The sharpest measures against Jews, especially foreign Jews,’ and the police announcement that the disarmament of Jews in Berlin is under way and thus far has produced 2569 daggers and swords, 1702 firearms and 20,000 cartridges,”
(p. 10, 11/9/1936).

The article conveniently neglects to mention that these so-called “reprisals” were nothing of the sort. In actuality, these rules had been enforced for years prior to Kristallnacht, and were in fact large part the cause of the Hershel Grynszpan’s actions. These laws were part of the 25-point Nazi party platform that had been unveiled in 1920 and explicitly stated that Jews could not be citizens of any Germanic nation. The “deportations” alluded to in the article were actually cattle cars to ghettos where the Jewish population was slowly being starved to death. The following day, the story jumped from page ten, to page one. Unfortunately, the cover story was even less nuanced than the original note, which was already written with a fairly anti-Semitic bent.

But, just a few short years later, the same paper, and even the very same columnists painted a very different picture of Riefenstahl. Gone were the doe-eyed compliments and hyperbole. Gone was the push to release her films. And to even imply that the woman who made Triumph of the Will was anything but a propagandist was sheer blasphemy. Whereas earlier articles danced around the fascist politics of Hitler or else excused them, the tone of stories written after the start of the war that these very same columnists dismissed offhandedly was less kind, to say the least. Discussing a nightclub popular with immigrants, columnist Hedda Hopper, who had previously written a glowing review demanding the release of Riefenstahl’s Olympia said, “Never have I seen so many foreign faces with so many strange names behind ‘em [SIC]. I did a double-take the other night, ‘cause [SIC] I thought for a second I saw Herr Goebbels, Hitler’s boyfriend,” (Hopper p. A19, p. A14). At the war’s end, The Times was still publishing articles pushing the Riefenstahl Hitler love connection, except now, the articles were inflammatory, going out of their way to mention that the soldier that captured Riefenstahl had no idea who she was, (Goldberg p. A1). While an article written before the war saw no reason to even explain why a government official would file a formal protest to Riefenstahl’s presence in the country, a post-war article finds it newsworthy to reprint Riefenstahl’s claims that Hitler had only taken two lovers during his life time – his niece, and Eva Braun. And while earlier articles had quoted Riefenstahl speaking in semi-broken English, this same post-war article ends with an extended quote from Riefenstahl that is grammatically perfect, but written phonetically to imply a thick German accent. Even when she was cleared of war crimes charges at Vilingen Riefenstahl was not put back on her pedestal. Instead, she is referred to as a, “Now faded beauty,” before adding a non-sequitor end sentence that repeats Riefenstahl’s denial of having a love affair with the Fuehrer, (AP p.1). With the promise of her early career dashed a foreign correspondent for the times quipped, “I guess, on consideration, we might just be able to do without the lady,” (Cassandra p. B5).

So, what changed? Surely Riefenstahl’s films didn’t suddenly become something else when war broke out. They were still the same works that the Gossip columnists groveled before just a few years earlier. The shots were the same, the editing the same, and the talent identical. While it is possible that these journalists only discovered how to critically read visual texts at the outbreak of war, it seems somewhat unlikely. And, realistically, as journalists, there is little possibility that these authors simply didn’t know about what was happening in Germany during this period. It was no secret. Mein Kampf was readily available on bookshelves, Nazi officials were regularly making public addresses of an overtly anti-Semitic nature. Even the Nazi party platform was rather unambiguous about the political group’s intent. And yet, even with all of this information easily accessible, especially by those within the news media, every article except one written about Riefenstahl before the beginning of WWII had a positive bend and every article written about her during and immediately after the war carried an extremely negative slant to the point of being almost slanderous.

Since it is wholly illogical to think that every one of the professional journalists working in a first market, destination paper was so incompetent as to remain totally unaware of the German government’s actions during this period, one must surmise that the fluid state of Riefenstahl’s social status had nothing to do with the quality or content of her art. Nor did it have anything to do with moral outrage. The LA Times continued to post glowing pieces about Riefenstahl even as large scale ethnic cleansing was occurring during her vacation. As I quoted above, Ministers in the Nazi party were publicly calling for the murder of Jews. But not one word of protest came, no hint of moral ambiguity in Riefenstahl’s morals. Rather, the perception and positioning of her within the news media was predicated largely on what was politically expedient. Before the war, mentioning that both Hitler and Benito Mussolini admired Riefenstahl carried the cache of being worldly. It made the author look cosmopolitan to praise this foreign filmmaker whose art was being suppressed. By championing her, the Gossip columnists could appeal to the proto-feminist groups who had just recently won the vote. And, publishing glowing reviews of a film that almost no one in America was even allowed to see certainly didn’t hurt the perception of the columnist as an “insider.” Later, once the war began, jingoistic patriotism became chic. Selling the idea of a monolithic, subhuman enemy was appealing. Thus, we see cartoonish phonetics that highlight foreignness above content became popular and the semi-obscene detailing of the contents of a foreign leader’s little black book became acceptable. As lowbrow entertainment, Gossip writers were able to infiltrate the popular consciousness without much effort. While the average citizen might consider bias in an official news story, it would seem less probable that one would intellectually engage an article written in cutesy slang and first person colloquialisms. In short, these gossip columnists and journalists were themselves no different from Riefenstahl. Their work was propaganda, and as the message of those in power shifted, so did their viewpoint.

Just as Riefenstahl has redacted and rewritten her life, changing her story so that she was no longer a close personal friend of Hitler’s even before he rose to power but rather a loose acquaintance who followed party doctrine only insofar as it allowed her to make her films, these articles rewrite and revise history as they go. And none of it leaves us any closer to understanding Riefenstahl’s true intent as an artist. But, if there was any doubt as to her loyalty and enthusiasm for the messages of the Third Reich, I think it is best to let Riefenstahl explain herself – “Although America won the 1936 Olympic Games, the pictures of the sports events will not be shown here as the motion picture industry is controlled, both in production and distribution, by men who are opposed to Germany’s political activities,” (LA Times, p. 2, 1/7/1939). Or, as she put it more bluntly days later in an interview in Cherbourg France, -- “[Riefenstahl] praised American hospitality ‘With the exception of the Hollywood cinema industry, directed by Jews or members of anti-German leagues, where I was given a hostile reception,” (LA Times, p.1, 1/27/1939).

,Said the Shotgun to the Head--
Saul Williams

www.myspace.com/ohhorrorofhorrors