It was not my intention to read a critical film review on Leni Riefenstahl, Nazi director par excellence. I’d never heard of her or her films. I saw her name in Marc Eliot’s Disney biography. A quick search revealed her Wiki. I saw an image of her filming a scene with an SS soldier, Luger in leather holster on her belt.
I was intrigued and found this book on library genesis. Her story begins as a dancer in Berlin. Supple and beautiful, she took to the stage and made a fantastic stir. I decided to read on.
She was cast in several Arnold Fanck, 1923/24 ‘mountain films’ (Bergfilme). Where she demonstrated her great strength, athleticism, and beauty. The mountain films capture the Alps, the sport of mountain climbing, and skiing. Together with the pastoral protagonist, and city dwelling antagonist, she plays the heroine in between.
She determined to direct her own film, Das blaue Licht (The Blue Light, 1932). An ephemeral, stylistic, fairy tale dream sequence. I love you, Junta. May I have one of your lovely crystals? Let’s open a bottle of red and watch this film together.
It must have caught the attention of the Nazis. Soon thereafter she was filming a party rally film, Sieg des Glaubens (Victory of Faith). What came to be called a new cinematic National Socialist art form.
Her second film for Hitler, Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will). One of the most grandiose and terrifying spectacles I have ever seen. OMG. Extremely interesting as a documentary, extremely terrifying as a propaganda film. The choreography is hypnotic, the scale of the film is off the charts.
I would love to visit Nuremberg. Unfortunately, DHS/TSA Nazis are preventing me from doing so.
Every Nazi image we’ve ever seen was taken from her Party Rally films.
The aesthetic is copied in all of our modern movies and advertising.
“Her films do indeed seem ‘stylized’ and to, reminiscent a point, of advertising art.”
She’s one of the most influential film makers of all time.
It would have to be a Nazi, these damn Hollywood people, they copied a Nazi. You are the funniest two-faced people in the galaxy.
A masterpiece: Olympia 1936
The greatest sports film of all time. Even with the dialogue in German, I was locked on the images and especially the music by Hebert Windt.
They’ll never better the representation of Olympic sport found in this film.
“She insists that the propagandist effect of her work was at most coincidental – it was never her aim, never the result of a purposeful artistic effort.”
Are not all movies propaganda? Even the most milk toast sci-fi movie is techno space propaganda.
Of course it’s propaganda. All art is propaganda.
“The director had ‘communicated the political experience in the form of an artistic experience by transforming the rhythm of the real event into a cinematic rhythm. In doing so she has created a new artistic genre.’
Some of the critics called the films, ‘heroic reportage‘.
“perhaps romanticism will again overcome realism, haste, restlessness and the modern, technical tempo.”
I doubt it.
“These concerned the relationship between art and ideology, between artists and morality. Could there really be such a thing as Nazi art which was not downright bad and unspeakably kitschy? Could there be such a thing as a work of art which was also Nazi propaganda? And how should an
artist who achieved such a thing be regarded? troubling questions”
Good questions.
She starts as a dancer, supple and symmetrical, beautiful and bold. Then she becomes an actress. Then she meets Hitler and creates the most amazing Nazi propaganda films.
Knowing how susceptible we are to glamour and erotic aesthetic programming, I believe Leni Rienfenstahl was the most powerful weapon of the third reich.
The greatest generation are all dead now. And we can freely admit the facts.
The Nazis won.
They own everything.
Driving several nails in the coffin of antisemitism:
Antisemitism is a word they made up. There is no such thing as Semites. The sons of Noah were SHEM, HAM, and JAPHETH.
The people in Palestine could conceivably be called Shemetic peoples, and so antisemitism doesn’t make any sense, and is a worthless and useless word-spell of yester-years programming language. YOUR CODE is OBSOLETE. Antisemitism is NOW DEPRECATED.
Leni Riefenstahl: The Seduction of Genius by Rainer Rother Book Review
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