How Leni Riefenstahl Built her Isolated Worlds
I have an above average interest in Hitler and Nazism because the films that most baffled me while taking courses in Film History were Leni Riefenstahls’ Olympia Part 1 and 2 and Triumph of the Will. I couldn’t understand where to make the connections: extremely innovative and brilliant films advocating such a torrid regime.
Well, there were two books (three actually, and two authors) and numerous viewings of the films that made me come to terms with this strange phenomenon.
- Siegfried Kracauer: The Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality
- Siegfried Kracauer: From Caligari to Hitler : A Psychological History of the German Film
- Rainer Rother: Leni Riefenstahl: the seduction of genius
Krackauer’s From Caligari to Hitler helped me realize that the brilliance of many of these films these lay in their negation of reality, in their building of fantasy lands (stages and sets in films), and their narratives which put people into tight corners of mostly psychological prisons. Someone is always trying to hypnotize the masses to do destructive things - see the post on Dr. Caligari.
Leni Riefehstahl also did just that.
One of her methods I remember well from watching the Olympias, her films of the Berlin Olympics, was how perfectly – through editing, of course – each race or competition was orchestrated.
She would start with the big picture, so to speak, including the arena, the crowd, the field into her shots. Then she would change the speed – going slightly slow motion. Then she would narrow in on the specific competition isolating it from the rest.
Her strategy seems always to make a world apart from the rest. A small haven that has pushed aside all the superfluous and unnecessary surroundings.
A little like the isolated paradise that her Fűrher was trying to build/create with his actors. And since that didn’t really work, he had to use force instead.
As has been amply recorded, image makers – filmmakers, designers, painters – are creating these isolated paradises, after all. But the ultimate question is how different are their strategies and goals from these Nazi ones?
These next few days, I will be following up on this topic which I started with the fantasy films of early Black and White German classics and which I hope to continue with the meaning and consequences of the artist and his image.
