"What did the President know, and when did he know it?" This question from Senator Howard Baker during the Watergate hearings could be altered for German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. What did Leni Riefenstahl know, and when did she know it? Riefenstahl, the last living witness to Nazi cinema, spent nearly sixty years denying or deflecting her role in the Third Reich. The documentary Riefenstahl now looks at this most controversial of filmmakers.
Culled from her personal archives, Riefenstahl paints a dark, ominous portrait of the director of Triumph of the Will and Olympia. While even her fiercest detractors grudgingly acknowledged her visual artistry, she is still damned for her association with the Nazi regime. However, how close was it? The contradictions, deflections and defensiveness that Leni Riefenstahl had throughout her life make it hard to fully defend or fully condemn her.
Riefenstahl does not cover the entirety of her 101 years. Instead, it lets others do most of the talking. That is not to say that Leni herself does not get a chance to speak. The documentary features more than just footage from various talk shows and interviews that she gave. Riefenstahl kept meticulous records of telephone calls from all sorts of people. We get to hear her speak with supporters, enraged that she was in their eyes set up on a German television show. We also get to hear her rapport with Albert Speer, whom she kept in contact with after his release from prison for crimes against humanity.
The Riefenstahl/Speer telephone excerpts are brief. However, I think they give more insight into Riefenstahl's involvement and worldview than perhaps Riefenstahl director Andres Veiel intended. Both Speer and Riefenstahl insisted to their dying day that they were apolitical figures caught up in the Nazi machinery. Both had celebrated postwar lives. Both attempted to whitewash or at minimum downplay their roles in the Third Reich. Both of them, with the evidence we have now, probably knew much more than they let on.
However, can Leni Riefenstahl really be blamed for the execution of Jews in Konskie, Poland? In one of Riefenstahl's most damning charges, the events in one Polish town make her a de facto murderess. When the Nazis first invaded Poland, Leni Riefenstahl went as a war correspondent. The story as related in Riefenstahl states that she objected to some men being made to dig a ditch (presumably their own graves). If memory serves right, she told the troops that "the Jews have to be removed from there", as they were a distraction to her camera. This direction was translated as "Get rid of the Jews". That in turn led to the German soldiers shooting the men right then and there. In narrator Andrew Bird's conclusion, "If this statement is true, Riefenstahl's set direction played a role in the death of the Jews in Konskie".
This, I think, is shaping things to fit an idea. It is similar to the Derek Bentley case. In that situation, nineteen-year-old Bentley and an accomplice were caught robbing a warehouse. The police officer demanded his accomplice's weapon. In the confusion and chaos, Bentley told his accomplice, "Let him have it!". However, did Bentley mean "Hand the gun over" to the officer, or did he mean "shoot him"? That phrase, "let him have it" could mean either. Context matters.
The same applies to Riefenstahl's "the Jews have to be removed from there" statement. If we accept what Riefenstahl appears to propose, we are meant to believe that Leni Riefenstahl basically ordered the men killed and/or knew that such a thing would happen. This, to me at least, is a very dicey thing to prove. There is no direct evidence that Leni Riefenstahl knew that the men would be killed at her mere request. Riefenstahl might have genuinely thought that they would be moved out of camera shot but not be literally shot. Moreover, given how virulently antisemitic and anti-Slavic many Nazi military officers and troops were, I doubt that they would need one woman's directions to kill anyone. To place such a heavy burden on Riefenstahl seems a bit of a stretch.
She is apparently also blamed for the fate of one of her Olympia cameramen. Wilhelm "Willy" Zielke, a director in his own right, filmed the Olympia opening prologue. After he completed his part, Zielke was forcibly sterilized and went mad. Somehow, this is all Leni Riefenstahl's fault. I cannot remember why Zielke's awful fate was somehow Riefenstahl's doing. I remember being astounded that such a thing could be put wholly and squarely at her feet.
It is not as if Leni Riefenstahl does not make a case against herself with awful moments and comments. Using unaired footage from The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl, she tells the interviewer about her tense relationship with Joseph Goebbels. She uses the phrase, "All the affairs he had with me...", which the interviewer himself had to point out to her that it sounded odd. She, if memory serves right, chuckles and says that she misspoke. This again could be an accidental choice of words, as "affairs" could mean something other than sexual. It does come across as funny, as does when she fervently denies a close relationship with the bad doctor.
Riefenstahl has excellent editing that I imagine would have made her proud. This is especially true in the various montages of her aging via her vast photographic collection. The use of various past television and documentary appearances, along with footage of her films, is well-crafted to give us this look at one of the most controversial and contradictory cinematic figures. She is shown as permanently defensive, bristling at the notion that Triumph of the Will or Olympia were "Pied Piper films", luring the German volk into a pact with the Devil.
However, I think one of the most revealing parts in Riefenstahl may be an unexpected one. It is when she is on a German talk show with Elfriede Kretschmer, another German who was also of her generation. Unlike Riefenstahl, however, Kretschmer dismisses Riefenstahl's suggestions that she could have been unaware of what the Third Reich was up to. She also condemns Riefenstahl for having made her films. Riefenstahl defends herself by essentially saying that people like Kretschmer have the benefit of hindsight. Leni later gives an impassioned defense of herself and her generation, that they have not fully healed from what happened. The audience applauds Riefenstahl's monologue, with Riefenstahl later playing recordings of supportive callers.
I think, in the end, this is why Leni Riefenstahl still holds such power over people to love or hate her. She, I think, has become the embodiment of and to that generation of Germans who feel perpetually blamed and condemned for the horrors of the Third Reich. Leni Riefenstahl is so much: a cinematic craftsman, a manipulative liar, someone who probably supported National Socialism but who also may have been made a scapegoat for everything that the Nazis did. Riefenstahl makes the case that she bears responsibility for her actions during the Nazi era and went to her grave not accepting it. Exactly how much responsibility, how much blame she can and should bear, however, is a harder question.
"I am not responsible for what happened", we hear Leni Riefenstahl say near the end of Riefenstahl. She did not send people to the gas chambers. She, however, hesitated on calling her association with Hitler a mistake. Riefenstahl is a strong introduction to this figure, a woman of evil to some, an artistic innovator to others. Perhaps the truth is that in the final analysis, Leni Riefenstahl can be both.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Views are always welcome, but I would ask that no vulgarity be used. Any posts that contain foul language or are bigoted in any way will not be posted.
Thank you.