The Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl
by Les Phillips

This is a film about a pretty blonde woman, a good German actress who only just barely lost the lead in The Blue Angel to Marlene Dietrich, an actress who might have gone off to Hollywood with von Sternberg. ("But I was involved with a man"; she didn't want to leave Germany). Riefenstahl was a terrific action-movie actress and stunt woman! We see her in a 1930 film called Avalanche, performing impressive mountaineering feats; no special effects here, those are real Alps, and a real avalanche was called for. Riefenstahl became a director and made an impressive first feature, The Blue Light. Hitler noticed her -- her skill as a director, and her Aryan purity onscreen. And so she was recruited to make Triumph of the Will and Olympia.

Triumph of the Will is an indisputably great film. Riefenstahl had so much raw talent! History redirected (but did not determine) her career and then foreshortened it. What a splendid and full career she might have had, otherwise; what masterful, brilliant films she might have created.

This is a movie about a vigorous old lady, past 90 when these interviews were conducted. For fifty years, Riefenstahl was unable to make films, but she established a solid career as a still photograher. (Among her subjects: Siegfried and Roy, captured in situ in Las Vegas.) In her old age, she took up underwater photography. Riefenstahl had to lie about her age to get a Scuba diver's license; for some time she was apparently the oldest licensed Scuba diver in the world. Her feature film, Impressions Under Water, was made in her nineties and released when she was 100 years old. Riefenstahl is immensely engaging, even energizing. She shows us the mountain locations from Avalanche, padding about in boots and a weird pink housecoat ("There's hardly a rock face or peak I haven't climbed."). Riefenstahl discusses films she made sixty years ago with total recall, with great technical sophistication, with a great teacher's flair for explication.

Leni Riefenstahl was never convicted of a crime, and she won many lawsuits against people who said she was a war criminal. She's got her story down, and she's sticking to it. "Meeting Hitler was the greatest catastrophe of my life . . . I thought the racial talk was just electioneering . . . saying I'm sorry can never be enough. It was a pact with the devil, but we didn't know that then." This comes from a woman who directed a short film chronicling the rally that produced the Nuremberg Laws, who said that reading "Mein Kampf" had made her a confirmed National Socialist, who knowingly employed concentration camp inmates as extras in her films. "What am I guilty of?" she asks. "I cannot be guilty of being alive during that period. Now, Triumph of the Will, that I regret."

The Wonderful Horrible Life is a memorable, essential chronicle.

©2010 Les Phillips
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