Riefenstahl  (15) |Close-Up Film Review

Leni Riefenstahl became famous or perhaps one should say infamous as the director of two documentary films which essentially supported Adolf Hitler.  

The first was Triumph of the Will  about Hitler’s Nuremburg Rally in 1934  and her twin films of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin which celebrated the Aryan ideal of beauty.   She is therefore perceived as a Nazi propagandist.  Yet despite her close friendship with the Hitler’s closest colleagues, she has always denied that she had any knowledge of the horrors of the Holocaust.   Using a wealth of archive material both from the many interviews she gave and from her personal archive, accessed after the death of her long term partner, writer/director Andres Veiel attempts to answer that question.

The fascinating material of the film is arranged thematically rather than chronologically, which at times makes it a bit tricky to know where we are in Reifenstahl’s long life – she died in 2003 at the age of 101.  

As a portrait of a person, it is certainly multi-faceted.  A former actress, she clearly understood the language of film.  We see her talking about how she shot the Nuremberg Rally with the same authority and confidence that say Ridley Scott would discuss the shooting of a spectacular scene in the Gladiator films – except Nuremberg featured a real army that was soon to ravish Europe.  Whereas her love of the beautiful human body interestingly expressed in her admiration of black American athlete Jesse Owens is at odds with the Nazi ideal of racial purity.

We learn her father was a bully and her mother a wannabe actress who lived out her ambitions through her daughter.   Before becoming a film maker, Riefenstahl was an actress and dancer.

She was also  a very good looking woman, even into her old age.   In one of the many interview clips, this one shot when she was in her 70s, we see her questioning the lighting, not wanting it to show her wrinkles.  While when she was in her 60s, she formed a relationship and lived with a man 40 years younger than her.   We see the two of them enjoying life in their luxury chalet.

Riefenstahl was a close friend of Albert Speer during and after the war.   At one point in the seventies, after he’d served his 20 year sentence for war crimes, in an almost comic scene we see them exchanging information on how much they each get for television  appearances.  She was also close to other members of Hitler’s team, including Goering, who she claims sexually assaulted her.  The film’s main concern though  is the obvious one – how much did she know about the Holocaust, the concentration camps and what went on there.

It’s a question raised over and over again  in the many clips we see from interviews she gave over the years.  One of the most interesting is from a German chat show in the seventies, where she’s interviewed alongside  a woman who was in the German resistance movement and who obviously doesn’t believe a word Riefenstahl says.

Whatever the truth, she denied the accusation to her very end.   One pertinent anecdote that emerges comes from when she was filming in the street and some shabby Jewish workers (slaves?) were in view and spoiling the shot.   She was heard to say,  “Get rid of the Jews.”   A specific instruction on a specific occasion.  But perhaps indicative of a wider implication?  .