2024-09-03 04:11:13
The images of Nazi troops and Hitler’s speech during the Congress in September 1934 remained embedded in the imagination of the whole world. There is something about them that mixes the terrifying and the hypnotic. There was even talk on the Nazi stage of the way the parade itself, the montage, the music and the framing blended together, creating a propaganda weapon that is constantly studied in film schools. The person responsible for recording these images was the filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, who commissioned Hitler after directing The Blue Light to film a trilogy of works about him rallying to promote his fascist ideology.
To do this, he had almost unlimited resources, a staff of 170 employees, including 36 cameramen and nine aerial cameras. Triumph of the Will, his second and most famous installment, took seven months to put together. That was not the only work done by Nazism, but also the Olympia diptych about the Berlin Olympic Games in 1936, where his camera praised the athletic bodies and the physical excellence of its athletes.
She was a friend of the regime and contributed to her work to spread her message more effectively, like a virus thanks to her propaganda films. However, when the war ended she always denied belonging to the Nazi party, and would repeatedly sell that the art was apolitical and that she only received a commission. She was tried and was only defined as a “follower”, but because of the shame of the actions of the Germans she only directed one more film, Tiefland. However, Riefenstahl continued in German public life. He gave interviews, went on TV, published books and throughout his life he received thousands of letters from fans.
In many history books his contributions to cinematographic staging are praised more than his links with Nazism are told, and for that reason filmmaker Andres Veiel wanted to settle accounts with history in Riefenstahl, a documentary that shows the full awareness of which the director was aware. the atrocities committed, her collusion with Hitler and her friendship with the party leadership. She does so by breaking down the legacy of hundreds of boxes she left behind when she died, including diaries and cassette tapes in which she recorded telephone conversations.
Veiel does a meticulous job so that there is no ambiguity when studying the figure of Riefenstahl, but even less at a time when the extreme right is on the rise. His documentary is also blunt about one of the questions that should already be rhetorical: can’t art be political? Riefenstahl knew what he was doing by filming how he filmed and editing how he edited, and the effect he created, so he bears direct responsibility for it what inspired his images.
He also receives a letter in which he requested that “some Jews be sent out of there” so that a scene could be filmed. In response, an officer ordered “those Jews,” some of whom tried to flee to them and were shot, according to the documents they inherited by which justice is done to her and her impunity .
The filmmaker defines her as a pioneer in fake news, because “she lied her whole life.” “This is something we see every day in the US, and I see it in Germany as well, where there is a party that advocates National Socialism. I felt the need to address the importance of ideology and aesthetics. Dealing with the roots of this, because I think we ignored it,” Veiel explains to a small group of journalists from the Venice Film Festival, where the documentary was presented.
The director particularly appreciates that it was in Venice, since Meloni’s extremism rules in Italy. That is why he emphasizes the “courage” of the director of the festival, Alberto Barbera, who is appointed as the director of the Biennale “an intellectual who is part of a neo-fascist party”. “I don’t think it was a coincidence, but a political statement. She was a hero here. He appeared three times with his films and was awarded. The first woman to win here. So it’s great to bring this film at a time when there is a president who has roots in a party with a fascist tradition and who denies the importance of looking at those roots,” he says.
As she immersed herself in her heritage, it became even more clear that she was “trapped not only by the aesthetics of the Third Reich, but also by its ideology”. “When you hear her say that Germany will succeed in regaining her morality, virtue and order in one or two days, it clearly shows that she wants an authoritarian system. It is scary and like a prophecy. But on his calendar we found small notes in which he marked a vote for the National Democratic Party, which is the party that denies the Holocaust, and he asked us to vote for them. She remained connected to fascism in the 60s, 70s and 80s, Fascism started in her life long before it officially started in the year 33. She is the prototype of fascism,” he says.
What Veiel denies is that Riefenstahl was a good director, and reduces her merits to being “a very good editor with a great director of photography, but as an author she was terrible, she didn’t know how to write scripts write.” It was also a promotion of Nazi values. “Those who say that politics and art must be separated are innocent. That dark side was part of the regime and it was part of its ideology,” he concludes.
He hopes that this documentary and the cinema can open a debate that will lead to an understanding of why “many young people vote for the right-wing AfD party in Germany”: “It is important to describe the dangers . This film is like a warning, and I hope to create some kind of awareness of what could happen. This film is not only about the past, but it is not only about the present. It is a film that tells us what could happen in the future” (Taken from The Diary).
Cover image: Leni Riefenstahl and Adolf Hitler, in an image from the documentary by Andres Vietel.
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