One shouldn't "speak ill of the dead," the saying goes. But Leni Riefenstahl was no good. She died this week at age 101, lending some credence to another saying: "Only the good die young."
Riefenstahl did many other things in her life than make propaganda movies for Hitler. But the main reason she is world-[in]famous, the main reason newspapers all over the world are running prominent obituaries for her, is that she made the film Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will), a documentary about the 1934 Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg, starring her friend, admirer and Leader Adolf Hitler.
The film is still commonly referred to as the greatest propaganda film ever made. A present-day audience may find that somewhat surprising. The booming, melodramatic rhetoric that was common in those days when politicians still had to depend heavily on projecting their voices in live appearances often comes off as histrionic today. And the long segment of marchers carrying banners and insignia to the sound of martial music is dull to almost anyone today.
But in those pre-television days, it was spectacularly successful. It would be a mistake, though, to think that Triumph des Willens was Rifenstahl's only service to the Hitler regime. Susan Sontag did a 1975 essay called "Fascinating Fascism" to counter Riefenstahl's effort to reinvent herself as some kind of pioneering feminist filmmaker.
Sontag debunked Riefenstahl's ridiculous claim that she made Triumph des Willens as pure art, a claim that Riefenstahl made until the end. Sontag describes how the 1934 rally was organized around Riefenstahl's filming, and how senior Party officials made great efforts to accomodate her directorial demands.
To use a more recent example, saying that Triumph des Willens was pure art would be like saying that George W. Bush's May 1 appearance on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln wearing a flight suit and featuring a giant "Mission Accomplished" banner was routine daily bureaucratic business. It was an event staged entirely for the cameras.
(continued in Part 2)
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