(Part 1 is in the previous post below)
Moreover, Riefenstahl's second most famous movie, Olympiad, a record of the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, was also a Nazi propaganda film. (Actually, it was two movies, Fest der Völker and Fest der Schönheit.) The event itself was meant to showcase the superiority of "Aryan" athletes, although the African-American runner Jesse Owens famously upset that goal. You don't have to go into philosophical discussion of what "Nazi aesthetics" were about to know that Riefenstahl intended the film to glorify the Nazi ideal and the Hitler government.
Hitler himself referred to Riefenstahl as the ideal German woman. Although, like some female Christian Right activists in America today, her own life as a professional woman hardly fit the traditional mold of "Kinder, Küche, Kirche" that the Nazis idealized for "Aryan" women. That means "children, kitchen, church," although the Nazis weren't as big on the "church" part as the other two.
She was never a member of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party, but Riefenstahl willingly promoted Hitler's regime. For instance, after the annexation of Austria in 1938, she went as Hitler's emissary to occupied Austria to help put a nice public-relations face on the new regime.
(continued in Part 3)
No comments:
Post a Comment