The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl-Die Macht der Bilder (1993)

Directed by: Ray Muller | 189 minutes | documentary

A serene underwater world. Two divers with camera swimming towards the viewer, calm, peaceful. Then the viewer is propped up in his seat by a rough cut at marching Nazi soldiers, complete with the sound of army drumming. What is going on here? What is the connection between these images, which are completely incoherent in tone and content? Then we go back to the bottom of the sea. This time we see a close-up shot of the face of an old, yet spry lady, who takes a closer look at a special aquatic plant. And here we have the answer to the question just now: the lady in question is none other than Leni Riefenstahl, the German actress, but above all director, who has become famous and infamous for her technically brilliant Nazi propaganda film ‘Triumph des Willens’ (1935), and who, even if she is already over ninety, is still practicing her profession, as witness these images from her last film ‘Impressionen Unter Wasser’ (2002).

The casually interested person may not be very fascinated by the stories about Riefenstahl as an actress in a couple of early films, in which she figures as a mountain climber. But, even if you really want to get to the subject of her Nazi films as quickly as possible, this introduction to it is a useful addition, as we get a good picture of Riefenstahl’s character, and we see where her artistic preferences are. started. We see how she suddenly became fascinated by cinema in 1924 when she saw a movie poster of Arnold Fanck’s ‘Berg des Schicksals’. She was impressed by this mountaineering film because of its moving clouds, slow motion, special backlighting, and camera settings, even though she didn’t understand film (yet) at the time.

In the (similar) films she subsequently ended up in, she showed an increasing eye for image composition and editing. We also see how strong she was then, both physically and in willpower. These qualities would later become so important in her defining films ‘Triumph of the Will’ and ‘Olympia’, about the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Her character is also characteristic in her behavior during the making of this documentary about her life. She often has specific comments or remarks about the film style or compositions. She is clearly a director and camerawoman at heart. All these aspects make her later artistic excellence very believable to the viewer.

The section on her two National Socialists movies is very interesting, both because of the insight we get into Riefenstahl’s perfectionism and the stories she has to tell about her dealings with top Nazis. A central question that runs through the documentary is whether you should be politically aware as an artist. Whether you should take responsibility for what your art depicts. Can you find yourself in a kind of artistic vacuum, where political considerations are irrelevant to the art itself? Riefenstahl is silent and in any case denies in all tones. She regrets having lived in those terrible times, and what the films caused her personal suffering, but she sees the documentaries themselves as purely artistic entities.

It is still clear that she is completely obsessed with her work. With love and enthusiasm she talks about certain editing techniques, camera positions and movements while showing images of ‘Triumph of the Will’. And these images are indeed extremely skillfully made. The same goes for her documentary about the 1936 Olympic Games, ‘Olympia’ (1938). Revolutionary camera use (including an underwater camera) and beautiful slow motion techniques provide almost hypnotic images. We see diving boats soaring through the air like birds, and marathon runners who seem to stick to the ground by their shadows, poetically portraying the foregoing of these men. Combined with heavy, bombastic music, this gives the sport an appropriate charge, which cannot be depicted by a simple registration of a running man. Due to its emphasis on the strength and aesthetics of the body, later also found in Riefenstahl’s photographs of indigenous tribes, where shiny bodies are displayed in all their pride, this film has been accused by some critics of having fascist tendencies. Riefenstahl is not interested in any of this, and finds it only logical for an artist to be interested in aesthetically pleasing subjects.

When director Müller asks her about the frequency of Riefenstahl’s association with Hitler and other high-ranking Nazi members, she becomes quite fierce. She claims to have hardly been there, and that it was certainly not the case that she regularly walked in and out of their houses. When confronted with passages from Goebbels’ diaries, which claim to the contrary, she becomes angry and even walks away. She also claims to have known practically nothing about anything, until at the end of the war she saw those terrible images of concentration camps. She waves away the enthusiastic letter she wrote to Hitler when he had invaded Paris, explaining that she was only relieved because she thought that terrible war was now over. But Müller does not (or hardly) judge, and largely allows Riefenstahl to have her say, and then leave the rest to the viewer’s interpretation.

‘The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl’, already released in 1993 under the name ‘Die Macht der Bilder’, gives a very complete picture of Riefenstahl, from her capacity as a dancer in the 1920s to her time as a nature film star in the last years of her life. People who really want to know everything about Riefenstahl’s career have found a gem with this film. However, for those interested only in Riefenstahl’s most famous and controversial films, the film will be at least half an hour too long. In particular, her underwater adventures at the end of the film add little to the rest of the film, other than showing that Riefenstahl never stops and is a born filmmaker. On the other hand, this is the point that, aside from controversies and difficult political questions, emerges most forcefully in this excellent documentary. Ultimately, it is this aspect that the viewer will remember most about Berta Helene Amalie (Leni) Riefenstahl, one of the greatest talents in film history.