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Can despicable propaganda also be great art?
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Explores Leni Riefenstahl’s artistic legacy and her complex relationship with the Nazi regime, juxtaposing her image with evidence of her awareness of the regime’s atrocities. This is a question that will forever be raised when discussing the work of German director Leni Riefenstahl. She is admired as one of the greatest German directors of all time (like Quentin Tarantino), but also despised for making the Third Reich look glamorous. Riefenstahl herself always denied being a Nazi.
Director Andres Weil thoroughly researched all of his properties
According to her, she is an artist who happened to work for Hitler. In interviews, she always claimed that she knew nothing about the regime’s atrocities. After her death in 2003, this image she created quickly fell apart. The stark contrast between her own claims and historical facts was already the subject of the recent television documentary Riefenstahl – The End of the Myth and is further explored in the documentary Riefenstahl 39.
This study shows even more clearly how manipulative Riefenstahl was
letters, newspaper clippings, and official documents to compare Riefenstahl’s words with reality. But at the same time, it’s fascinating to see how her huge ego and fearless ambition helped shape her place in film history. At the Ghent Film Festival, Weyel said that she originally wanted to create an avatar of Riefenstahl in her film, an alternate Leni created from personal letters and fragments of a diary in her estate. But in the end, the material itself was so clear that it could speak for itself.
The film contains a treasure trove of historical material
There is no doubt that Riefenstahl had a deep sympathy and admiration for the Nazi movement. Weil convincingly shows that her own worldview was completely in line with Nazi ideology. The footage of the television interview, filmed with the cameras running, when the interview is interrupted, is very revealing. Riefenstahl repeatedly became angry when questions were raised about her responsibility as an artist and her involvement in the Nazi movement.
Andres Weil himself considers his film a lesson for today
But even more revealing are Riefenstahl’s recorded telephone conversations with her many admirers. Whenever her artistic integrity was questioned, she received letters of support and sympathetic phone calls. Many Germans agreed that it was very difficult to resist the Nazi movement in the 1940s and that Hitler’s passive supporters were viewed too harshly. Riefenstahl’s ability to reinvent his image and shape the past to his advantage is similar to the many fake news stories created by populists like Donald Trump.
