Leni Riefenstahl

So. Leni Riefenstahl. Leni "I'm completely innoncent. I wasn't a party member. I thought the nazi-thing was some kind of boy-scout organisation" Riefenstahl. Master director and master nazi propagandist.

(I plan to de a series of short visual portraits of female icons from the 30s, and it's propably a bit unfortunate that Riefenstahl is the first one. But I'll probably do famous anti-Nazi Marlene Dietrich next, hopefully that'll even things out.)

The page http://www.dasblauelicht.net has a lot of Riefenstahl information, including posters from her early career as an acress. She mostly acted in German 'mountain'-films, a late 20s/early 30 strange proto-nazi breed of national cinema, which were mostly about good looking young atheltic Germans, climbing German mountain peaks. Weird shit:








Now her propaganda masterpiece "Triumph of the Will", that's a truly scary film. I have a hard time getting through the last part, which has all the really annoying nazi speeches, but the first part and the middle section are completely terrifying. Sometimes it feels almost like someone had travelled to a parallel universe with a camera, a parallel universe where the Third Reich won the war and became this all encompassing global Empire, bigger than The Roman Empire. It's so big, it's so dark, it's so chilling.

Of course you also get the feeling that it wouldn't have lasted that long - if all those ugly stupid semi-bald male nazis had married all those beautiful teutonic maidens, they'd probably have ruined the bloodline because of bad genes, and after a couple of generations they have to kill their own sons according to their own ideals about a master-race. Oh well. It's never easy being an 'über-mensch'.















I've never seen her 2-part "Olympia" sports documentary, but there are some clips on Youtube. Great editing, and nice bodies. You gotta admit that. Looks pretty awesome actually. And it probably has fewer stupid nazi speeches than in "Triumph of the Will", I might get it on DVD one day:



Prologue



Last Diving Sequence: