Next Up: The Reading of the Will
When Charles Bronson died, I fired a shot or two at the critics who'd unfairly tagged Death Wish as "fascist." Now a genuinely fascist filmmaker has followed him to the grave: Leni Riefenstahl, who spent the last 58 years claiming to be apolitical at heart but before then churned out the Nazis' most famous propaganda pictures. I can't say I'm an admirer of her work, but I did enjoy Ray Müller's documentary about her "wonderful, horrible" life.
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For all their evil, the Nazis certainly knew how to put on a show (and Leni knew how to film it). Those scenes of silent, orderly, jackbooted stormtroopers still make the hairs stand up on the back of my neck, even echoed in the closing scenes of the original Star Wars and more recently in Saruman’s dispatch of the orcs from Isengard in LOTR The Two Towers. And who can forget Speer’s Cathedral of Light at Nuremberg?
There is a basic human desire for spectacle and ritual, a need democracies are woefully unable to fill but totalitarian regimes are masters at manipulating. Has anyone ever been really thrilled or terrified by one of our presidential inaugurations? We are more likely to be moved by a football halftime show than by any of our political extravaganzas.
Press the right mental and emotional buttons, and we too might throw our right arms stiffly skyward and scream “Sieg Heil!” Maybe Leni Riefenstahl’s films make us uncomfortable because we fear that in those Aryan masses captured by her lens, we might spot ourselves.
Comment is specific to “Triumph of the Will” only:
A truly brilliant movie about an icredibly horrible subject.
Most of the “horrible” aspects of that regime were only trends that came to a head. I don’t think we learned a damn thing about Nazi ideology and wouldn’t be surprised if a “new” “shocking” study which smacks of the Jukes and Kalikaks (1877 and 1910 respectively) were to come out tomorrow. They didn’t come out of the blue in 1933.
I’d have to agree with Tom from Texas too.
The greatest lesson IMO that “Triumph” teaches us is not about Nazi doctrine (Hitler never gave a damn about ideals or principles) but how mob psychology can be so powerful, and the power of its visual propaganda.
Funny, commenting on Jesse’s Death Wish thread (while semi backing him against aforementioned critics), I opined that “There were no lone wolfs in Triumph of the Will!” How cosmic! 🙂
That’s it. Jesse wins the Clever Title Award 2003.
Mr. Welch takes first runner-up and Mr. Sanchez goes home with Turtle Wax.
Not to be a party pooper, but “Triumph …” was filmed in 1934, long before most of the most odious aspects of the NAZI regime came into full flower. I am not trying to defend Leni’s actions, however he life was slightly more complicated than the likes of Jesse Walker will admit. Thus if “Triumph…” is a mark against her, films like “Tiefland” and her photographic essays (which are largely about Africa – she loved the cultures and natural splendor of that continent) are the opposite.
Roger Ebert called Death Wish “quasi-fascist”, and Pauline Kael called Dirty Harry “fascist”. Since Dirty Harry was a police officer, Kael was a little more accurate (do we want an entire police force of Dirty Harrys ignoring the bill of rights?) Both films espoused a similar philosophy, however: the point was not that people should ignore the law, but that the police force’s primary duty was to protect people from violent crime, and that the law and policy of the time was a hindrance to that rather than a help.
One could interpret this as a plea for more “common sense” jurisprudence and policing- and less legalism, following the spirit of the law rather than the letter.
Suppose the city of San Francisco agreed with Dirty Harry’s philosophy, and made him Chief of Police, or Mayor, so he could make create “better” policy? Then it would certainly be fascistic, at least in the colloquial sense of a conservative or reactionary individual as a head of government- ignoring civil liberties as a matter of official policy .
(Incidentally, anyone having info on crime rates for Carmel, CA under Mayor Clint Eastwood, *please* email me…)
As to how this pertains to Riefenstahl, a true fascist: she seemed, in my opinion, to advocate something closer to(but even worse than) my Mayor Dirty Harry Callahan scenario, with Hitler creating “better” or “more common-sense” law and policy.
My blog contains posts on Riefenstahl, the 70’s vigilante film genre, and vigilantism in general (both in entertainment and real life) if anyone is interested in reading more- click on the name to visit.
That’s funny Rachel, I see an long obit and a seperate article discussing her in today’s LA Times. Got a bone to pick or something? Yeah, the LA Times pisses me off too, but do you have to lie?
Good point about Owens, though. I wonder how she got the top brass to leave that part in?
Leni was a genius and every frickin’ shot Bud Greenspan and any other sports film maker ever put on film is descended from her work. Here in LA, every time an old Commie dies the LATimes rushes to praise the hack’s work to the skies. But since Leni was a woman and ambitious, talented, and dead wrong on politics, she’s relegated to a footnote. She’s the best female director ever and one of the top documentary film makers.
In Olympia, she could easily have left out Jesse owens and the Nazi’s reaction to him but she didn’t. And she did her own climbing stunts in Pitz Palu. She’s far, far more complicated than her recent obits would let on.
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