The strange love of Leni Riefenstahl

[randy_byers]

The Paramount theater is in the midst of a three-film series of silent German films from 1929. I highly recommend the third film in the series, Asphalt, which is showing next Monday, the 29th. It's a simple, even conventional, story about a naive traffic cop (played by the lead from Metropolis, Gustav Fröhlich, except looking almost butch in gleaming leather boots) who is seduced by an aggressively sexual jewel thief played by Betty Amann. Other than Amann's fascinating character -- quite different from the aloof femme fatales of the era played by Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich -- the main attraction is the high-Ufa style of the production. The sets and lighting and cinematography (by Günther Rittau, who also worked on Metropolis and The Blue Angel) are all outstanding, with more than a hint of the dark urban pleasures of film noir to come.

Last night, I met up with akirlu and libertango to see the second film in the series, The White Hell of Pitz Palu (Die Weiße Hölle vom Piz Palü), which is apparently the pinnacle -- nay, the very peak -- of the strange German genre of the mountain film. The movie was a strange hybrid of nature documentary, with some utterly gorgeous shots of ice crystals and ice caves and swirling, evaporating mists and cloud shadows racing over brilliant fields of snow, mixed with a soapy tale of hubris, the humbling power of Mother Nature, redemption through self-sacrifice, and with an unarticulated love triangle for spice. There was something truly weird about the whole project that I found quite compelling despite the longueurs of the so-called narrative. ("I thought it was only 90 minutes long," Hal protested when we were told it would run just over two hours.) Not the least weird was Leni Riefenstahl, who plays the glamorous tom-boy girlfriend of a feckless man, all the while casting hot looks at the manly but suicidal Gustav Diessl (who played Jack the Ripper in another -- much better -- German film from 1929, Pandora's Box). What strange ecstasies she experiences in this film, asking one man to give his life for another while tears freeze in a crystal mask on her face.

Riefenstahl's directoral debut, before she went on to make propaganda for the Nazis, was another mountain film called The Blue Light (1932), in which she also played the lead. IMDb says: "Junta is hated by the people in the village where she lives, especially by the women, who suspect her of being a witch ..."

Well, if the shoe fits ...

Burn her!

Comments

[baldanders.livejournal.com]

I don't have the details to hand, but Sontag made a convincing case that Riefenstahl fabricated much of her pre-Nazi film history. The Blue Light might have been one of the ones she actually did, though.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure it's legit, from what I've read on the web. At the very least, it's an actual movie that she actually stars in. I'm not sure what aspects of her pre-Nazi career she would have fabricated, but it's undeniably true that she acted in a number of mountain films. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure she lied about the extent of her pro-Nazi activities as well. That is, she was more involved in the the Nazi party than she cared to admit later.

[baldanders.livejournal.com]

I have got to find my copy of Under the Sign of Saturn. My (unreliable) memory is that there was independent evidence for the existence of two mountain films with Riefenstahl. Something like that. Augh! I must find the book.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Well, The Blue Light plus The White Hell of Pitz Palu, make at least two, yeah. I mean, I don't know what more "independent evidence" one needs beyond the fact that one can see that it's her in the films.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Christ, it finally struck home that her name in The Blue Light is Junta! That's hysterical!

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

The mountain films in which she starred that are available on DVD in the US are The Holy Mountain (1926), The White Hell of Pitz Palu (1929), Storm over Mt Blanc (1930), and The Blue Light (1932). S.O.S. Eisberg (1933) is also available and also appears to be an ice and snow adventure, but not in the mountains. The skiing film, White Ecstasy (!) (1931) appears to be available on VHS but not on DVD.

[baldanders.livejournal.com]

Well, that's a definitive reply. Thanks!

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

"Redemption through self-sacrifice"

Oh, is that what that was. It sounds so good when you say it. I thought it was just persisting in being a suicidal egomaniac dumbass. Clearly I have missed the finer points, and the finer emotions, once again.

(BTW, despite the confusing failure of the characters to have the same last name, I'm pretty sure Riefenstahl is supposed to be Feckless Lad's newly minted wife. There was something in the note on the champagne bottle about brautpaar, which I'm pretty sure means "newlyweds".)

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

A quick google suggests that "brautpaar" can either mean bridal couple, bride and groom, or engaged couple.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Bizarre. That sort of ambiguity between newlyweds and fiancees definitely doesn't work in Swedish.

[hal-obrien.livejournal.com]

In all fairness, what I said was, "I thought the web listing said it was 90 minutes long." Which it does.

I'd noticed Diessl's crossover from Pandora as well. But I'd mixed him up with Fritz Kortner (Dr. Schon), and thought he looked so much more "athletic" because of differences in lighting and makeup.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

The IMDb lists four different timings. We should just be thankful we didn't get the 150 minute version! In any event, I'm guessing that part of the restoration that we saw last night was a restoration of footage cut from the previous US release. Somewhere I read a comment about that 75 minute version that it's actually a lot better than this 135 minute version. But which half of the movie did they cut?

Diessll is also the studly young hero (with the drippy girlfriend) in Fritz Lang's wonderful last German film, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933).

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Somewhere I read a comment about that 75 minute version that it's actually a lot better than this 135 minute version. But which half of the movie did they cut?

Every other shot? Seriously, even within the framework of repetition to re-establish scene context, or show the passage of time, the number of times we see the exact same shot over and over seemed excessive to me. I'm sure I've been ruined by modern rapid-fire filmmaking technique, but I couldn't help getting a certain, "Yes, yes, I get it. What's next?" feeling whenever we hit the third or fourth shot of the same dripping icicles or Föhn-driven spindrift snow skirling along the same ridge. I think the film could be much improved by picking a representative subset of the absolutely gorgeous scenic cinematography and letting it do the work of its near duplicates.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Yes, you're right about that. One got the feeling that Fanck was so in love with the imagery that he got just a leetle bit carried away with it. One shudders to think how it was ballooned out to 150 minutes.

Another thing that could have gone was the whole subplot about the five (or was it four?) students from Frankfurt who try to get to the top first. Clearly another strand of hubris, but pretty much completely unnecessary narratively. Although that was the strand with the best visual pyrotechnics, of course.

But there's another sense in which they could have gotten rid of the story entirely and just shown the nature photography as an abstract hommage to the mountains or something.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I didn't mind the students as a subplot. For one thing, they make a number of aspects of the A-plot more plausible. It's the ego threat of being beaten out by the students that gets Diessl to consent to Riefenstahl tagging along at all, and presumably keeps him from deciding to take the other two back off the mountain at various points when circumstances would suggest that turning back would be wiser, and later, it's all that faffing about in the ice-caves that provides at least some account for why we don't get on with the search and rescue of the lost trio sooner.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Fair enough, but I thought they should have found the lost wife frozen in a pillar of ice, too, just for added Teutonic romantic morbidity. Perhaps with an inexplicable white rose clutched in her perfect teeth.