-Caveat Lector- I don't know. Being Hitler's lover, a fact omitted from this article, certainly says something. I'm not sure what, but something.
on 8/10/02 6:16 AM, Euphorian at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > -Caveat Lector- > > From http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,482-379192,00.html > > Opinion > > > August 10, 2002 > > A genius of film forever in the frame with the Nazis > ben macintyre > > > In 1926, Adolf Hitler watched a silent film entitled > The Sacred Mountain, one of the mystical Teutonic mountain epics then in > vogue. He was > particularly captivated by a scene in which a striking young actress named > Leni Riefenstahl > performed an airy seaside dance, a sort of Aryan Beauty and the Beach. Eight > years later, > he asked the 32-year-old Riefenstahl, by then an acclaimed and accomplished > film-maker in > her own right, to make a movie of the Nazi Party�s annual mass rally at > Nuremberg. �I am > not looking for a newsreel,� Hitler reportedly told her, �but an artistic > document.� > > He got what he wanted: the greatest work of art to emerge from Nazism, a > fascinating > fascist masterpiece of propaganda, a creation of the highest art in the > service of the basest > politics. > > Riefenstahl�s films are seldom screened now, and never without controversy, > but the > techniques of cinematography she pioneered have endured, as has Riefenstahl > herself, the > most troubling artist of the 20th century, and an enduring enigma. > > On August 22 Leni Riefenstahl will be 100 years old. Her birthday sees the > premiere of > Impressions Under Water, a 45-minute documentary shot beneath the Indian > Ocean, her > first film for 50 years. Meanwhile the film-maker will soon get the full > bio-epic treatment > herself, with Jodi Foster in the title role. None of this attention is likely > to make Riefenstahl > any easier to understand for, as Ray M�ller showed in his brilliant 1993 > documentary film > The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl, this is a biography of tense > internal > contradiction: between beauty and truth, aesthetics and politics, art and > manipulation. > Nazism might have lacked much of its lethal (and enduring) glamour without > Riefenstahl, > but the art of cinema would have been far poorer. > > Riefenstahl made two films during the Third Reich � Triumph of the Will, > depicting the > 1934 Nuremberg rallies, and Olympia, about the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Both > were > inspired, inspiring and horrible. > > From the opening shot of the Fuhrer�s plane descending from the golden > heavens, Triumph > of the Will is the ultimate artistic realisation of the Nazi ideal, an > iconography of > totalitarianism depicted in ways that were then revolutionary, mixing staged > with genuine > footage. Brownshirts on the march, forming great fiery swastikas in the > Nuremberg night > with their flaming torches; enraptured young faces, upturned to the light. The > effect is both > entrancing and repulsive. > > In Olympia, Riefenstahl�s art is still more remarkable. The New Yorker film > critic Pauline > Kael judged Riefenstahl �one of the dozen or so creative geniuses who have > ever worked in > the film medium�. Olympia is a 220-minute elegy to the human athletic form. > True, she > dwells lovingly on Jesse Owens, black hero of a supposedly inferior race, but > finally this is a > film about victory, conquest and power, the attempted theft of the Greek > Olympic ideal by > the would-be Master Race. Its opening sequence includes a shot of the nude > athletic form > of Riefenstahl herself, arms outstretched to greet the new dawn. > > That image is one of the most beautiful and powerful in cinema, and one of the > most > disturbing. Riefenstahl and her defenders insist she pursued beauty only as an > aesthetic > ideal; but in the hands of the Nazis, the pursuit of beauty was the > justification for > oppression and murder on a Olympic scale. > > How far was Riefenstahl complicit in Nazism? She never joined the party, was > strongly > defended by her many Jewish friends and even claimed to have challenged > Hitler�s racist > views. She maintained that she had produced pure art, on to which Nazi > politics had been > grafted. In a similar way Friedrich Nietzsche�s writings were hijacked by > Nazism with the > connivance of his grisly sister Elisabeth. > > �What did I do that was political?" Riefenstahl demanded in a 1965 interview, > while > maintaining that Triumph of the Will is artistic reportage. �It reflects the > truth that was > then, in 1934, history. It is therefore a documentary, not a propaganda film.� > > That adamantly maintained naivete is what ultimately condemns Leni > Riefenstahl, a vaunted > disingenuousness that simply does not chime with the vivid intelligence of her > art. Nietzsche > had been insane for years by the time his complex thoughts were mangled into > simplistic > fascism; Riefenstahl�s acute eye and consciousness run through every frame of > her > evocation of Nazism on film. > > All art is political; Riefenstahl�s art was unmistakably, emphatically so, but > unlike, say, > Albert Speer, she has consistently declined to accept the artist�s moral > responsibility or > apologise for the enormous influence she had within the Nazi project. > > Indeed, her entire career has arguably been a self- exculpating effort to > prove that art and > beauty can be forged in a state of pure independence. In her mountain film The > Blue Light > (1932), Riefenstahl depicted a vision of simple beauty which perishes when > that ideal is > destroyed. �It was my own destiny,� she later claimed. > > She spent years photographing Nuba tribesmen in remotest Sudan, yet even here > were > echoes of Olympia, the idolisation of the human form. �Riefenstahl seems > hardly to have > modified the ideas of her Nazi films,� wrote Susan Sontag. > > In the final stage of her life, Riefenstahl sought refuge beneath the Indian > Ocean. > �Underwater, I am in another world,� she told the writer Gitta Sereny. But > whether on the > mountain, in the desert or under the ocean, the past pursued her, and rightly. > For art can > never be divorced from life and politics, and to pretend otherwise is to > distort both. Perhaps > that moral, more than any amount of cinematic virtuosity, is Riefenstahl�s > inadvertent > legacy. > > Contribute to Debate via [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > Copyright 2002 Times Newspapers Ltd. > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > A<>E<>R > + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + > Forwarded as information only; no automatic endorsement > + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + > In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed > without charge or > profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of > information for > non-profit research and educational purposes only. > + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + > + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + > "Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep > your mouth > shut." > --- Ernest Hemingway > > <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> > DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER > ========== > CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic > screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are > sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- > directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with > major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. > That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and > always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. 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Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html <A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A> http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/";>ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
