> It is certainly a powerful record, and I appreciate it as much as > anybody, but let's not kid ourselves into thinking it's an inser's > view. If she was an insider then she must take her share of the > responsibility for events. She claimed she was not an insider. Her > pictures and movies are not in any way fly-on-the-wall stuff; they are > all rehearsed and cannot possibly be treated as documentary in any > modern sense of the word, so I don't see what glimpse we are getting > of this time. > > Where is the insight in her photographs & films? They are extremely > shallow. She saw only the surface of things. Look at what she has > influenced: advertisements for Calvin Klein; James Bond films; Annie > Leibovitz's celebrity portraits. Flashy, exciting, emotive, but > trivial with no depth. She was ahead of her time. > > > But then I've always tended to think that "art" can stand and be judged > > independent of the artist. Good thing, since many famous painters have been real > > assholes in real life. > > In my opinion you can gain more from the art by knowing about the > artist's life. Knowing that Picasso was Spanish certainly adds to the > power of 'Guernica', for instance. > > -- > Cheers, > Bob mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Well, I admit I tend not to like Picasso's work because he treated women so lousily -- he really did. So I can't say I am totally indifferent to an artist's real life track record. Actually, I am not that fond of cubism, but Picasso's extreme sexism has tended to influence my attitude toward him. For me, his Spanishness is very secondary. ;-) I feel it was an insider's look emotionally, which was the point I made before. It conveys some of the nationalism and insanity that frankly is almost impossible to get otherwise. I said this before. I've never understood how a funny little man like Hitler was able to sway a nation. How Germany (and many, many Germans, I am not discounting the ones who did not go along with him, but many, many did) could get swept up into his insanity. From another country, from later in history, it can be almost incompressible. Until one sees something like Triumph of the Will. Watching it (many long years ago) was the first time I could *see* some of the charisma Hitler had, and could come close to understanding (not in the head, in the gut), how it could happen. Watching the pageantry, watching the march, march of led astray nationalism -- I could begin to see how it was not so impossible. So *that* is the insider's glimpse. Sure it was all orchestrated, but that is exactly the point. The same thing, those very same propaganda approaches, were orchestrated for the German people -- orchestrated exactly to sweep them up in the fervor. So the inside thing I was referring to is the emotional insanity that went on. In that I think Leni did do her job too well. You can get it by watching the film. You can get the *thing* they thought they had. The Reich that would last a thousand years (for was it longer)? She, through her powerful visualization, through her masterful deliberate propaganda, caught the propaganda going on at the time, caught the feeling of indomitable spirit that Hitler and those soldiers thought they had. She caught the "triumph of the will." Now that is art, that she could capture something so basically nutty and incomprehensible. And by showing the rest of us the insanity -- the film by its very powerfulness can explain some of that the insanity as well as it could ever be explained. As well as it can ever be explained. I do not think that is without value. In fact, I think it has a great deal of value. Unless we understand history we are doomed to repeat it. I do not think it couldn't happen again, given the right circumstances. Given the same sort of propaganda, given an insane leader, given nationalism deliberately led astray -- given deliberate attempts to led it astray. The German people prior WWII are no different from people anywhere in any country or any time. Oh, well, I've made my points about as well as I can. You either get what I am saying or not. I remain convinced she captured something valuable, and did it extremely well. And I am not convinced that any one else, any other film maker, could have done the same thing nearly as well. Marnie aka Doe
