Bela Balazs and Leni Riefenstahl: The Blue Light.

Leni Riefenstahl, Belá Balázs and THE BLUE LIGHT.

The Self-Staging of a Martyr.

„Leni Riefenstahl, one of the most interesting women of the century, can now look back upon almost one hundred years of life which have been filled with both highs and lows. Her party conference film is praised as being the best propaganda film of all time, and Olympia is in the top ten of the world’s best films. Over one hundred dissertations have analyzed her artistic work. The women’s movement elected her as a cult figure. Whilst the artist, at the age of 96, works on an under water film with her longtime companion, the name of Riefenstahl is already legendary.“[1] These words close Anna Maria Sigmund’s in many ways typical essay about Leni Riefenstahl which was published just two years ago in a tellingly titled book called Die Frauen der Nazis ( The Women of the Nazis ).

Leni Riefenstahl is still diving, and the wealth of books, films, essays and articles about her continues to expand. As one of the „Women of the Nazis“ she marks the spot to which West German post-war society as a whole preferred to draw back: the defiant martyrdom of disappointed love, an apparently ideology-free space in which the defeated wallow in the wounds of abused belief and betrayed ideals. In this sense the Germans were used to regarding themselves as a collective of „accused“ (as Martin Walser put it) and abused at a time and – as a whole – as „women of the Nazis“. Taking over the Germans with force, the Nazis were in any case, something different to the Germans themselves.

In her memoirs, Leni Riefenstahl is a victim of violence right from the start. The childhood which she portrays is molded by male pestering, by a patriarchal father who doesn’t understand her genius, and by child murderers (she says „Kinderaufschlitzer“) in dark hallways. And nothing changes throughout her life, including sexual advances made by Joseph Goebbels, which according to other sources than Riefenstahl, not at all seem to be very probable. Riefenstahls „traumatic experiences” appear on the surface, like a projection of dangerous and frightening wishes. Indeed in reading these scenes one has the feeling that this all fits together too well, as if reality and fantasy become one: as in film.

Even today, Leni Riefenstahl models herself as a victim and the analogies which she uses for this purpose are significant. The motto for her memoirs she takes from a Jew and a notorious genius: Albert Einstein, who complains about the lies which are prepared about him.

Even today, Leni Riefenstahl’s limited cinematic oevre polarizes the discussion about art and ideology, aesthetics and National Socialism. On the one hand she is, and will always remain an untouchable, a political propagandist, on the other she seems a victim of abuse.

Examples of populist apologetics are numerous, and all are pretending to break a taboo. Alice Schwarzer’s article for the feminist magazine EMMA (on the occasion of an exhibition about Leni Riefenstahl in Potsdam 1999) is representative for the tone: „Because that was Leni Riefenstahl’s fate: her belief in pure art, in a form removed from its content [...] 70 years of work, of which 3 months were in Hitler’s service - and she is regarded her whole life long as a Nazi-artist. [...] Had it not been for the murderous interlude of the 1000jährige Reich, euphoria for Riefenstahl would have probably gone a lot further today: The director would have been considered the female film genius of this century, and her early film THE BLUE LIGHT would have been a cult film for the women’s movement as well as the environmental movement.“[2] In 1972 Herman Weigel was writing: „And the fact that the last proofs of her ability remain behind this eternity is the result of a battle which she had to fight against those who, both before and after 45, sought to obstruct her work, a battle which she ultimately lost.“[3] „Before and after 45“ who is this eternal enemy? Who are these people who always stay the same? The Jews, the Nazis, men?

More convincingly than anyone else, Leni Riefenstahl embodied the role of abused innocence, abused ideals and beliefs within the collective conscience of post-war Germany. Perhaps she succeeded in this because she had started to play the part before 1933. Indeed perhaps it was that very ability which appealed to Hitler as he admired her first film in 1932.

A production of an ambivalent self-sacrifice, a woman’s martyrdom, and described by Leni Riefenstahl in the subtitle as a „legend“, it was this film which decisively led to establishing her fame: THE BLUE LIGHT. The story behind this unusual film production is, although lesser known, surrounded by legends itself. For there was a writer and film critic who had a part to play and whose biography could not have been more contrary to that of Riefenstahl’s. He was Béla Balázs. The author, born in 1884 in Hungary and of Hungarian, Jewish and German descent, discovered Communism in 1919, yet admittedly more out of romantic-spiritual reasons, but nonetheless final, as was the case with his friend and companion Georg Lukács with whom he had a highly contradictory relationship.

THE BLUE LIGHT was to be his last film production in Germany, and the start of a career as a film-maker for Leni Riefenstahl. Admittedly it was not to be feature films at which she would succeed in the following years, but rather elaborate byproducts of National Socialist mass meetings in which she participated with a style of documentary film of a technical extravagance never seen before. Would anyone remember Leni Riefenstahl today, had it not been for her party rally films (her „Reichsparteitagsfilme“)? Would the glorification of the athletic body in her Olympia still be an issue had it not been for the sounding-board of evil? Leni Riefenstahl would have probably ended up like the almost forgotten Arnold Fanck who attempted to establish a German film genre in the twenties which was meant to compete with the Wild West and its borderless spaces: the „mountain-film“. Leni Riefenstahl tried out her role as a female medium in the male struggle against nature in Arnold Fanck’s films, before starting to produce this role herself.

Born in 1902, Helene Bertha Amalie Riefenstahl first trained as a dancer with the Berlin Russian ballet and Mary Wigman which led to a short but successful career as a free dancer. But a knee injury was to put a halt to this after little more than 6 months. Film was now to become her personal „triumph of will.“ „I feel that I must understand the technique very well, that a film without technique is nothing.“ She wrote these words in 1933 in her book „Struggle in Snow and Ice.“ „And many years will pass before I succeed in imposing my own will on the film. Not until ‚The blue Light‘, which was to be entirely my own property, did I enjoy working with the same dedication as I did on ‚Holy Mountain.‘”[4]

If one is to follow her own portrayal, the story is a marriage of struggle, will and fate. Initially she is captivated by Arnold Fanck’s film The Mountain of Fate. On meeting Luis Trenker in the mountains she answers his question regarding her climbing skills with the words, „I will learn, I think I can do anything if I want it badly enough.“[5] She meets Arnold Fanck and convinces him into believing in her as well, she overcomes her knee injury and receives the leading role in The Holy Mountain (1925/26). Siegfried Kracauer had already viciously commented on the film in 1927: „A gigantic composition of body culture-fantasy, sunshine idiocy and cosmic capers.“[6] Kracauer sees nothing more than the incarnation of irrationality in the (mountain) film. „Perhaps there are small groups of youth dotted around Germany who strive to meet that which they call mechanization through a carried-away indulgence in nature, through a sort of desperate escape into a misty concoction of vague sentiment. As an expression of their way of not existing, the film is a great achievement.“[7] In the face of his comment about indulgence in nature, Kracauer of course fails to notice that it is a form of indulgence – indulgence of technique - which actually distinguishes the film, the „unique connection between premodern longing and advanced technology,“[8] which Eric Rentschler emphasized. „Aside from snowy landscapes, layers of cloud and unpopulated spaces, there also appear tourists, health resorts, cars, aeroplanes, star and weather stations in the film.“[9] In no way do Fanck’s films depict untouched nature as a central theme, but rather the „touching“ side of things, man’s struggle with the forces of nature, the synthesis of mountains and machines, the euphoria of the mechanization of the experience of space and time.

The empty space in which man strays, this sphere, „4000m above“ in which, as Balázs writes in 1931, „everyday occurrences are not about to happen,“ is a world of the menacing cancellation of the subject in that space, and of its preservation at all cost. „There is nothing more fantastic than nature in which we do not feel at home. That which we see there is pure, unadulterated nature. That we can see it is completely unnatural since it is not designed for the human eye.“[10] Such crossing of boundaries, such an experience of nature, remained admittedly bound to the experience of technology, the identification with the machine.

With the same pathos with which he propagated Shackleton’s film about the South Pole, the film critic and Communist Balázs also defended Arnold Fanck’s mountain film against its left-winged and liberal critics in 1931. „One should let them wither in their comfortable ‚matter-of-factness‘ (Sachlichkeit) which demands no devotion, no sacrifice, no fanaticism.“[11] Only those who know how to form the dramatic fight with nature emotively, who are involved with the struggle for existence, who can see themselves in the fight, can take the social struggle at all seriously. „Heroic battle scenes of the creature which had overstepped the margins of its defined nature and stands eye to eye with the dark universe. Beyond the boundary of life where only the miracle of human will stands firm.“[12]

In planning her first film, Leni Riefenstahl had the miracle of human will in mind too. She had resolved „to make a mountain film in which the woman should play a more important role than the mountain“.[13] The story which she wanted to tell is about a village in the mountains whose young men are drawn by a magical blue light which shines down from the top of a mountain when there is a full moon. At night, the men fall regularly to their death. Only one young wild girl, an outsider, knows the secret of the mountain. Leni Riefenstahl attributed the origin of the plot partly to an alpine legend, and partly to herself. However, without Leni Riefenstahl ever admitting to it, the film is actually an adaption of Gustav Renker’s novel Bergkristall (Mountain Crystal), just as Fanck’s film, Der Heilige Berg (The Holy Mountain), can be traced back to one of Renker’s books.

Béla Balázs, the Hungarian-Jewish immigrant in Berlin was filled with enthusiasm for both Arnold Fanck and Leni Riefenstahl in 1931. In 1924, his first film-book, Der Sichtbare Mensch (The Visible Man), decisively co-founded the German language film theory. His last essay about the film, which appeared before 1933 in Germany, is his forward to Arnold Fanck’s film-book entitled Stürme über dem Montblanc (Storms over Mountblanc), from which I have just quoted. Whilst Siegfried Kracauer and other left-wing and liberal authors mock Fanck – and the „mountain-film“ as a whole – as an anti-rationalistic and pre-fascist romance, Balázs hopes for a fairytale-like expression of a creation drama between man and nature from this freshly produced (and in fact soon exhausted) genre. When, probably in May 1931, Leni Riefenstahl asked him whether he would be prepared to write a screenplay out of her film idea, drafted only in note-form, he spontaneously agreed.

Balázs knew Riefenstahl from Arnold Fanck’s films and – even if he found it necessary to defend Fanck against critics from his own political camp – the participation of leftwingers on mountain films was in no way unusual. For example, before he had to emigrate to Paris for being a Communist, Paul Dessau wrote the music to the films Stürme über dem Montblanc, Der weisse Rausch, Abenteuer im Engadin, SOS Eisberg and Nordpol Ahoi! (Storms over Montblanc, The White Ecstacy, Adventure in Engadin, SOS Iceburg and Northpole-Ahoi!). And Helmar Lerski who emigrated to Palestine in 1933 participated as a cameraman in the production of Der heilige Berg (Holy Mountain). Yet Balázs did not view his work for the film The blue Light from a financial perspective, but rather regarded it as the fulfillment of a desire.

In the early summer of 1931 Balázs transformed Riefenstahl’s expose into a screenplay. Carl Mayer also had a say in some of the discussions. Riefenstahl searched independently for financial assistance for her „film-fairytale“ in which she wanted to play the main role as well as direct. Confident of her charisma, she managed to convince not just her old admirer, producer Harry Sokal into investing 50.000 German Marks into the venture, but also founded her own production company, „L.R Studiofilm“, and she gathered a small team with which she wanted to shoot the film - to be shot at an essentially „original setting“ in the Alps. The small group of staff consisted of just six workers, among them her former partner Hans Schneeberger (camera), and Mathias Wieman as the main actor. The filming lasted from July until September, with Balázs coming in for four weeks to assist Riefenstahl with her job as director. Riefenstahl’s account of the filming is more reminiscent of an adventure of a commune than of a film production. „We were like a family. Everything was paid for out of one pot. Each person made the effort not to dip into the pot too much so that it would last for as long as possible. [...]In the evening we sat by the log fire together and discussed the scenes. Every individual gave their opinion.“[14] At the premiere on March 24, 1932, the film was titled as being a joint project between Leni Riefenstahl, Béla Balázs, and Hans Schneeberger.

Riefenstahl and Balázs had developed dramatic visual effects during the shoot. Riefenstahl also expected a magical presence from the Sarntal peasants who she had managed to win over for the filming. Their part in the film would be quite ambiguous, as a symbol of rugged „earthliness“ (Riefenstahl) but also as an expression of materialistic seduction: a traditional world which has a part to play in its own decline.

In September 1931, Balázs was still taking part in the short shootings in the Berlin studio. Then he received news from Moscow. Three years after his proposal of a film about the Hungarian soviet republic, the project was now to be realized. Balázs was invited to Moscow to take over the screenplay and direction of the project. That Balázs offered to arrange an invitation for Leni Riefenstahl to accompany him to Moscow remains a rumor up until today.

Whilst Balázs battled in vain for the realization of his film, a major conflict arose back in Berlin during the editing of The Blue Light. Riefenstahl reports to Balázs about it in a letter dated February 21, 1932: „Dear Bela, I have been waiting for news from you for ages and am beginning to think that you have forgotten us.“[15] Balázs had obviously written from Moscow and inquired about the progress of the work. Riefenstahl complains about the work which hardly allows her a night’s sleep. At the first showing of the cut film to Sokal and Arnold Fanck, the result is said to have been „shattering“, with the film coming across as „tedious and incomprehensible“, „insanely boring and stiff, exaggerated and unnatural“, although Fanck and Sokal were themselves very taken by the quality of the filming.

Arnold Fanck became convinced that the film should be re-worked. „What happened next is indescribable. If I was still hoping that only a few chops and changes would be made, this hope was completely destroyed since Frank [amazingly, Riefenstahl manages to constantly misspell Fanck‘s name] left no two cuts together, but instead tore the whole work apart, piece by piece, and started to stick it back together completely anew.“ After two nervous breakdowns, she finally retired from the work. With astonishing frankness she writes, „The result of Frank‘s editing of the first acts was mainly very positive for the film, but not for my own psyche.“ And she says, Fanck‘s new version led to „a simply fantastically edited moon night when compared to our harmless and naive picturesque landscape.“ Riefenstahl clearly favoured Fanck‘s cuts of the first two acts, yet she did not agree with the third and took the material away from Fanck until she was in a „state of good health“, with Fanck taking over the work again when she collpased another time. On the reworking of the sixth act, Riefenstahl was back on track, also the day of her letter to Balázs, and the last act was to be finished during the following days. In the meantime there were „major clashes“ between Fanck and Carl Mayer who was also a part of the project, and also the music composer, Giuseppe Becce, who was to rearrange his composition within a matter of days so that it fitted the new cut: all of this just for weeks before the film‘s premier. „Basically, dear Bela, struggles and difficulties which you can’t even start to imagine, and from which, thank heavens you have been spared.“

Indeed at the same time Balázs went through troubles in Moscow which Riefenstahl never imagined nor experienced. His film on the Hungarian revolution was hardly completed and banned before ever reaching the cinemas. No copy of the film was found anymore. But back to Riefenstahl: she will come to re-tell the story of the filming of „her“ film somewhat differently in her memoirs. „What I was given to see was a mutilation. What had Fanck done to my film! I have never found out whether this was an act of revenge, or whether he simply had no relationship with the subject.“[16] She now maintains that she had saved the film, re-cut it from a thousand pieces all on her own until the result was, finally, „a proper film“.

On March 24, 1932, The Blue Light was premiered in the Zoo Palace in Berlin. On March 26, 1932 the Film-Kurier reported: „a courageous woman who believes in her work and obsession has blown the dust from the cinema skies [...] Regarding cultural-politics and national hygene the significance of this ‚back to nature film‘ surpasses everything, this bewitchment of town-city humanity to a connection with the cosmos.“[17] And this is followed by thoroughly cryptic praise for Balázs: „Béla Balász [sic] and the sensitive help from Carl Mayer cleanse the tragic story of the crystals from the mountain gorge from all materialism. If the miracle of the crystals is converted to money and riches, then there must not be a trace of the rest of a ‚Marxist‘ fairytale[...]“. And finally on balance: „A film to be placed alongside the unforgettables. A film which will last. [A] film of German style and art.“

Yet there were also more critical voices to be heard, such as that of Hermann Sinsheimer who compares The blue Light with Chaplin’s Goldrush in the Berliner Tageblatt (March 26, 1932), a comparison in which The Blue Light comes out the worse. In 1976, the effects of such criticism were still leading to controversy between Harry Sokal and Leni Riefenstahl. In a letter to Spiegel, Sokal claimed that Leni Riefenstahl had become a „passionate antisemitist“ after reading Mein Kampf due to negative criticism in the Berlin Press. „The most prominent amongst these critics happened to be Jews. [...] Enraged, she threw the newspaper onto my desk. 'How come these foreigners who don’t understand our mentality or inner life have the right to destroy my work? Thank God it won’t go on for much longer! As soon as the Führer comes into power, these newspapers will only be allowed to write about their own people. They will appear in Hebrew‘”.[18] We can’t rely too much on Sokal here, who had his very personal reasons for being disappointed by Riefenstahl – and who tried to join forces with her and Balázs after 1945 again to produce a new version of The Blue Light. However:

In a conversation with Leni Riefenstahl in the Film Kurier in 1938 one could read: „The stronger and more sustained the success amongst the public, the more negative the behavior of the non-Aryan section of the press“.[19] The Jewish critics, she claimed, had prevented a better commercial success of the film. But now, in 1976, Riefenstahl was countering in Spiegel that she did not read Mein Kampf until April 1932, and first met Hitler in May. And she lists her Jewish friends, from Stephan Lorant to Manfred George: „full-blooded Jews“, as she calls them, as opposed to the „half Jew“ Sokal. She „told Hitler right from the start [...], that I completely rejected his race theory.“[20] In her memoires she also makes it just as clear: „I made a definite distinction between Hitler‘s political ideas and him as a person. [...] I refused his racist ideas unreservedly.“[21]

It has not been verified when Riefenstahl actually first saw Hitler before their meeting in May 1932. In her memoirs she talks of having heard Hitler‘s name for the first time during The Blue Light‘s first touring, but she also writes of having already visited one of his appearances at the end of February in the Berlin Sportpalast (just before the presidential election in March). She describes what then followed as an ecstatic experience, an „almost apocalyptic vision“, or, more exactly, like an orgasm: „It was as if the earth was moving under my feet - like a hemispher splitting open down the middle and a monstrous flow of water rushing out, so powerful that it touched the heavens and shook the earth.“[22] In May Riefenstahl visited Hitler in Wilhelmshaven and discovered the sort of impact THE BLUE LIGHT had had on him: „Once we come to power“, he said, „you must make my films.“[23] Riefenstahl portrays her „fateful meeting“ like a meeting between two artists, two ascetics of will, two rebels, two people at risk whose blood would be sought, and who would devote their lives to their work. „Until I have completed my work, I may love no woman“, said (in her memoirs) a shy Führer who remained chaste towards her. „Mind out for assassination attempts“, she said when leaving.[24]

The film The Blue Light which arrived in the cinemas as an „L.R Studio Film from H.R Sokal Film Productions Limited“ was, despite mixed opinion amongst the critics, a success in Germany and also abroad, in fascist Italy in 1932 and in America in 1934.

By this stage Béla Balázs was no longer appearing in the film credits. During the whole of 1932 he still waited in vain for news about the reception of the film. Two months after the premiere, Riefenstahl had gone to Greenland to work on SOS Eisberg, and did not return until October. Balázs was also waiting for his royalties for the work on the financially quite successful low-budget film. In December 1933 Leni Riefenstahl seemed it a good idea to assure herself of publicist support in the face of Balázs‘ demands. On December 11 she wrote a power of attorney on writing paper from the Kaiserhof Hotel in Berlin - a traditional meeting place of the Nazi elite: „I place Mr. Gauleiter Julius Streicher from the Nürnberg publishers of ‚Stürmer‘ in charge of the demands made upon me by the Jew Belá Balacs [sic]. Leni Riefenstahl.“[25]

In those days Leni Riefenstahl new perfectly well, just as today, the difference between a „full-blooded“ and a „half“ Jew. And she made use of anti-Semitic motives whenever it seemed beneficial to her. Traces of this are even found in the diaries of Goebbels from whom (as she later writes) she had always felt persued. Following a conversation with Leni Riefenstahl on February 5, 1939 he notes: „This evening Leni Riefenstahl told me about her visit to America. She gave me an exhaustive impression that was everything but pleasant. [...] The Jews rule with terror and boycott. But for how much longer?“[26]

Just as mysteriously as Balázs‘ name disappeared from the film credits in 1933, he reappeared in 1952 as „screenplay assistant“ when Leni Riefenstahl re-released the film without the help of Harry Sokal. „Script, direction and camera- arrangement“ she demanded for herself.

The original reels had disappeared and the dubbed reels confiscated by the French. Yet with the help of an old copy Riefenstahl could reconstruct the film out of the remains of material which the Americans returned in 1950. Both versions are identical apart from one essential point: the original framework-story was left out, resulting in a cancelling out of the time difference between the present and pre-modern world. „Instead, we now have a melancholy tale addressed to a timeless present.“[27]

The original version begins in the present. We see the village of Santa Maria, children playing. A man and his girlfriend, clothed androgynously in a trench coat and flying goggles drive into the village. The children offer to sell them crystals and pictures of Junta, the girl from the mountains and around whom the legend evolves. A child in the inn gets the album which tells Junta’s story. A locket with her picture inside is fixed to the cover of the album. And this is the point at which the second version of the film from 1952 starts: In the spray of a waterfall, the girl, Junta, collects crystals and edible berries. A coach comes close by on the road. A man gets out, and looks around him helplessly. The door of the coach closes without a sound, the coachman is silent, out of the window stare peasant faces and the coach rolls away. It is clear right from the start that this is a different world, and that there is a secret here, like in the famous coach scene in Nosferatu. Peasants return singing from the fields, symbolizing the simple and traditional world into which the visitor, a painter from the town, now enters. On the side of the road is an altar in memory of the young men who have fallen from the mountain.

Junta, the girl from the wilderness, creeps around the village at night selling berries and the crystals which she has found, awakening the interest of a dealer. Antonio, the landlord‘s son pesters her, yet she manages to get away.

The world of the villagers is a gloomy one of drive and convention. On this particular evening there is a full moon, the curse under which the village lies. From the peak of the mountain, from Monte Cristallo, there then shines a secretive blue light. Junta the rebel starts to interest the painter. She is said to know the way, she is a witch. And before the moon rises, mothers and fathers lock up their boys, closing all doors and windows.

Soon after the painter goes to visit Junta in her alpine hut. And he stays with her, painting her, not wanting to go back to the other people. But then there is a full moon again and he follows her as she, sleepwalking, climbs the mountain. During this night, the landlord‘s son from the village is also successfully lured away by the light. Whilst Junta squeezes through a gap in the rock, a secret path in the mountain, Antonio falls. Junta, however, reaches the source of the light, a cave full of crystals.

The painter shares the secret with the villagers, wanting to transform the curse into a blessing and the magical light into a wealth of valuable crystals. The villagers loot the mountain. All Junta finds the next day are bare, shattered rocks. In mourning over the destruction of pure beauty which knew no purpose, she falls, helplessly from the rock face. All the painter finds is her dead body, lightly covered with glossy reflections, as with the spray from the waterfall.

The 1952 abridged framework ends with the modern lovers from the town having not just experienced the tourist side of the legend, but ultimately also the spell of nature, its unbroken power bringing them to a stand still. At the end they watch the waterfall, spellbound, from whose spray the girl emerged at the start of the film, and whose scenery provides the backdrop for her death. "The elemental, the ornamental, and the instrumental come together in Santa Maria‘s cottage culture industry. Its offerings unite premodern sentiment and modern rationale in a manner that anticipates National Socialism‘s synthesis of romanticism and technology.“[28]

The history of verdicts on the film The Blue Light range from Siegfried Kracauer‘s well-known judgement up to over-exaggerated apologia, depending on the viewpoint of the observer. Kracauer notices: „Certainly, at the end, the village is pleased about the stroke of luck and the myth seems to have been defeated, but this rational solution is summarized in such a way that it heightens rather than lessens Junta‘s significance. That which remains is the longing for wealth and the sadness about a world deprived of its mystique in which the wonderful becomes merchandise.“[29] For Herman Weigel, this is exactly what Riefenstahl would fight against. He believes that Riefenstahl was defending the world of dream against reality. Yet which dream does the audience dream in this film where the painter‘s love brings ruin to innocence, where innocence is sacrificed to progress, where the legend nonetheless or even more captures and improves the modern visitor and the blue light still shines even after the cave has been looted? And it all happens because it has to happen, held together by one woman who is sacrificed and who sacrifices herself.

Gisela von Wysocki and Eric Rentschler have indicated the ambivalence of this self-chosen and self-staged sacrificial role in which sexual desire and punishment fantasies, myth and mechanization, innocence and rape are inextricably linked with one other. „Junta personifies pagan, elemental life. Her rag dress belongs to the realm of sanctified femininity.“[30] As such she is both magical subject and object of a broken spell and she can not be anything else: victim and priest. „Riefenstahl assumes a double role, actress in a punitive fantasy in which she acts upon herself, at once victim and victimizer, masochist and sadist, both the object and the agent of violence.“[31] Such self-sacrificial and ultimately destructively indulgent priesthood of the feminine is very close to fascist „rebellion.“ „The fascist revolt promised a vagabond life in eternal expanses and in new times. [...] The fascists usurped the language of the social outsider. They saw themselves as the Germans who had been deceived by the pass of civilization: daring rebels, pushing forward from the fringes, demanding their rights. [...]In this tone, the ‘ratcatcher’ tone, the fascists meet Leni Riefenstahl as accomplices.“[32] From this point of view, Leni Riefenstahl‘s second film Tiefland (Lowland), planned in 1934 and not brought to fruition until 1954, is to be understood as a fantasy about self sacrifice and revolt, but quite different from the way Helma Sanders-Brahms[33] or Thomas Koebner have done it. There can be no suggestion here that Riefenstahl had „acted out the estrangement from Hitler.“[34] Nor was the realization of the film in any way „officially hindered“[35] by the National Socialists for political reasons, but rather by the calamities of war, rivalries in Berlin and Leni Riefenstahl‘s illnesses. The story of a dancer (played by Leni Riefenstahl herself) who falls for the erotically overpowering Baron Don Sebastian (played by Bernhard Minetti) who turns off the peasants‘s water supply so as to care for his own bulls, and who is ultimately killed by a shepherd, a rebel of the people, in a duel, is in no way a parabel of a political assassination of a tyrant, however tempting this interpretation may be. For Leni Riefenstahl at least, Hitler was no tyrant living out his sexual fantasies, he was far more the ascetic rebel of the people, and thus the opposite of a noble „ruler“ who even in the final version of 1954 was accompagnied by a „Jud Süß“-like advisor and administrator, whispering devilish methods into the ear of the energetic rake Don Sebastian. More clearly than in The Blue Light, Riefenstahl puts the corrupted world of the plains against the pureness of the mountains, the atavistic innocence of the shepherd (who is just as much a guardian, a leader) who defeats the wolf.

Particularly in the role of the woman, Eric Rentschler sees a radicalization which reaches further than the male fantasy of threatening „nature“ which is the hallmark of a Fanck mountain film, towards a production of the fantasy of the self-destruction of a woman, towards the tragedy of „the sacrifice of a woman for the good of a community“, a „role of a martyr which corresponds with the vision of the painter who wonderfully transforms Junta into a mythical being. [...] With one glance which is both intuitive, subconscious and radical, she manifactures , according to male demand, images of female self-sacrifice.“[36] Rentschler does however lose the sense of „collective“ authorship through this a little. Which were the images over which Riefenstahl and Balázs, Schneeberger, Mayer and Fanck argued and then quite spontaneously agreed? To where are the looks directed? Where do nature and technology merge in this film? Where does the cyclical order of the myth, which continuously finds its expression in the full moon, crystalize? What is this blue light that streams out of the cave, the dream light which temptingly reaches the valley like bait and hypnotizes a somnambulary female medium to such an extent that it goes climbing up the face of a cliff in its sleep and discovers an entrance into the heart of the mountain?

The cave itself, the secret Junta keeps, can easily be seen as the fantasy of a vagina which is ultimately plundered and destroyed by penetrating men. But the mountain as a whole, its optical apparatus as it presents itself is more than this. The light directs the staring eyes towards itself, magically drawing forth the glances which hostily meet the traveler from the town, which fix themselves on the woman, which tells about furtive emotions and which coldly estimate the value of the crystals. Under the full moon, all these glances know just one target, the large light-focussed lense of the opening of the cave under the peak of the mountain. The central force of the film is an enormously enlarged projector whose film, the wishes of which are focussed together into a ray of light, directly throws the desire into the eyes of the people. The focussed light produced from the crystals captures their wills, particularly those of the young men and whose initiation, whose ‚journey to the other side‘ of the world (that is to the other side of the lense) proves fatal as long as the secret of the mountain and the power of the witch who is unwittingly protecting it are unknown. The artist from the town, the traveler who has no ties aside from his own curiosity, ultimately breaks the spell of Junta and the mountain, breaking the spell of the projection machinery. The cosmic ecstasy of the full moon is not enough to conjure up this state of general somnambulism alone. Between the forces of nature and the desires of man, the film writes this „unorganic life“, this magical display of energy which Wilhelm Worringer tried to define as the vision of Expressionism, the most powerful intensification of the geometrical principal of “crystalline unorganic matter”[37]: „frenzy of movement which leaves all possibilities of organic movement behind. The movement pathos within this enlivened geometry - a forplay to enlivened mathematics in Gothic architecture - violates our feelings to an unnatural achievement of strength which is too much for them.“[38] The apparently rational solution of the film’s myth, the „explanation“ of the hypnotic light through the crystal cave, and its destruction in the favor of economy and „enlightenment“ merely gives rise to a new myth. If the light is not given any supernatural power, Junta’s ability to sleepwalk her way up the mountain in a dream-like state to the source of the light remains a puzzle. The projector/mountain which pierces the top of the sky like a needle is also similar to the lines of force of a gothic cathedral which reach towards the light.

In discovering the witch‘s secret, the initiated frees himself and the others from her and from the spell of the mountain. Indeed, as Christian Metz writes: „By breaking the toy one loses it, and that is the position of the semiotic discourse: it feeds on this loss, it puts in its place the hoped for advance of knowledge: it is an inconsolable discourse that consoles itself, that takes itself by the hand and goes to work. Lost objects are the only ones one is afraid to lose, and the semiologist is he who rediscovers them from the other side...“[39]

The consequence of the film is not a romantic approval of Junta‘s dream, but a fatalistic look at the necessity of breaking the spell which results in a second myth: the transformation of the girl into a mountain legend. Junta’s death brings no salvation and yet it is necessary. Everyday life continues as it did before: the children who sell crystals and holy pictures at the start of the film, the tourists who are amazed at Junta‘s story, and even we ourselves who enjoy the spectacle of her death. The initiation into the secret of the cosmic cycle, the mountain and the light compensate the betrayal, making it seem inevitable.

It appears that Riefenstahl and Balázs had related a legend together and yet at the same time there are two stories, two Utopias and two disappointments depicted in the film. Balázs tells a sad story about the failure of the artist, his inability to „see“ what he wants, to love and hold the picture without destroying it. He tells of forgetfulness and its price, of the fascination of the medium as a medium and the danger of coming to close to its secret.

Riefenstahl’s story is the vision of a heroic self-sacrifice, a mechanisation of the myth at all costs, not a sad story but actually rather a triumph, her triumph of will over her body which stays lying at the foot of the mountain as the mortal remains. (So close and yet so far). The film which came to the cinemas was hers. She had battled with it until the end and ultimately also managed it on her own. In Riefenstahl’s vision fanaticism and a fatalistic world view are bound in a new myth. Her later films will stage this myth as „matter of fact“, as a document of that „which is“. In her statements she claims again and again that she has never „aesthetically organized“ her „documentary films“, she has „never confused things“, just shown everything as it „is“. „It comes automatically from the material“.[40] The triumph of the will cancels itself out, knowing itself only as executor of fate: as executor of the destruction of the „other” – completely „matter of fact“: „Sachlich“.

[1] Anna Maria Sigmund, „Leni Riefenstahl. Die Amazonenkönigin“, in: dies., Die Frauen der Nazis. Wien: Ueberreuter, 1998, p. 117.

[2] Alice Schwarzer, „Leni Riefenstahl. Propagandistin oder Künstlerin ?“, in: EMMA, January/February 1999, p. 40.

[3] Herman Weigel, „Randbemerkungen zum Thema“, in Filmkritik, No. 8 (1972), p. 426.

[4] Leni Riefenstahl, Kampf in Schnee und Eis. Leipzig: Hesse & Becker, 1933, p. 15.

[6] Siegfried Kracauer, „Der heilige Berg“, in: S.K., Von Caligari zu Hitler. Eine psychologische Geschichte des deutschen Films. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1979, p. 399-400 [first in: Frankfurter Zeitung, March 4, 1927].

[8] Eric Rentschler, „Hochgebirge und Moderne: eine Standortbestimmung des Bergfilms“, in: Film und Kritik, Jg. 1, H. 1 (Juni 1992), p. 26. See also Eric Rentschler, The Ministry of Illusion. Nazi Cinema and Its Afterlife. Cambridge, Mass./London: Harvard University Press, 1996, p. 27-51.

[9] Rentschler, „Hochgebirge und Moderne“, p. 12.

[10] Béla Balázs, „Der Fall Dr. Fanck“ [preface to Arnold Fanck‘s film book Stürme über dem Montblanc 1931], in: B.B., Schriften zum Film. Volume 2, p. 289.

[13] Rentschler, „Hochgebirge und Moderne“, p. 23.

[14] Riefenstahl, Kampf in Schnee und Eis, p. 69 and 73.

[15] Leni Riefenstahl to Béla Balázs, February 21, 1932. Balázs-Archive, Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, Ms 5021/320.

[16] Leni Riefenstahl, Memoiren. 1902-1945. Frankfurt am Main/Berlin: Ullstein, 1996, p. 150.

[17] -ger., „Das blaue Licht“, in: Film-Kurier, Vol. 14, No. 73 (26.3.1932).

[18] Harry Sokal, „Über Nacht Antisemitin geworden?“, in: Der Spiegel, Vol. 30, No. 46 (November 8, 1976), p. 14.

[19] „Gespräch mit Leni Riefenstahl“, in: Film-Kurier, Vol. 20, No. 224, September 24, 1938.

[20] Leni Riefenstahl, „‘Nie Antisemitin gewesen‘“, in: Der Spiegel, Vol. 30, No. 47 (November 15, 1976), p. 18-22.

[25] Riefenstahl file, Berlin Document Center, reproduced in: Glenn B. Infield, Leni Riefenstahl. The Fallen Film Goddess. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1976, between p. 76 and 77.

[26] Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels. Sämtliche Fragmente. Teil 1. Band 3. 1.1.1937-31-12-1939. Hg. von Elke Fröhlich. München/New York/London/Paris: K.G.Saur, 1987, S. 569.

[27] Rentschler, The Ministry of Illusion, p. 46.

[28] Rentschler, The Ministry of Illusion, p. 43.

[29] Kracauer, Von Caligari zu Hitler, p. 273.

[30] Gisela von Wysocki, „Die Berge und die Patriarchen“, in: G.v.W., Die Fröste der Freiheit. Aufbruchsphantasien. Frankfurt am Main: Syndikat, 1980, p. 75.

[31] Rentschler, The Ministry of Illusion, p. 48.

[32] V. Wysocki, „Die Berge und die Patriarchen“, p. 75.

[33] See Helma Sanders-Brahms, „Tiefland. Tyrannenmord“, in: Das Jahr 1945. Ed. by Hans Helmut Prinzler. Berlin: Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek, 1990.

[34] Thomas Koebner, „Der unversehrbare Körper. Anmerkungen zu Filmen Leni Riefenstahls“, in: Knut Hickethier, Eggo Müller, Rainer Rother (Ed.), Der Film in der Geschichte. Berlin: Edition Sigma, 1997, p. 186.

[36] Rentschler, „Hochgebirge und Moderne“, p. 26.

[37] Wilhelm Worringer, Abstraktion und Einfühlung. Ein Beitrag zur Stilpsychologie. Neuwied: Heuser’sche Verlags-Druckerei, 1907, p. 34.

[38] Wilhelm Worringer, Formprobleme der Gotik. München: Piper, 1911, S. 31-32.

[39] Christian Metz, The Imaginary Signifier. Psychoanalysis and the Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982, p. 80.

[40] Herman Weigel, „Interview mit Leni Riefenstahl“, in: Filmkritik, Vol. 16, No. 8 (1972), p. 410.