Riefenstahl
Apr. 6th, 2025 09:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphilo I've watched Triumph of the Will. All the way through. I am one of the very few people who have.
It's extraordinarily impressive. Also extraordinarily boring. They showed it us at University- as part of a course in 20th century studies. At the beginning the lecture room was packed. By the end there were just a handful of us still numbing our bums on the wooden seats.
The debate goes on and on as to whether its maker, Leni Riefenstahl, was a committed Nazi or simply a committed artist who saw a Nazi rally as an opportuity to leave Cecil B de Mille choking on the dust of her chariot wheels.
There's a new German documentrary which has access to Riefenstahl's own records. I've watched the trailer- with footage of Rienstahl herself- by now a hard-faced old lady- throwing a strop at an interviewer who was insisting on raking over old bones. I can't help thinking, "O, let her be. If she has demons gnawing away at her entrails they're her business, not yours".
Even if we could reach a final conclusion on the extent of her depravity it wouldn't change the fact that she was a cinematic pioneer. I've also seen her film of the 1936 Olympics. And that's also extraordinary- and a good deal less boring.
We have this very human desire to prove our heroes - our great artists, our great thinkers, our great scientists- in every way heroic- and if they weren't to piss on their graves.
But none of them were.
It's extraordinarily impressive. Also extraordinarily boring. They showed it us at University- as part of a course in 20th century studies. At the beginning the lecture room was packed. By the end there were just a handful of us still numbing our bums on the wooden seats.
The debate goes on and on as to whether its maker, Leni Riefenstahl, was a committed Nazi or simply a committed artist who saw a Nazi rally as an opportuity to leave Cecil B de Mille choking on the dust of her chariot wheels.
There's a new German documentrary which has access to Riefenstahl's own records. I've watched the trailer- with footage of Rienstahl herself- by now a hard-faced old lady- throwing a strop at an interviewer who was insisting on raking over old bones. I can't help thinking, "O, let her be. If she has demons gnawing away at her entrails they're her business, not yours".
Even if we could reach a final conclusion on the extent of her depravity it wouldn't change the fact that she was a cinematic pioneer. I've also seen her film of the 1936 Olympics. And that's also extraordinary- and a good deal less boring.
We have this very human desire to prove our heroes - our great artists, our great thinkers, our great scientists- in every way heroic- and if they weren't to piss on their graves.
But none of them were.
