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Home , Blutfahne, Coral Gardens, Franz Hofer, Fritz Reinhardt, Hans Schneeberger, Herbert Windt

September 12, 2017 (XXXV:3) /TRIUMPH DES WILLENS (1934), 110 min.

(The online version of this handout has color images.)

Directed by Leni Riefenstahl Written by Leni Riefenstahl, Walter Ruttmann, Eberhard Taubert Produced & Film Editing by Leni Riefenstahl Music by Camera: Sepp Allgeier, Karl Attenberger, Werner Bohne, Walter Frentz, Hans Karl Gottschalk, Werner Hundhausen, Herbert Kebelmann, Albert Kling, Franz Koch, Herbert Kutschbach, Paul Lieberenz, Richard Nickel, , Arthur von Schwertführer, Karl Vash (Vaß), Franz Weihmayr, Siegfried Weinmann, Karl Wellert

Assistant Camera: Sepp Ketterer, Wolfgang Hart, Peter Haller, Kurt Schulz, Eugen Oskar Bernhard, Richard Kandler, Hans Bühring, Richard Böhm, Erich Stoll, Josef Koch, Otto Jäger, August Beis, Hans Wittman, Wolfgang Müller, Hans (Heinz) his death in a car accident in 1943), Ludwig Müller (theologian Linke, Erich Küchler, Ernst Kunstmann, Erich Grohmann, and leading member of the "German Christians" faith movement, Wilhelm Schmidt (played a major role in the naval history of World

War II), Fritz Reinhardt (Secretary of State), Alfred

Special Camera/Effects: Albert Kling (ærial photography), Rosenberg, (Minister of Economics), Franz Svend Noldan (special effects), Fritz Brunsch (special Xavier Schwarz, , (engineer whose effects), Hans Noack (special effects) firm handled construction of fortifications such as the Westwall and Atlantikwall, and the autobahn superhighways.) Sets: Leni Riefenstahl (b. August 22, 1902 in , —d. Cast September 8, 2003, age 101, in Pöcking, , Germany) , Max Amann (SS official, politician and wanted to know what it felt like to dance on the stage. Success as journalist), ( Chancellery Head), a dancer gave way to film acting when she attracted the attention (SS official), Richard Walter Darré ("blood and of film director , subsequently starring in some of soil" ideologist; Reich Minister of Food and Agriculture from his mountaineering pictures. With Fanck as her mentor, 1933 to 1942), , Josef "Sepp" Dietrich, Hans Riefenstahl began directing films. In 1931 Riefenstahl Frank (lawyer who worked for the Nazi Party during the 1920s established her own production company and wrote (with noted and 1930s, and later became Adolf Hitler's personal lawyer), Hungarian film writer Béla Balázs), directed, produced and , Jakob Grimminger (member of the SS starred in Das Blaue Licht (The Blue Light, 1932) which won her known for carrying the , the ceremonial Nazi flag), the silver medal at the and drew Hitler’s Hermann Göring, , Konstantin Hierl attention. He wanted her to film the 1933 Party rally but (head of the and an associate of Adolf Goebbels opposed her, arguing she was too young (31), too Hitler before he came to national power), , inexperienced and a woman. Without his assistance she shot Franz Hofer, (headed the German Labor Front from several thousand feet of film which Hitler insisted be edited and 1933 to 1945), (SA official who informed Hitler released. This was Sieg des Glaubens (Victory of Faith, 1933), about Ernst Röhm's anti-regime activities. After the “Night of the which is lost. Riefenstahl asserts her name did not appear in the Long Knives” he became the new leader of the SA until Riefenstahl—TRIUMPH OF THE WILL—2 credits. She complained to Hitler about Goebbels’ interference cameraman in 1911 for the Expreß Film Co. of Freiburg. In 1913 and Hitler ordered her to film the 1934 rally. Because she hadn’t he filmed newsreels in the Balkans. He then became an assistant made a nonfiction film she sought the help of Walter Ruttman, to Arnold Fanck, a leading director of Mountain films. He director of the famous German documentary Berlin: The worked frequently with and Leni Riefenstahl, both Symphony of a Great City (1927). He agreed to do a film closely associated with the genre. His most famous film for a US prologue on the Nazi rise to power and she left for Spain to scout audience would be Diary of a Lost Girl (1929) starring Louise locations for Tiefland (finished in 1954), her next fiction project. Brooks. During the Second World War, Allgeier filmed material She returned from Spain in mid August 1934 and had only two for newsreels. He later worked in West German television. weeks to prepare for filming. Hitler had combined the offices of President and Chancellor on the August 2nd death of von Adolf Hitler (b. Hindenburg. He presided over the sixth party rally held in April 20, 1889—d. Nürenberg from September 4th to 10th. April 20, 1945) was Triumph of the Will (1935) is the film record of his the Chancellor of gigantic display of party power, regarded as the most Germany from 1933- effective visual for ever made. Her penchant 1945. After the early for artistic work earned her acclaim and awards for her films death of both of his across Europe. Triumph of the Will would come back to haunt parents, in 1907, her after the atrocities of World War II. Despite her protests to Hitler moved to the contrary, Riefenstahl was considered an intricate part of the and worked as a casual laborer and watercolor painter. Third Reich's propaganda machine. Condemned by the He applied to the Academy of Fine Arts twice and was rejected international community, she did not make another movie for both times. Lacking money outside of an orphan's pension and over 50 years. She currently holds the record for the longest funds from selling postcards, he stayed in homeless shelters. length of time in between projects. After Lowlands (1954), it was Hitler later pointed to these years as the time when he first 48 years before she directed another film, the documentary cultivated his anti-Semitism, though there is some debate about Underwater Impressions (2002). She’s also the oldest director to this account. In 1913, Hitler relocated to . At the outbreak helm a documentary at 99 years old in 2002. of WWI, he applied to serve in the German army. He was accepted in August 1914, though he was still an Austrian citizen. Walter Ruttmann (b. December 28, 1887 in Frankfurt-on-Main, Although Hitler spent much of his time away from the front lines Germany—d. July 15, 1941, age 53, in Berlin, Germany) was a (with some reports that his recollections of his time on the field painter in his youth. He started in films as a designer and creator were generally exaggerated), he was present at many significant of special effects for and Lotte Reiniger. He was battles and was wounded at the Somme. He was decorated for most famous for his documentary feature Berlin: Symphony of a bravery, receiving the First Class and the Black Great City (1927). After Adolf Hitler came to power, he turned . Hitler became embittered over the collapse of the out propaganda films for the Nazis. He also collaborated on the war effort. The experience reinforced his passionate German editing of Leni Riefenstahl's Berlin 1936: Games of the XI patriotism, and he was shocked by Germany's surrender in 1918. Olympiad (1936). He was severely injured in 1941 while filming Like other German nationalists, he purportedly believed that the a documentary about the fighting on the Russian front. German army had been betrayed by civilian leaders and Transported back to Berlin, he died in a hospital during an Marxists. After , Hitler returned to Munich and operation to try to save his life. continued to work for the German military. As an intelligence officer, he monitored the activities of the German Workers’ Party Eberhard Taubert (b. May 11, 1907, Kassel, Germany—d. (DAP) and adopted many of the anti-Semitic, nationalist and November 2, 1976, Cologne, Germany) was a lawyer and anti- anti-Marxist ideas of party founder Anton Drexler. In September Semitic Nazi propagandist. He joined the Nazi party in 1931, and 1919, Hitler joined the DAP, which changed its name to the quickly became involved in both anti-Communist and anti- Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) — Jewish propaganda. From 1933 to 1945 he worked as a high often abbreviated to Nazi. Hitler personally designed the Nazi official in the Propagandaministerium under Joseph Goebbels. party banner, appropriating the symbol and placing it in His nickname in Nazi circles was Dr. Anti. He worked in 1940 a white circle on a red background. He soon gained notoriety for on the script for the anti-Semitic Der Ewige his vitriolic speeches against the , rival Jude (English: The Eternal Jew) and was responsible for the law politicians, Marxists and . In 1921, Hitler replaced Drexler requiring Jews to wear the yellow badge (Judenstern). After the as the Nazi party chairman. Hitler's fervid beer-hall speeches war he worked for $3,000 a month for the German Christian began attracting regular audiences. Early followers included Democratic Party, providing material against more radical army captain Ernst Rohm, the head of the Nazi paramilitary Marxists. After 1957 he worked in South America, Iran, organization the (SA), which protected meetings Lebanon, Egypt and South Africa and as the counsel of the and frequently attacked political opponents. On November 8, German minister Franz Josef Strauß. From 1970 he was 1923, Hitler and the SA stormed a public meeting at a large beer employed by German industrialists. hall in Munich. Hitler announced that the national revolution had begun and declared the formation of a new government. After a Sepp Allgeier (b. February 6, 1895—d. March 11, 1968) was a short struggle that led to several deaths, the coup known as the German cinematographer who worked on around fifty features, “” failed. Hitler was arrested and tried for high documentaries and short films. He began his career as a treason and sentenced to nine months in prison. During Hitler’s Riefenstahl—TRIUMPH OF THE WILL—3 nine months in prison in 1924, he dictated most of the first participation in a political murder, and after his release he joined volume of his autobiographical book and political manifesto, the National Socialists. He became head of the Nazi press in (My Struggle), to his deputy, . The first in 1926 and from 1928 held posts in the high volume was published in 1925, and a second volume came out in command of the SA. In 1933 he became chief of staff to the 1927. It was abridged and translated into 11 languages, selling deputy führer, Rudolf Hess. On May 12, 1941, Hitler appointed more than five million copies by 1939. A work of propaganda Bormann to fill the post of head of the party chancellery, and falsehoods, the book laid out Hitler’s plans for transforming succeeding Hess after the latter had made his quixotic flight to German society into one based on race. In the first volume, Hitler Scotland. Bormann thus became head of the administrative shared his Anti-Semitic, pro-Aryan worldview along with his machinery of the Nazi Party, and through intrigue, party sense of “betrayal” at the outcome of World War I, calling for infighting, and his shrewd manipulation of Hitler’s weaknesses revenge against France and expansion eastward into Russia. The and eccentricities, he became a shadowy but extremely powerful second volume outlined his plan to gain presence in the Third Reich. He controlled all and maintain power. While often illogical acts of legislation and all party promotions and full of grammatical errors, Mein and appointments, and he had a broad Kampf was provocative and subversive, influence on domestic policy questions making it appealing to the many concerning internal security. He controlled who felt displaced at the end of World the personal access of others to Hitler and War I. Hitler’s purity of race extended to drew up the Führer’s schedule and self-imposed dietary restrictions including appointments calendar, insulating him from abstinence from alcohol and meat (or the independent counsel of his subordinates. veganism). He encouraged Germans to Bormann was a rigid and unbending guardian keep their bodies pure of any intoxicating of Nazi orthodoxy; he was a major advocate or unclean substances and promoted anti- of the persecution and extermination of Jews smoking campaigns across the country. and Slavs, and he played a role in expanding After World War I, Hitler came to control the National Socialist the German slave labor program. He disappeared shortly after the German Workers Party, which he hoped to lead to power in death of Hitler, and it was presumed that he was either dead or in Germany. When a coup attempt in 1923 failed, he turned, after hiding. He was indicted August 29, 1945, along with other Nazi release from jail, to the buildup of the party to seize power by leaders, on charges of war crimes and was found guilty and means that were at least outwardly legal. He hoped to carry out a sentenced to death in absentia at Nürnberg on October 1, 1946. program calling for the restructuring of Germany on a racist basis so that it could Walter Buch (b. (24 October 24, 1883—d. win a series of wars to expand the November 12, 1949) was a German jurist, German people’s living space until they official in and SS- dominated and exclusively inhabited the Obergruppenführer. He was also Martin globe. By 1933 he took control of the Bormann's father-in-law. After the end of German government. His establishment the Second World War in Europe, Buch of concentration camps to inter Jews and was classified as a major regime other groups he believed to be a threat to functionary or “Hauptschuldiger” in Aryan supremacy resulted in the death of proceedings in 1949. On more than 6 million Jews and millions of others in the November 12th of that year, he committed suicide. Holocaust. His attack on Poland in 1939 started World War II, and by 1941 Germany occupied much of Europe and North Otto Dietrich (b. August 1887—d. 1952) was a soldier in WWI, Africa. By early 1945, Hitler realized that Germany was going to where he was awarded the Iron Cross (First Class). After this he lose the war. The Soviets had driven the German army back into went to the universities of Munich, Frankfurt am Main and Western Europe and the Allies were advancing into Germany Freiburg, from which he graduated with a doctorate in political from the west. At midnight, going into April 29, 1945, Hitler science in 1921. He strongly supported Nazi ideology, and married his girlfriend, , in a small civil ceremony in became a member of the Party almost immediately after its his Berlin bunker. Around this time, Hitler was informed of the foundation in 1919. In 1931, he was appointed Press Chief of the execution of Italian dictator . Afraid of falling NSDAP and, the following year, joined the SS. By 1941 he had into the hands of enemy troops, Hitler and Braun committed risen to the rank of SS-Obergruppenfuher. His job as Press Chief suicide the day after their wedding, on April 30, 1945. Their overlapped with Goebbels' Ministry for Propaganda, and thus bodies were carried to a bombed-out area outside of the Reich many anecdotes exist of their feuds. They were infamous for Chancellery, where they were burned. Berlin fell on May 2, their disagreements, and both often felt obliged to “repair” the 1945. Five days later, on May 7, 1945, Germany surrendered mistakes of the other. He died after serving time in Landberg unconditionally to the Allies. Prison following the trials, where he was convicted of “crimes against humanity.” Martin Bormann (b. June 17, 1900—d. May [date unknown] 1945) was an avowed and vocal pan-German in his youth, who Joseph “Sepp” Dietrich (b. May 28, 1892—d. April 21, 1966) participated in right-wing German Free Corps activities after the joined the German army in 1911 and rose to the rank of sergeant close of WWI. Bormann was imprisoned in 1924 for during World War I. An early acquaintance of Hitler, he joined Riefenstahl—TRIUMPH OF THE WILL—4 the SA in 1923 before moving up to the SS in 1928. he special Goebbels and his wife poisoned their six children and then killed SS unit that Dietrich founded in 1932 evolved into the themselves. Leibstandarte-SS Adolf Hitler (LAH), which served as Hitler’s personal army and later became a division in the Waffen-SS. As Hermann Göring (b. January 12, a reward for the role played by the LAH in the violent purge of 1893—d. October 15, 1946) son of a Ernst Röhm and other high-ranking SA officers in June 1934, judge who had been sent by Bismarck Dietrich was promoted to SS-Obergruppenführer (general). An to South-West Africa as the first able field commander with good battle intuition, Dietrich Resident Minister Plenipotentiary, continued to head the LAH, leading it into battle at Kharkov and Goering entered the army in 1914 as Kursk on the Eastern Front. In 1943 the LAH was expanded into an Infantry Lieutenant, before being the I SS Panzer Corps. In October 1944 he was placed in transferred to the air force as a combat command of the Sixth Panzer Army, which spearheaded the pilot. The last Commander in 1918 of German offensive through the Ardennes in the Battle of the the Richthofen Fighter Squadron, Bulge. He led this unit in Hungary and during the closing Goering distinguished himself as an phase of the war. Upon surrendering to American forces in May air ace, credited with shooting down 1945, Dietrich was held partly responsible for the murder of twenty-two Allied aircraft. Awarded the Pour le Merite and the American prisoners at Malmédy by SS troops during the Iron Cross (First Class), he ended the war with the romantic aura Ardennes offensive. In 1946 he was sentenced to 25 years’ of a much-decorated pilot and war hero. imprisonment, and he was released after serving 10 years of his Germans adored their Führer, but found in der dicke Hermann— sentence. In 1957 he was convicted in a German court for his “Fat Herman”—a figure of ebullient entertainment. Slender, role in Hitler’s purge of the SA in 1934 and served another 20 ascetic Hitler ate only vegetables, abstained from smoking and months in prison on this charge. drinking, and wore mainly plain gray jackets. Not Göring. In flamboyant uniforms of his own design and fingers bedizened (b. May 23, 1900—d. October 16, 1946) Frank with rings, the fat man ate, drank, and made riotously merry, fought in World War I, studied economics and jurisprudence, and living out loud. He loved food, wine, art collecting, and hunting. in 1921 joined the German Workers’ Party (which became the His country lodge, Carinhall, named after his beloved first wife, Nazi Party). He eventually became the party’s chief legal counsel abounded with sculptures, paintings, and furniture. Endangered and Hitler’s personal lawyer. After the Nazis came to power in species roamed his grounds. He kept pet lions. Göring’s dandy Germany in 1933, Frank was appointed to a variety of important image made him a persistent figure of ridicule. Germans mocked posts, including president of the Reichstag and minister of justice him and the foreign press painted him as an overweight buffoon. in the Nazi government. After the German invasion of Poland in But Hermann Göring was a colossus in every way: a wily 1939, Frank was appointed governor-general, becoming the Machiavellian with an outsize IQ, skilled at combining charm, supreme chief of occupied Poland’s civil administration. An guile, and ruthlessness to get what he wanted—skills he enthusiastic proponent of Nazi racist ideology, Frank ordered the employed to the end. Göring reluctantly relinquished leadership execution of hundreds of thousands of Poles, the wholesale of the SA to Ernst Röhm, a brutal war veteran, while he confiscation of Polish property, the enslavement of hundreds of recovered during a long, forced exile in and Austria. To thousands of Polish workers who were shipped to Germany, and ease Göring’s persistent pain, doctors injected morphine; he the herding of most of Poland’s Jews into ghettos as a prelude to became addicted to the opiate. His dependency became a lifelong their extermination. Frank remained as governor-general until the plague causing or exaggerating many of his outlandish war’s end, although Hitler stripped him of his other posts in characteristics. The drug induced a sine wave of effects, from 1942. He was captured by U.S. Army troops on May 4, 1945, energetic euphoria to morose passivity, as well as weight gain, and was indicted for trial before the International Military vanity and delusions, and extreme anxiety. During the first year Tribunal at Nürnberg. He was found guilty of war crimes and of Nazi rule, Göring purged Communists, Jews, and crimes against humanity and on Oct. 1, 1946, was sentenced to and paved the way for a one-party state using manipulation, hang. bribery, and hired thugs. He was now Reich Commissar for Aviation and head of Germany’s largest police force. He bound Joseph Goebbels (b. October 29, 1857—d. May 1, 1945) was the nation’s industries to the Nazis through coercion. “I’ve appointment by Adolf Hitler to , he named always said that when it comes to the crunch he’s a man of Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945), his trusted friend and colleague, steel—unscrupulous,” Hitler later said.In April, Göring set up the to the key post of minister for public enlightenment and Forschungsamt, his personal spy agency, with Hitler’s consent. propaganda. In this capacity, Goebbels was charged with The operation bugged and tapped the phones of foreign leaders presenting Hitler to the public in the most favorable light, and businessmen, and almost every Nazi leader. In the regime’s regulating the content of all German media and fomenting anti- power struggles, Göring always stayed a move ahead. Publicly, Semitism. Goebbels forced Jewish artists, musicians, actors, he created the dreaded secret police. He also set up the directors and newspaper and magazine editors into first concentration camps—originally holding pens for Nazi unemployment, and staged a public burning of books that were Party foes— at Oranienburg and Papenburg in the German state considered “un-German”. He also spearheaded the production of of Prussia. Titles attached themselves to him: Speaker of the Nazi propaganda films and other projects. Goebbels remained in German Parliament, President of the Reichstag, Prime Minister this post and was loyal to Hitler until the end of World War II. of Prussia, President of the Prussian State Council, Reich Master On May 1, 1945, the day after Hitler committed suicide, of Forestry and Game (his hunting laws still exist), and Riefenstahl—TRIUMPH OF THE WILL—5 commander of a clandestine air force. When Hitler declared that 1941, just before the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. Hess he would remain in the Berlin bunker to the end, Göring, who intended to see the Duke of Hamilton, whom he had met briefly had already left for Bavaria, misinterpreted this as an abdication during the Berlin Olympics in 1936. Hess wanted to convince the and requested that he be allowed to take over at once; he was British Government that Hitler only wanted Lebensraum for the ignominiously dismissed from all his posts, expelled from the German people and had no wish to destroy a fellow “Nordic” Party and arrested. Shortly afterwards, on May 9, 1945, Göring nation. He also knew of Hitler’s plans to attack the Soviet Union was captured by forces of the American Seventh Army and, to and wanted to prevent Germany from getting involved in a two- his great surprise, put on trial at Nuremberg in 1946. During his front war, fighting the Soviets to the east of Germany, and trial Göring, who had slimmed in captivity and had been taken Britain and its allies in the west. But Hess also displayed signs of off drugs, defended himself with aggressive vigour and skill, mental instability to his British captors and Churchill, realizing frequently outwitting the prosecuting counsel. With Hitler dead, this, and somewhat infuriated by his statements, ordered Hess to he stood out among the defendants as the dominating personality, be imprisoned for the duration and treated like any high ranking dictating attitudes to other prisoners in the dock and adopting a POW. Hess was declared insane by a bewildered Hitler, and pose of self-conscious heroism motivated by the belief that he effectively disowned by the Nazis. His flight ultimately caused would be immortalized as a German martyr. Nevertheless, Hitler and the Nazis huge embarrassment as they struggled to Göring failed to convince the judges, who found him guilty on all explain his actions. During his years of British imprisonment, four counts. Göring was sentenced to death by hanging on Hess displayed increasingly unstable behavior and developed a October 15, 1946. Two hours before his execution was due to paranoid obsession that his food was being poisoned. As the take place, Göring committed suicide in his Nuremberg cell, months passed, Hess tried twice to kill himself, by jumping over taking a capsule of poison that he had succeeded in hiding from a staircase railing and by stabbing himself with a butter knife. his guards during his captivity. His obsession with food was unrelenting. When the Swiss envoy visited in August 1943, Hess had lost 40 pounds. In November Rudolf Hess (b. April 26, 1894—d. 1944, Hess petitioned the British for a “leave of absence” in August 17, 1987) was a somewhat to restore his health. It was denied. In 1945, Hess neurotic member of Hitler's inner was returned to Germany to stand trial before the International circle best known for his surprise Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. During his years of British flight to Scotland on May 10, 1941 imprisonment, Hess displayed increasingly unstable behavior and in which he intended to negotiate developed a paranoid obsession that his food was being peace with the British, but which poisoned. When Hess was transferred to Nuremberg in October resulted in his capture and long-term 1945, he relinquished his food packets under protest and asked imprisonment. In WWI, Hess was his doctor to make sure they were safe. Nonetheless all doctors wounded twice, then later became declared Hess fit to stand trial. Most of the other Nuremberg an airplane pilot. After the war, Hess defendants were sentenced to death, but Hess, convicted of two joined the , a right-wing counts related to crimes against peace, was sentenced to life in organization of ex-soldiers for hire, prison. Hess spent 40 years complaining of the food and his involved in violently putting down health at Spandau Prison in western Berlin before he succeeded Communist uprisings in Germany. at what he’d tried twice before. At age 93, he hanged himself After hearing Adolf Hitler speak in a small Munich beer hall, with an extension cord on August 17, 1987. The suicide has Hess joined the Nazi Party, July 1, 1920, becoming the sixteenth come under suspicion as rumors have surfaced that rather than member. After his first meeting with Hitler, Hess said he felt “as taking his own life, the elderly Nazi was killed on British orders though overcome by a vision.” Hess was a shy, insecure man to preserve wartime secrets. Perhaps his complaints about the who displayed near religious devotion, fanatical loyalty and food weren’t so crazy after all. absolute blind obedience to Hitler. Although often rewarded by Hitler for his dogged loyalty, Hess was never given any major Reinhard Heydrich (b. March 7. 1904—d. June 4, 1942) was influence in matters of state due to his lack of understanding of Heinrich Himmler’s chief lieutenant in the SS. He played a key the mechanics of power and his inability to take any action on his role in organizing during the opening years of own initiative. He was totally and deliberately subservient to his WWII. Heydrich’s father, who directed a musical conservatory Führer. One of his most visible tasks was to announce the Führer and sang Wagnerian roles in the opera, exposed his son to the at meetings with bellowing, wide eyed fanaticism, as seen cult of , and his mother was a stern in tonight’s film. disciplinarian; the family was falsely suspected of partial Jewish Over time, his limited power was further undermined by ancestry. Heydrich joined a Freikorps paramilitary unit in 1919 the political intrigue of the top Nazis around Hitler who were and entered the German navy in 1922. Commissioned as a naval constantly scheming for personal power. Hess had only one officer, he was discharged in 1931 after a naval court found him desire, to serve the Führer, and thus lacked the will to engage in guilty of misconduct (for refusing to marry a shipyard director’s self-serving struggles for power and lost out primarily to his daughter with whom he had had an affair). That same year he subordinate and eventual successor, Martin Bormann. As a joined the SS. Soon after a chance introduction to Himmler, result, Hitler gradually distanced himself from Hess. Hoping to Heydrich was entrusted with the organization of the SD, the regain importance and redeem himself in the eyes of his Führer, intelligence and surveillance arm of the SS. After Adolf Hitler Hess put on a uniform and flew a German fighter became chancellor in 1933, Heydrich was appointed chief of the plane alone toward Scotland on a “peace” mission, May 10, political department of the Munich police force, and he helped Riefenstahl—TRIUMPH OF THE WILL—6 bring the political police forces throughout Germany under he got after 1933, the more Himmler saw the opportunity to Himmler’s control. Heydrich rose rapidly through the ranks of fulfill this belief. It was Himmler who supported the idea of the SD. Because Himmler was only four years older than unmarried women partnering SS men– he saw nothing wrong Heydrich, Heydrich’s hopes for advancement could be realized with single women having children as long as both mother and only with his specialization. He was appointed SS chief for father were racially pure. In October 1939, he told the SS that Berlin in 1934, and when Himmler became chief of all German women, single or married, should, out of patriotic duty, get police forces in 1936, Heydrich took charge of the SD, the themselves pregnant by soldiers who were about to go to war. criminal police, and the Gestapo. During in The idea of racial purity and racial excellence came to dominate November 1938, Heydrich ordered the arrest of thousands of Himmler’s mind—as did hunting out traitors in Germany. Jews by the Gestapo and the SS and their imprisonment in Himmler oversaw Germany’s concentration camps (he concentration camps. In 1939 Heydrich became head of the had set up the first at Dachau in 1933) and eastern Europe’s Reichssicherheitshauptamt, which was in charge of all security death camps. His brilliance at organization had terrible and secret police in the Third Reich. Heydrich masterminded the consequences for the Jews. It was Himmler who made sure that fake “Polish” attack on the Gleiwitz radio transmitter that the ‘cattle’ trains ran on time and that each camp was run on provided Hitler with a pretext for invading Poland on September business lines so that they paid for themselves and made profits 1, 1939. Soon afterward Heydrich and began where possible. Ironically, for a man associated with the spilling organizing the first deportations of Jews from Germany and of so much blood, Himmler himself would nearly faint at the Austria to ghettos in occupied Poland. On May 27, 1942, two sight of blood. In 2016, Himmler’s office diaries, lost for 71 Free Czech agents mortally wounded him with a bomb while he years, were discovered lying in a Russian military archive. The was riding in his car without an armed escort. He died June 4 in a sheer banality of the entries provides a chilling insight into the Prague hospital. Gestapo officials retaliated for his death by life of a doting father who started each day with a massage executing hundreds of Czechs and wiping out the entire village before heading off to organize the nitty-gritty of mass murder. of Lidice. The diaries also relate how close he was with his daughter, who at age 86 has remained loyal to her dad’s memory and is still Heinrich Himmler (b. October 7, closely involved in neo-Nazi groups that give support to ex- 1900—d. May 23, 1945) was to members of her father’s SS. In in May 1945, he was on the run, become one of the most feared men disguised in a shabby suit as the Russian Army reached Berlin. in Nazi Germany and Europe once He was soon caught by a British patrol and identified himself to WWII broke out. As head of the amazed officers. But he cheated the noose by biting on a cyanide SS, he had ultimate responsibility capsule hidden in his tooth. Himmler fell down, kicked once or of internal security in Nazi twice and was dead in seconds without uttering a word — as Germany, as was seen in the Night efficient and emotionless at his own end as he had been of the Long Knives, and was organizing the deaths of millions. associated with helping to organize the though Reinhard Franz Hofer (b. November 27, 1902—d. February 18, 1975) Heydrich, as well as having major was born to a Bad Hofgastein hotelkeeper, and in 1922 began a input into the organization of the career as a freelance salesman. In September 1931, he joined the Holocaust. He was old enough to serve in the German Army in NSDAP. He very quickly rose in the Party, becoming District 1918 and saw out the last days of WWI. After the war, he Leader in April 1932, and in July of the same year acting became a salesman for a fertilizer company. He joined the Nazi of the . Only four months later, on November 27, Party in 1923 and quickly developed a reputation for 1932, he was promoted to Gauleiter of the Tyrol. For his thoroughness and efficiency. In 1930, Himmler was elected to activities in the Nazi Party, which was banned in Austria, Hofer the Reichstag as Nazi deputy. He also spent his time expanding was arrested in June 1933 and sentenced by a Tyrolean court to the SS so that by 1933, it had 52,000 men in it. Himmler also two years in prison. On August 30, 1933, four armed SA men ensured that the SS remained free from interference by Röhm broke into Hofer's prison cell and freed him. In September 1940 and the SA. Himmler created the Security Service lead by he was made the governor () of the of Heydrich whose original function was to be the ideological Tyrol-. After Italy forsook the in 1943, intelligence service to the Nazi Party. Himmler became Hofer was chosen to be the Supreme Commissar in the Operation convinced that Germany’s future rested in the stars and he was a Zone of the Alpine Foothills, consisting of the neighboring keen astrologist and cosmologist. He also believed that the SS Italian provinces. In November 1944, Hofer suggested in a were the Twentieth Century’s Teutonic Knight. Many SS memorandum to Adolf Hitler that an “Alpenfestung” (Alpine ceremonies were held at night in castles lit only by flaming Fortress) ought to be built up in the heart of the Alps as Nazi torches. He recommended that SS officers had only leeks and Germany's last bastion. Apparently Hitler’s secretary Martin mineral water for breakfast and he would only have 12 people at Bormann only brought this document to the Führer’s attention a time sitting around his table – as King Arthur had done. early the next year, leading to Hofer's being called to Hitler's Himmler became very interested in the occult. He saw the SS as Berlin bunker on April 12, 1945 to present his proposal. Hitler, being a new type of people – soldiers, administrators, academics 18 days before his suicide and still convinced that his victory was and leaders all rolled into one. The SS, in the mind of Himmler, possible, approved Hofer's plan and appointed him Reich were to be the new aristocracy of Germany. He was very keen on Defence Commissar of the Alpenfestung. On May 3, 1945 Hofer the creation of a master race and racial purity. The more power surrendered to American troops. On May 6, 1945, he was Riefenstahl—TRIUMPH OF THE WILL—7 arrested by the United States Army in Hall in Tirol and held in an and state were few. From 1921 until 1945, he was a member of internment camp. In 1948, he managed to flee to Germany, the Nazi Party. In 1925 he was appointed Gauleiter of , where he continued his former trade as a salesman in Mülheim and he remained until about February 1940. From the time that under his true name. In Austria, Hofer was sentenced in absentia the Nazi government came into power in 1933 until 1945 he was in June 1949 to death. In July 1953, a Munich appeal court a member of the Reichstag. In addition to that, he held the title of upheld a sentence of 3 years and 5 months in labour prison. Obergruppenfuehrer in the SA. The propaganda which Streicher When interviewed by the press during this time, Hofer made it carried out throughout those years was chiefly done through the known that his National Socialist convictions were unbroken. medium of his newspapers. He was the editor and publisher of Hofer spent his later years in Mülheim an der Ruhr with his wife Der Stürmer from 1922 until 1933, and thereafter the publisher and seven children, continued his former trade as a salesman and and owner of the paper. In 1933 he also founded and thereafter died a natural death under his real name. published a daily newspaper called the Fraenkische Tageszeitung. In addition, in later years he published several (b. January 12, 1893—d. October 16, 1946) other papers, mostly local journals, from Nurnberg. Despite the was one of the most influential Nazi intellectuals. studied “success” of his Stürmer and his strong personal association with architecture in and Moscow Hitler, who valued him as a before fleeing revolution-torn Russia in protégé, Streicher was often 1918 for Germany. Already a viewed as volatile and mercurial by committed anti-Bolshevik and leading officials, however useful he antisemite, he became heavily involved proved as a purveyor of virulent in the post-WWI ultra-nationalist scene and often prurient to in Munich. In early 1919 he became an the German masses. In May 1945, early member of the Nazi Party's Streicher was captured by US predecessor organization, the German forces, and convicted on the charge Workers' Party. Gaining renown as the of crimes against humanity. He author of antisemitic tracts, his main claim (that he held to the was hanged in Nuremberg, his former stronghold, on October 16, very end) the equation of Jews with Bolshevism and communist 1946. revolution. Mostly his ideas were designed to provide legitimacy for the regime's antisemitic policies by proving the existence of a (b. March 9, 1907—d. August 8, 1974) “Jewish conspiracy”. Rosenberg began writing for the Nazi was one of the earliest members of the Nazi Party, he entered the newspaper, Völkischer Beobachter, and he became the party in 1924 while attending the University of Munich, where newspaper's senior editor in 1923. After Hitler's release he briefly studied German folklore and art history, he was soon a following his arrest in the Munich Beer Hall Putsch, Rosenberg member of its innermost circle, despite his youth. In 1929 von returned to journalism and began his chief work, The Myth of the Schirach was put in charge of the National Socialist German Twentieth Century, published in 1930. Though never endorsed by Students League and two years later he was appointed Reich Hitler as the authoritative expression of Nazi ideology, the book Youth Leader of the NSDAP, a post he held until 1940. In 1933 sold approximately one million copies by the late war years and he organized the gigantic youth march in , in which boosted Rosenberg's standing as Party ideologue. Rosenberg was wave upon wave of youngsters greeted Hitler. Already before the more than just a writer: in 1928 he founded and ran a crusading Nazi seizure of power, von Schirach’s ceaseless propaganda, his organization, the Fighting League for German Culture, dedicated idealism and organizational flair for mobilizing youth had to rooting out “degenerate” art, books, plays and other cultural succeeded in winning over hundreds of thousands of young products from the German public scene. During the war he Germans to Hitler’s cause. In May 1933 he was made Leader of headed up the Rosenberg Task Force, which began the Youth of the German Reich at the age of twenty-six and in by collecting Jewish artefacts for a projected museum for the the next few years his cult seemed second only to that of Hitler study of what he hoped would soon be an extinct race, but himself. Von Schirach who fancied himself as a writer and poet, quickly graduated to looting artworks, manuscripts and other published two books which were best-sellers in 1932, Hitler wie treasures from Jews sent to the camps. According to the task ihn Keiner Kennt, with photographs by his father –in –law, force itself, bureaucratic in its precision, its loot filled 1,418,000 Heinrich Hoffmann (Hitler’s official photographer) and Triumph railway trucks. Despite its constant power struggles with the SS des Willens (Triumph of the Will). Towards the outbreak of the and other German agencies, Rosenberg's ministry played a key Second World War, his position was being undermined by the role in the evolution of the “Final Solution.” Rosenberg was intrigues of Martin Bormann and other enemies. Jokes about his arrested at the end of the war, tried at Nuremberg, and found effeminate behavior and his allegedly white bedroom furnished guilty on all four counts. He was sentenced to death. Rosenberg in a girlish manner, were legion and he was never quite able to was hanged on October 16, 1946. live up to his own ideal type of the hard, tough quick . Later that year, he joined the army and volunteered for Julius Streicher (b. February 12, 1885—d. October 16, 1946) service in France, where he was awarded the Iron Cross before was a school teacher in Nurnberg and formed a party of his own, being recalled. Schirach lost control of the Hitler Youth to Artur which he called the German Socialist Party. The chief policy of Axmann, and was appointed Gauleiter of the Reichsgau Vienna, that party was antisemitism. In 1922 he handed over his party to a post in which he remained until the end of the war. His Hitler, who wrote a glowing account of Streicher's generosity in unorthodox cultural policies in Austria soon aroused Hitler’s Mein Kampf. The appointments which Streicher held in the Party distrust, with promptings from Bormann, and after a visit to the Riefenstahl—TRIUMPH OF THE WILL—8

Berghof in 1943, where he pleaded for a more moderate classical ballet and modern dance. In the end, when she was treatment of the eastern European peoples and criticized the twenty-one, she persuaded her father to finance a solo dance conditions in which Jews were being deported, he lost all real recital on the understanding that she would relinquish her influence. Nevertheless, he in a speech on September 15, 1942 he ambitions if the performance was a flop. It was, on the contrary, stated “removal” of Jews to the East would “contribute” to successful enough to attract the attention of the great director and European culture.” The deportation of 65,000 Jews from Vienna impresario , who sent her on a tour of Europe in a to Poland during his tenure as Governor was a major indictment program of modern dances of her own creation. Her brief career against von Schirach at the . as a dancer was ended by a knee injury in 1924. It was during her The war crimes tribunal conceded that he did not originate the convalescence that she happened to see a movie by Arnold policy but had participated in the deportations from Vienna. Fanck, a geologist and climber who became famous for his During his trial, he underwent a change of heart, recognizing that “mountain films.” At a time when most German movies were he had misled German youth and contributed to poisoning a shot entirely in the studio, Fanck trained a team of technicians whole generation. He stated: “I put my morals to the side when, who were also expert climbers and skiers, and made on location a out of misplaced faith in the Führer, I took part in this action. I series of documentaries, travelogues and fiction films. did it. I cannot undo it.” Von Schirach was sentenced on October Magnificently photographed and celebrating the most dramatic 1, 1946 to twenty years imprisonment for crimes against and grandiose kinds of natural beauty, these films also an inflated humanity in which he served out in the company of Rudolf Hess spirit of heroic idealism that believed “was and Albert Speer in Spandau prison. After his release on the rooted in a mentality kindred to [the] Nazi spirit,” a point of view September 30, 1966, von Schirach lived a secluded life in south- echoed by in her study of Riefenstahl, the essay . He died in his sleep at a small hotel in Kroev an “Fascinating ,” reprinted in Under the Sign of Saturn. der Mosel on August 8, 1974. Excited by Fanck’s film, Leni Riefenstahl went to see him. She was promptly taken on as the only female member of his team, and taught to ski and to climb. It was from the same “professor” she says, that she learned the fundamentals of mise- en-scene.” I also found myself somewhat involved in the camera work and at times collaborated with the directorial crew.” She made her screen debut as the star of a movie that Fanck had written especially for her, Der Heilige Berg (The Holy Mountain, 1926), in which she plays a dancer turned climber who inspires a dangerous rivalry between two young mountaineers. The film was extremely successful and so was its star. “After all the sensuous vamps and hothouse beauties who for so long had reigned in the German cinema,” wrote one contemporary critic, “she was a breath of fresh air, the new Germany of athletes and freedom saw in her a symbol.” Leni Riefenstahl starred again in Fanck’s routine comedy Der grosse Sprung (The Big Leap, 1927), and then as Maria Vetsera in Das Schicksalderer von Habsburg (The Fate of the Habsburgs, 1929), an Austrian film by a different director. Another spectacular and immensely successful From World Film Directors, Vol I. Editor John Wakeman. mountain drama followed. Die Weisse Hölle von Piz Palü (The The H.W. Wilson Company, NY, 1987 White Hell of Piz Palü, 1929). Directed by Fanck in collaboration with G.W. Pabst, it combined daring mountain events and the RIEFENSTAHL, “LENI” (BERTA HELENE AMALIA actually hair-raising aerial stunts of the aviator . In her RIEFENSTAHL) German director, scenarist, producer, actress, first talkie, Fanck’s Stürme uber dem Montblanc (Avalanche, and photographer, was born in Berlin, the oldest daughter of 1930), Riefenstahl successfully survived both the transition to Alfred Riefenstahl, owner of a plumbing engineering firm, and sound and the elemental furies of Mont Blanc to rescue the man the former Berta Scherlach. She was a romantic and artistic child, she loved. drawn to painting and dancing and entranced by nature. She told An agreeable skiing comedy, Der Weisse Rausch (White an interviewer that she had read nothing but fairy tales until she Frenzy, 1931), also for Franck confirmed Riefenstahl’s statue as was in her late teens. ”I didn't want to have anything to do with one of Germany’s most popular movie star. And the same year reality. We had a weekend house by a lake near Berlin, and I she established her own production company, Leni Riefenstahl spent hours in the woods, watching trees, bushes animals, Studio Films. At that point she was recalled to make one more beetles, and butterflies. I turned them into human figures, like picture with Franck, who could find no other actress with the Walt Disney. I always looked for a fantasy image in nature.” necessary stamina and skills. This was SOS Eisberg (SOS Iceberg), a German-American co-production shot on location in Leni Riefenstahl attended gymnasium in Berlin, and Iceland under the supervision of the explorer Knud Rasmussen went on to art school at the urging of her father, who envisaged a who, according to the ballyhoo, housed his cast in Eskimo huts career for her as a commercial artist. She herself wanted and fed them on seal meat). passionately to become a dancer and took classes in both Riefenstahl—TRIUMPH OF THE WILL—9

The first production of Leni Riefenstahl; Studios Films Hitler, and he and his propaganda ministry did all they dared to was Das blaue Licht (The Blue Light, 1932). Starring disparage and obstruct her—among other things spreading the Riefenstahl, directed by her, and written by her with rumor that she was half Jewish (a claim she also denied). Béla Balazs, the Hungarian film theorist. Balazs also shared the There is no doubt, at any rate, that Hitler assigned role of producer with Riefenstahl and the movie’s Riefenstahl to film the Nazi rallies in Nuremberg in 1934, and cinematographer , formerly a member of that she performed this task with disturbing brilliance in a film Franck’s team. Set in the Italian Dolomites, it was based on a released in 1935 as Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will). folk tale about the Speaking if this mysterious blue light work, she told a that suffuses the peak Guardian of Mount Cristallo at reporter in 1976 full moon, luring that “It is always young climbers to their death. Only Junta (Riefenstahl) an said that I worked for the Nazism that the Nazis helped me. But I innocent child of nature who lives alone in the high mountains, was not in the Party can reach the light and survive; the local villagers are sure that And they made only difficulties for me….The Party did not pay she is a witch. A young Viennese painter (Mathias Wieman) for the film. I hired my own cameras. I had my own contract, my visiting the mountain is enthralled by Junta and follows her up own company and I arranged the distribution. It was hard work, Mount Cristallo, discovering that the source of the light is a it was horrible. For six days I just filmed everything that grotto of precious crystals. He reveals this secret to the villagers, happened. But it did not seem a sinister event to me. Remember who greedily remove this treasure. Climbing again at the next this was long before the war; all the diplomats were coming to full moon, but without the crystals to guide her, Junta falls to her Nuremberg . Many were saying that it was a good thing that death. Germany had such a leader. All the horror came later.” Riefenstahl would have preferred to make the movie in (Riefenstahl’s account is described as self-serving in Sontag’s the studio, but, short of funds, was obliged to shoot it on location essay.) and to persuade the Dolomite peasants to appear as themselves It is true that Triumph of the Will was released by (thus anticipating the methods of neo-realism by twenty years). Riefenstahl’s own Studio The harshness of the mountain landscapes, and the almost Film Company and financed by UFA, but it is also clear that it equally strong and weather-worn faces of the peasants provide a was made with the full support of Hitler, if not of all of his powerful contrast to the romanticism of the fairy story, with its colleagues. In her book Hinter den Kulissen das Reichsparteittag lament for a world that prefers hard cash to the pure and Films (Behind the Scenes of the National Party Congress Films) mysterious light of crystals. Riefenstahl herself asserts that the ecstatic parades, involving Jonathan Rosenbaum found a strong parallel between hundreds of thousands of carefully drilled participants were Leni Riefenstahl’s vision in this film (and others) and Walt stagemanaged for the benefit of her cameras—that “the Disney’s, citing “the intense pantheism and towering vistas of preparations for the Party Convention were made in concert with the film’s landscape shots, the poetic innocence and purity of the the preparations for the camerawork.” She and her director of heroine, the telepathy and empathy shown by animals….towards photography (Sepp Algeier) had thirty cameras with the latest her moods,” as well as `a general “predilection for primal wide-angle lenses and telescopic lenses, and a total staff of a myths of unity and perfection.” Moderately successful in hundred and twenty. Special camera lifts were built for her in Germany, the film received a silver medal at Vienna in 1932 and Nuremberg. was a hit in and London. Leni Riefenstahl said farewell to John Russell Taylor suggests that Triumph of the Will the “,” in an illustrated autobiography called can be seen “both as a documentary and as a mythic fantasy. Kampf in Schnee und Eis (Struggle in Snow and Ice, 1933). Documentary it certainly is…[but] everything is selected and Adolf Hitler himself greatly admired Das blaue Licht, manipulated to a larger mystical end. The very opening of the and in 1933, at his direct invitation, Leni Riefenstahl shot a film…a factual account of Hitler’s arrival in Nuremberg by air, documentary about his Nazi party’s annual rally at Nuremberg. becomes also an evocation of a god’s descent to earth—from the Sieg des Glaubens (Victory of Faith) as it was called, was endless vistas of clouds, seen from the god’s- eye viewpoint of withdrawn after Hitler’s purge of the party leadership in 1934. the place, we pass to the plane’s shadow moving majestically , inexorably over the summer city as those in the city gaze up in An enormous edifice of statements and rapturous expectation….The rest of the film adopts the same counterstatements , charges and denials, now obscures the facts approach. Constantly we lose all sense of perspective, are cut off about Riefenstahl’s relationship with Hitler and the Nazis. She is from the basic realities by alternations of extreme long shot and said to have thought Hitler “faultless” and “the greatest man who gigantic close-up….The torchlit celebrations are turned into ever lived”; he reportedly described her as “a perfect example of abstract patterns of sight and sound.” German womanhood” and an artistic genius. Many photographs The film shows a mastery of editing, Taylor thought, exist of them together and her enemies that is comparable to Eisenstein’s, transcending its political Maintain that she was the dictator’s mistress, a charge that she context and compelling “one to judge it absolutely as a film.” emphatically denies. “In the early days,” she says, “like millions Many have disagreed , including Siegfried Kracauer, who of people, I believed in Hitler and had been impressed by him. attributed “deep feeling of uneasiness” to the fact “that before But it is absolutely false to say that we were intimate friends.” our eyes palpable life becomes an apparition….The film Goebbels was bitterly jealous of her success and influence with represents an inextricable mixture of a show simulating German Riefenstahl—TRIUMPH OF THE WILL—10 reality and of German reality maneuvered into a show.” Paul mainly responsible for this, but there seems to be no evidence Rotha wrote that the powerful film “reeked” of National that he was more than her assistant and adviser.) Socialism and “unqualified idolatry for Hitler and all Nazism Olympia was released in April 1938, in time for the stood for.” In Sight and Sound Brian Winston argued against the festivities in honor of Hitler’s forty-ninth birthday, and was idea that the visual power of Triumph of the Will derives accepted by the Olympic Committee as the official film of the primarily from Riefenstahl’s 1936 Games. As a paean of praise to aesthetic vision. He wrote: “Given physical strength and beauty (and to our taste for the spectacle of Hitler and his entourage), it has seemed dehumanized mass (that part of to some critics tainted by the same anti- aesthetics which we all intellectual and pagan spirit that share) shots of 200,000 men in disfigured Triumph of the Will—just as close formation become “outspokenly fascistic in spirit.” On impressive not through the fact of the other hand, though Goebbels had filming, but because of the reportedly ordered Riefenstahl to play formation itself. Riefenstahl is as down the embarrassing successes of impressive as the next filmmaker “non-Aryan” athletes, she completely when she has that sort of spectacle ignored him, giving special prominence to work with….” It is universally to the achievements of the black regarded as a propaganda American track star Jesse Owens. masterpiece, however distasteful. “The individual spectator It received the German state prize must make up his own mind on the in 1935 and the gold medal at Venice in 1936, among other political implications of the film,” wrote David Stewart Hull, awards. Albert Speer, principal architect of the 1934 rally, wrote “but it is hard to deny that Olympia, examined purely as film, is of Leni Riefenstahl: “The Nazis were by tradition anti-feminist one of the most beautiful and exciting works the medium has and could hardly brook this self-assured woman, the more so produced.” For John Russell Taylor, it remains “a masterpiece since she knew how to bend this men’s world to her undimmed by time, one of the cinema’s supreme celebrations of purposes….But the…party rally film….convinced even the the mystery, beauty, and grandeur of the human body.” And doubters of her skill.” Arlene Croce, in an essay on dance in film in Richard Roud’s Triumph of the Will had celebrated the Nazi party but Cinema, wrote that “although it is not a dance film, it is not the German army and, to mollify the high command, Leni unsurpassed as a study of physical motion….Accompanied by a Riefenstahl next made a short documentary about the fine musical score composed by Herbert Windt, Olympia called Tag der Freiheit (Day of Freedom, 1935). This was transcends its obligations as a documentary….The editing is so followed by the most ambitious of her films, Olympische Spiele lyrical and so exactly times to the differently charged proportions (Olympia/Olympiad), a two-part record of the 1936 Olympic of regular or slowed motion that we are often displaced before Games in Berlin, shot by a team of forty-five cameramen. Part I we know it from one plane to the other, from stadium to theatre.” Fest der Völker (Festival of the Nations) begins with a lyrical Mussolini’s Italy gave the movie the gold medal at Venice in evocation of classical and a reconstruction of the ancient 1938. Ten years later the International Olympic Committee beginnings of the Games. It follows the Olympic flame to Berlin awarded Leni Riefenstahl a gold medal and a diploma, and in for the opening parade presided over by Hitler before covering 1955 a Hollywood jury voted Olympia one of the ten finest some of the contests themselves. The rest of the events are motion pictures of all time. recorded in Part II, Fest der Schönheit (Festival of Beauty In the winter of 1938, Riefenstahl went to the United ) which begins with sequences in the Olympic village-loving States to promote Olympia but was cold-shouldered by studies of muscular bodies in the steam of Turkish baths, or Hollywood (except by Walt Disney, who invited her to his plunging at dawn into misty woodland pools. Later there is a studios). Returning to Germany, she resumed work on an earlier long montage of midair shots of high divers “falling out of the project—an adaptation of Kleist’s drama Penthesilia—but had to sun” that comes close to total abstraction. abandon this when World War II began. To her subsequent For the filming of Olympia, Riefenstahl mounted regret, she served briefly as a war correspondent, following the cameras on steel towers, lifted them on ballons, sunk them in advancing German army into Poland with a camera team. In trenches, floated them on rafts. The famous diving sequence 1940, refusing Goebbels’ invitation to make propaganda films, includes shots taken underwater by a cameraman specially she went back to work on another long-planned movie of her trained as a diver, and the director also makes brilliant use of own, a non-musical version of Eugen d’Albert’s opera Tiefland. slow-motion photography, a technique she learned from Fanck. Starring the director herself as a poor girl ensnared by a powerful By the time the Games were over, Leni Riefenstahl had some lowlander but rescued by a highland shepherd, Tiefland two hundred hours of film in the can and faced the monumental (Lowlands) is a characteristic affirmation of faith in “simple task of reducing this to four hours, with various versions in people living close to nature.” The opening scenes show the several different languages. The editing occupied her for nearly heroine dancing with a troupe of gypsies—real gypsies, whom two years and was, if anything, an even greater achievement than Riefenstahl recruited from a concentration camp. By her account, the filming itself. (Riefenstahl’s enemies have suggested that it neither she nor they realized that those extras were destined for was not she but the master editor Walter Ruttmann who was Auschwitz. There were constant interruptions during the filming, but the movie was apparently completed in 1944 at the Riefenstahl—TRIUMPH OF THE WILL—11

Barrandov Studios in Prague, though it was not released until ten Suzanna Lowry, who interviewed Leni Riefenstahl for years later. Riefenstahl’s 1944 marriage to Peter Jacob, an army , wrote that, at seventy-four, she was still major, ended in divorce two years later. “spörtlich, freckled and even a little sinewy from her ceaseless At the end of the war she was imprisoned for a total of photographic adventures—ranging the world and returning to more than three years, first by the American army and then by labour away in her own cutting room in Schwabing, Munich’s the French authorities. The latter confiscated her films and trendy-elegant quarter.” In the same interview, speaking of The equipment, and she also lost her houses in Kitzbühel (Austria), Blue Light, Riefenstahl said that, for her, the film symbolized her Berlin, and Munich. Released, she continued her battle to clear life;” Junta, the heroine , is a girl with a very wild nature; she is herself of her reputation as a devoted supporter of the Nazis. The very poor but very happy. The people of the valley where she most damning piece of evidence against her was a photograph, lives hate her and think she is a witch.” published in 1951 or 12952 in a German illustrated weekly. It showed her watching the massacre of civilians by German troops in the Polish village of Konsky in September 1939. In 1952, at her own request, an inquiry was held in a West Berlin denazification court. According to her own account, she had followed the German army into Konsky on her first day as a war correspondent. She had chanced upon the massacre and had tried to end it at some risk to herself, subsequently protesting to the German commander and withdrawing from all war-oriented filmmaking. Witnesses supported what she said, and the court decided that she had engaged in “no political action in support of the Nazi regime which would warrant punishment.” In 1953 Leni Riefenstahl’s equipment and films were returned to her and the following year Tiefland was released with some success in Germany and Austria. Various other projects (including a collaboration with Jean Cocteau) came to nothing, and in 1956 Riefenstahl went to Africa to make Schwartze JUDGMENTS OF Triumph of the Will Fracht (Black Cargo), a semi-documentary about the modern slave trade. Various complications (including a serious car “blood-chilling” accident) aborted this film also. However, she had fallen in love with Africa and with “cinematically dazzling and ideologically vicious” “native people as yet untouched by the destructive hand of Richard Barsam civilization.” In 1962 she went to the southern Sudan to film and photograph the Nuba, a group of mountain tribes whose people “The historic event served as the set of a film which was then to are of great physical beauty. She learned their language, lived assume the character of an authentic documentary.” Susan among them, and returned repeatedly to record their daily lives, Sontag their ceremonies, and their athletic contests. A volume of her magnificent photographs was published in 1973 (English version “The film is purely historical. I state precisely; it is film-verité. It in 1974), but her long-promised film about the Nuba has still not reflects the truth that was then, in 1934, history. It is therefore a appeared. She has also undertaken photographic commissions for documentary. Not a propaganda film. Oh! I know very well what various newspapers and magazines (including coverage of the propaganda is. That consists of recreating certain events in order 1972 Olympics in Munich) and at seventy-one lied about her age to illustrate a thesis or, in the face of certain events, to let one and took a diving course, mastering underwater photography to thing go in order to accentuate another.” Leni Riefenstahl produce, among other things, the pictures collected in (1980). “Triumph of the Will, like the antisemitic films produced in Formally cleared by the denazification courts, Leni Germany in 1941 (Jew Suss, Der Ewige Jude) to encourage the Riefenstahl has continued to encounter controversy and hostility Nazis to perpetrate the Final Solution with zeal and efficacy, is and is said to have fought over fifty court cases since World War an indispensable part of the Third Reich.” II. In 1960, an invitation to lecture at the National Film Theatre “An outstanding mirror to the monstrosity of Nazi in London was cancelled after protests. In 1974 she was honored Germany. In its arresting visual power Triumph of the Will is a at the Telluride film festival in Colorado, but the event was cinematic document of one of the most compelling subjects of marked by protests and demonstrations by Jewish organizations. our time, and yet, by its very essence, it is a demonstration of John Russell Taylor has suggested that anti-female prejudice may extreme falsehood in the service of extreme evil.” Ilan Avisar have contributed to all this, since “the directors of far more politically objectionable Nazi films, like , maker of “Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph des Willens is one of the greatest the notorious Jew Süss were happily reinstated and went back to achievements, perhaps the most brilliant of all in the history of work” while “she suffered continuing boycotts and protests, as a film propaganda. It is a magnificently controlled work of art, sort of solitary scapegoat for the cinematic sins of Nazi and, at the same time, a documentary on an event captured in all Germany.” of its immediacy.” Leif Furhammar & Folke Isaksson

Riefenstahl—TRIUMPH OF THE WILL—12

“Triumph of the Will is a failed propaganda film. Although Hitler multiple documentaries to be made about the same event or liked the film, in Nazi Germany it was not successful with the person and for each to have validity and utility. Right and wrong general public and was not used very widely as propaganda.” exist somewhere else..... Ilan Avisar The only reality of a film is the reality of the film you see. The reality you see depends on some measure on who you “A sympathetic documentary of a propaganda event.” are and what you know, on what codes you can read. The reality Richard Corliss the film is about is in another plane entirely. This is as true for the most complex documentary as the simplest and most direct news footage.

[dc] History and Film Problematical questions about historical accuracy and influence arise for Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will. Some critics charge that the 1934 Nüremberg Nazi Party rally was staged for the cameras’ documentation, making it a propaganda film not a documentary. Hitler, newly proclaimed Führer, personally commissioned Riefenstahl to make a record of the gigantic display of party power at his sixth party rally. He wanted the film to give him rallies forever. The question of whether reality creates the picture or the picture creates the reality is a complicated one—an issue TV news producers face regularly. Some analysts go so far as to say that to point the camera is to create the action filmed.... Riefenstahl asserts that her film was historical and her editing authentic and artistic....Where is the boundary between from “Editing Reality” Bruce Jackson and Diane Christian. shaping a story and plugging a platform? The reason we want to Visual Sociology, 9 (1), pp.62-74. 1994. dismiss Triumph of the Will as propaganda is because we want to discredit its content, its celebration of Nazism. Filmmakers used [bj] The reel thing her footage and her techniques to fight Nazism, in fact. Frank Documentary films are created in an inverted funnel of Capra made the series at Roosevelt’s personal declining possibility. The filmmaker begins with the materials request; the President sought the successful Hollywood and subjects of the world, which are infinite in scope. From that filmmaker to galvanize American passion to fight Hitler. Capra infinitude one selects a subject, then an approach. These used grim narration over Riefenstahl’s footage to argue military decisions are in part predicated on practical concerns: the amount obsession and menace. also used and mocked of money determines the size of the crew, the amount of footage her Hitler footage to incite ridicule of Hitler in The Great that can be purchased, shot, and processed, the number of Dictator. location and editing days, the sophistication of the sound mix. Barsam describes Triumph of the Will as “cinematically Thousands of microdecisions are made for aesthetic reasons, dazzling and ideologically vicious”. But ideological viciousness technical reasons, weather reasons, background noise reasons, is not obvious in Triumph of the Will. It is implicitly present only time-to-go-to-dinner-now reasons, access and permission after the next ten years of history. In 1934, Churchill and reasons, sore back and feet reasons. Every decision forecloses Roosevelt were also praising Hitler as the new savior of others and the possibilities become ever narrower. Germany. In films based on real-time events, filmmakers are Riefenstahl, a brilliant, ambitious young director and limited by the arrow of time: they return from the field with a actress, didn’t want to make the documentary. She wanted to fixed amount of data, a fixed world of possibility: so many feet make an epic romance called Tiefland (Heartland) with dancing of exposed film and audiotape. (They can go back and do and drama; she wanted to play a Gypsy dancer and have poor pickups, but it’s never the same, and that just changes the peasants rebel against oppressive landlords. Riefenstahl declined moment at which the world of possibility is fixed, not the fact or Hitler’s first invitation to film the rally. But he persisted, asking limitation of it.). They may manipulate those images and sounds, her to give six days of her life to Germany. She said she was but they will have no other images to do things with.... completely unfamiliar with all the subject matter, that she couldn’t tell the SA from the SS. Hitler responded that The real thing individuals didn’t matter, what mattered was the transcendent The key fact missed most often by social scientists utilizing epic of the party, their people, their Führer. (Riefenstahl, documentary films for data, is this: documentary films are not 1992:158) He said “It is not important who is in the film. It is found or reported things; they’re made things. They differ from important that the film has the atmosphere.” She said it would fiction films in that they bring with them questions of accuracy interfere with her projects, taking perhaps a year to edit. Hitler linked to an external reality....We need to remember that asked her to do it as a personal favor and he guaranteed her documentaries don’t document just an event; they also document artistic control. She had eighteen cameramen and eighteen the perception of an event, and that perception is enacted in the camera assistants under the direction of Sepp Allgeier, the best film itself. That double documentary aspect is what permits talent, full control. Riefenstahl plaintively asked many times Riefenstahl—TRIUMPH OF THE WILL—13 afterward, “Tell me one person who would not make this film Alan Riding, Leni Riefenstahl, Filmmaker and Nazi under these conditions?” Yet her career and life were ruined by Propagandist, Dies at 101 NY Times September 9, 2003 her genius in Triumph of the Will, by her naive confidence that Leni Riefenstahl, the German filmmaker whose daringly art transcended reality. She became a documentary filmmaker by innovative documentaries about a Nazi rally in Nuremberg in accident and opportunism, not by desire. Her passion and 1934 and the Berlin Olympics of 1936 earned her both acclaim romantic escapism would have been more safely expressed in as a cinematic genius and contempt as a propagandist for Hitler, fiction rather than history. died Monday night at her home in Pöcking, south of Munich. She Her film is a peerless documentary of the myth of was 101. Nazism. Like Abel Gance’s Napoléon, which she admired and After the defeat of Germany in 1945, she was imitated in camera movement, the film omits negative elements pronounced a Nazi sympathizer by the Allies and never again and ambiguities and celebrates the glory of a hero and his noble found work as a movie director. But her revolutionary film military ideal and discipline. The reason we want to call Triumph techniques deeply influenced later generations of documentary of the Will propaganda is because its message is and makers and television commercial makers, keeping alive the and idolatry and we are slow to unmask that message. debate over whether her talent could be separated from her Our own political conventions climax in scenes that echo prewar political views. Triumph of the Will, with flag waving, adulation and hysteria. For many students of her life and legacy, Ms. Candidates piously pledge allegiance and Riefenstahl was both propagandist and promise warlike vigor. They are genius. A popular dancer and actress celebrated as saviors of the nation. before becoming a movie director in Nationalism and militarism are 1932, she enthusiastically put her talent touchstones of political viability. While at the service of the Nazis. we critique Riefenstahl’s halo lighting of Yet, without her exceptional artistic Hitler, the adoring up-gazing camera vision, her two most famous angles and the inflammatory chauvinism, documentaries, "Triumph of the Will" we might well reflect that our political and the two-part "Olympia," would staging and image-making use exactly the neither have caused a sensation at the same techniques. time nor be considered classics today. Triumph of the Will has a terrific Ms. Riefenstahl never denied energy: flags flutter, soldiers and farmers her early conviction that Hitler could salute, women and children wave and gaze "save" Germany. She also said that her and thrill to marching male energy. idealized image of him fell apart "far Riefenstahl edited the film to move, to be too late," near the end of World War II. moving, unlike static newsreels. The film But, amid widespread skepticism, she expresses her love and pride and hope for insisted that she was never a Nazi and her history. It is palpable. We don’t see a dark side of that "Triumph of the Will" and "Olympia" were apolitical, nationalism and militarism and Nazism. The anti-Semitism is inspired only by her desire to create works of art. missing, the speeches are cut and mask the will to world Still, while her documentaries continue to be studied in some domination. (The holocaust horror was probably as unthinkable film schools, Ms. Riefenstahl remained trapped in the shadow of to Riefenstahl as it was to Freud five years later, to Chaplin in her association with Hitler. Her repeated attempts to find 1940, to many today.) Instead Riefenstahl’s vision is relentlessly financing for a new film always ended in failure, while public romantic. Germans were still forbidden in 1934 to arm the screenings of her movies and exhibitions of her photographs military, so the endless marching men she filmed and then invariably prompted protests. As recently as last year, she was directed the orchestral music to match did not even carry guns. briefly investigated in Germany for purported race-hatred crimes. She filmed an innocent army, organized energy and discipline She nonetheless worked hard to shed her image as the Nazi and sacrifice without weapons. The talk of blood and sacrifice, regime's most persuasive propagandist. After the war, she spent the Blood Flag Hitler ritually touched to the flags of Germany, 20 years in relative isolation, living in her mother's apartment in only foreshadowed the real blood that now informs our reading Munich. Then, in the late 1960's, perhaps out of frustration, she of this passionate nationalism, military energy and unswerving reinvented herself as a photographer and, within a decade, she dedication to a leader who is the nation who is the people who is had made her name in a new visual art form. or becomes under such deification mad. But Hitler was more A tiny woman of great physical courage and fierce than a demon; he was a seductive drama, celebrated as a savior in determination, she next took up scuba diving, claiming to be only Riefenstahl’s film and embraced by civilized nations—a social 51 — when she was actually 20 years older — in order to obtain phenomenon. Whatever one says about the construction of a diving license. Two collections of her underwater photographs, documentary—about the inevitable presumptions, focusing or "Coral Gardens" and "Wonders Under Water," were published in omissions—it is the social element, the real others, that constitute the United States and she continued diving in the Maldives until the core of documentary truth. Riefenstahl’s work stands as an she was in her late 90's. early, eerie and enduring documentary of one of the most Last year, to coincide with her 100th birthday, she disturbing social phenomena in history. released her first movie in almost half a century, a 45-minute documentary of marine life called "Impressions Under Water." Riefenstahl—TRIUMPH OF THE WILL—14

But it was her photography that stirred most made the party film, `Triumph of the Will,' in 1934. But I cannot controversy. Inspired by George Rodger's famous image of a regret that I lived in that time. No anti-Semitic word has ever muscular Nuba wrestler carried on the shoulders of another crossed my lips. I was never anti-Semitic. I did not join the party. fighter, she made several trips to southern Sudan to photograph So where then is my guilt? You tell me. I have thrown no atomic the Nuba. She worked alone at first, then later with Horst bombs. I have never betrayed anyone. What am I guilty of?" Kettner, 42 years her junior, who became her companion and It was evidently a well-rehearsed response. In an interview with lived with her until her death. (In March 2000, while making a last year, she said: "I didn't do any harm to return visit to the Nuba, the 97-year-old Ms. Riefenstahl was anyone. What have I ever done? I never intended any harm to severely injured in a helicopter accident in Sudan. She was flown anyone." back to a hospital in Munich.) Certainly, in her final years, she never shied from the Her first Sudan book, "Last of the Nuba," published in limelight. the United States in 1974, won her recognition as a photographer In 1997, when a Hamburg gallery held the first exhibition of her and to some extent rehabilitated her as an artist. But while even work in postwar Germany, Ms. Riefenstahl agreed to be in Germany it became acceptable to praise Ms. Riefenstahl as the interviewed by major German news weeklies, even though she most important female movie director ever, both her role in knew much of the questioning would be hostile. celebrating the Third Reich and what the critic Susan Sontag That same year, ignoring protests, she traveled to Los Angeles to described as the "fascist esthetics" of her work also came under receive a lifetime achievement award from Cinecon, a group that new scrutiny. restores old movies. In 2001 she visited St. Petersburg, where her Writing in The New York Review of Books in 1975, films were shown in a documentary festival. Ms. Sontag said there was a common "esthetic" running through Whether out of vanity or naïveté, Ms. Riefenstahl may what she called Ms. Riefenstahl's "triptych of fascist visuals" — well have believed that her artistic independence was never her early work as an actress in Arnold Fanck's "mountain films," compromised, that she did not "sell" her talents to the Nazis who her two principal documentaries and her photographs of the financed "Triumph of the Will" and "Olympia." Yet, shaped by Nuba. the profound romanticism "The fascist of 19th-century German dramaturgy centers on culture, her monumental the orgiastic vision of beauty fitted transactions between perfectly into the National mighty forces and their Socialist ideology. puppets," Ms. Sontag Born into a wrote. "Its comfortable Berlin home choreography on Aug. 22, 1902, Helene alternates between Berta Amalie Riefenstahl ceaseless motion and a grew up loving nature and congealed, static, the outdoor life. Her `virile' posing." mother encouraged her In the early artistic flair, and although 1990's, when Ms. her father, a businessman, Riefenstahl was more was opposed to her than 90, she once again found herself at the center of heated working on the stage, she began dancing in an Isadora Duncan- debate when she was the subject of a three-hour documentary, like free style at the age of 16 and soon found work — and "The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl," by the considerable recognition — in Berlin theaters. German filmmaker Ray Müller. Coincidentally, she also In 1924, her life changed direction. Recovering from an published her own 669-page autobiography, "Leni Riefenstahl: A injury at 22, Ms. Riefenstahl was profoundly affected by seeing Memoir." Fanck's movie, "Mountain of Destiny," and promptly sought out In the book, she was able to give her version of her life. the director. Entranced by the striking young dancer, Fanck cast Writing in The New York Times Book Review, John Simon said her in his next seven mountain films, among them "The Holy the memoir did not contain "a single unspellbinding page." He Mountain," "The White Hell of Piz Palu" and "S O S Iceberg." raised the question about the veracity of her accounts of These films gave her the image of a romantic heroine in everything from her private meetings with Hitler to her life with the Wagnerian cast, in harmony with nature and bent on fighting the Nuba. But he concluded, "The book must, in the main, be evil. Her often dangerous roles — she climbed rock faces true; it is far too weird for fiction." barefoot and was once almost swept away by an avalanche In the documentary, while Mr. Müller allowed her to provoked by Fanck — also showed her to be fearless. In 1932, talk at fascinating length about her filmmaking techniques, he she directed her first movie, "The Blue Light," another mountain also questioned her memory, notably her claim to have had few film, in which she appeared as a warm-hearted peasant girl. (The dealings with Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda minister. At names of her Jewish co-writer, Bela Balázs, and the film's Jewish the end of the documentary, Mr. Müller also tried to provoke her producer, Harry Sokal, were removed from the credits when into admitting guilt for her past. "The Blue Light" was reissued in 1938.) "What do you mean by that?" she asked, clearly It was also around this time, a year before Hitler's rise to surprised. "Where is my guilt? I can regret. I can regret that I power, that she first heard the Nazi leader speak at a rally. "I Riefenstahl—TRIUMPH OF THE WILL—15 heard his voice: `Fellow Germans'," she recalled in her swimmers that she edited into the final version. When the games autobiography. "That very same instant I had an almost began, she had to cover 136 events because, she recalled, "we apocalyptic vision that I was never able to forget. It seemed as if never knew when a world record would be broken." the earth's surface were spreading out before me, like a And, once again, both her filming and editing hemisphere that suddenly splits apart in the middle, spewing out techniques broke new ground. To capture the drama of the pole an enormous jet of water, so powerful that it touched the sky and vault and long-jump events, she had holes dug beside the sandpit shook the earth. I felt paralyzed." where the athletes landed. She subsequently wrote to Hitler, noting that "I must In the high-diving event, which dominated the second confess that I was so impressed by you and by the enthusiasm of part of the film, "Festival of Beauty," she used four cameras, the spectators that I would like to meet you personally." Her including one underwater, to capture the movement of divers popularity as an actress made the request seem reasonable; from all angles. Then, in the editing room, she turned the divers Hitler's appreciation of her role into graceful birds. in "The Blue Light" made the "Olympia" was not encounter possible. blatantly propagandistic. In the years that Notably, it showed Jesse Owens' followed, she met frequently moments of victory, while Hitler with the Nazi leader. She was seen for only 15 seconds on always stridently denied that the single occasion he visited the they were lovers although, Olympic stadium. Although the recalling one meeting, she later film was widely praised, its wrote, "That evening I felt that reception in 1938 was muted by Hitler desired me as a woman." Europe's gradual slide toward At their first meeting in 1932, war. She was also met with though, she said she was most hostility when she took the film struck by his informality and to the United States in November she quoted him as telling her, 1938. "Once we come to power, you When Germany invaded must make my films." Poland in September 1939, Ms. Riefenstahl went to the front as a In her autobiography, she said she told him that she war correspondent, but she claimed that she soon left in disgust could not make films on commission. Yet, the next year, with at Wehrmacht brutalities. Yet the next year, when Germany Hitler now Chancellor, she made "Victory of the Faith," a occupied France, she sent a telegram to Hitler congratulating him documentary about a Nazi Party rally at Nuremberg. She was not on seizing Paris. "Everyone thought the war was over," she later happy with the film and the following year she tried again, this explained, "and in that spirit I sent the cable to Hitler." time with ample time, money and equipment. The result was During the war, she continued to see Hitler sporadically "Triumph of the Will." but turned her attention back to filmmaking. Several projects fell The film, which took almost two years to edit from 250 through, but in 1944 she was able to complete filming of miles of raw footage, included such innovative techniques as "Tiefland," or "Lowlands," an adaptation of the Eugene d'Albert moving cameras, including one on a tiny elevator attached to a operetta in which she also played the role of a Spanish Gypsy flagpole behind the speaker's podium that provided sweeping dancer. The film was shot in the Tyrol, and its extras included panoramic views; the use of telephoto lenses to create a Gypsies interned in a nearby concentration camp. foreshortening effect (for example, when filming a parade of After the war, Ms. Riefenstahl insisted she had not Nazi flags); frequent close-ups of wide-eyed party faithful, and known that the Gypsies were being detained before their heroic poses of Hitler shot from well below eye-level. The film deportation to Nazi death camps. However, when in April 2002 also used "real sound" but was not accompanied by a she repeated the claim that none of the Gypsies had died, a commentary. German Gypsy Association, Rom, started legal action against The film won Ms. Riefenstahl assorted German prizes her, arguing that at least half the extras were later killed. and, although she again pledged to make no more party films, On her 100th birthday, the Frankfurt prosecutor's office she then made an 18-minute documentary, "Day of Freedom: opened an investigation into charges that she had denied the Our Army," about the Wehrmacht in 1935. Soon afterward, she Holocaust, but the case was dropped two months later for lack of was commissioned by the German Olympic Committee to record evidence and because of her advanced age. the 1936 Berlin Olympics. To the end of her life she insisted that Ms. Riefenstahl said she saw Hitler for the last time in "Olympia" was not an official film, but ample evidence exists to March 1944 when she visited him in Kitzbuhel, Austria, to suggest it was indirectly financed by Goebbels' Propaganda introduce her new husband, an army officer called Peter Jacob. Ministry. She later wrote that Hitler had aged considerably and his hands Still, she made extraordinary use of the 170-member trembled, but "he still cast the same magical spell as before." team of cameramen and technicians that she assembled. To Ms. Riefenstahl's only marriage lasted little longer than her evoke the early Greek Olympics in the first part of the numerous passionate affairs during her time as an actress and documentary, "Festival of the Nations," she filmed near-naked filmmaker. At the end of the war, she was detained for almost athletes in assorted heroic poses. During the training period, she four years for "de-Nazification," first by the American authorities also filmed close-ups of oarsmen, marathon runners and and then by French forces. She was found to be a Nazi Riefenstahl—TRIUMPH OF THE WILL—16

"sympathizer," but she was not banned from working and was was over. finally able to release "Tiefland" in 1954. But her movie career

COMING UP IN THE FALL 2017 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS XXXV

September 19: Luchino Visconti Rocco and His Brothers 1960 September 26: Jacques Demy The Umbrellas of Cherbourg 1964 October 3: Robert Altman M*A*S*H 1970 October 10 Alan J. Pakula All The President’s Men 1976 October 17: Andrei Tarkovsky Nostalghia 1983 October 24: Wim Wenders Wings of Desire 1987 October 31: Mike Nichols Postcards from the Edge 1990 November 7: Tran Anh Hung The Scent of Green Papayas 1993 November 14: Hayeo Miyazaki The Wind Rises 2013 November 21: Andrey Zvyagintsev Leviathan 2014 November 28: Pedro Almodóvar Julieta 2016 December 5: Billy Wilder Some Like it Hot 1959

CONTACTS:...email Diane Christian: [email protected]…email Bruce Jackson [email protected] the series schedule, annotations, links and updates: http://buffalofilmseminars.com...to subscribe to the weekly email informational notes, send an email to addto [email protected] cast and crew info on any film: http://imdb.com/ The Buffalo Film Seminars are presented by the State University of New York at Buffalo and the Dipson Amherst Theatre, with support from the Robert and Patricia Colby Foundation and the Buffalo News.

Leni Riefenstahl in Olympia