Leni Riefenstahl: A Life [Hardcover]

Jurgen Trimborn's book "Leni Riefenstahl: a Life" is an excellent examination of the life and career of that problematic aesthetic figure, Leni Riefenstahl. What does one do with a woman whose greatest aesthetic accomplishments were performed to glorify one of the most evil regimes to stride this sorry earth(and that is saying something)? Trimborn charts her early rise as a dancer and model, her gradual drift into the film world, and her adventurous life both in and after the Nazi era. Trimborn is great at documenting Riefenstahl's tergiversations(in virtually every sense of the word) - while he is merciless in his documentation of the seemingly endless opportunism of Riefstahl, he seems to hestitate at calling her an opportunist. The word that comes to my mind is 'climber.' While Riefstahl was anti-Semitic(a dime-a-dozen in that time and place, unfortunately), she was not a Nazi as such. However, when Hitler took a shine to her directing debut in "the Blue Light," she saw opportunity and seized it. Trimborn leaves no doubt that Riefenstahl was on very good terms with Hitler indeed. (He does, however, discount the endless rumours at the time about her sleeping with Hitler, however coy she was about it personally.) Trimborn makes a surprisingly good case for considering "Triumph of the Will" as an experimental film(in terms of film technique). He also discounts the idea(first put forward by Susan Sontag) that the films of Arnold Fanck were proto-fascistic - debatable. He describes the various problems Riefenstahl had with that ugly womanizer Goebbels - nowhere near as many or as difficult as Riefenstahl and her admirers let on. His research into the filming of "Olympia" is fascinating(as well as the 'missing' films of Riefenstahl) and the "Tiefland" debacle(it was a debacle, and a surreal one at that) is treated fully. His treatment of her life after fascism is treated with something resembling sympathy, although he is meticulous in documenting her various misrepresentations of the immediate post-War period. A good deal of this book seems to address Susan Sontag's famous article "Fascinating Fascism", both explicitly and implicitly. Sontag, as you may recall, said Riefenstahl had a negligible influence on later film-making technique. The influence seemed, as it were, to leap a generation. Trimborn documents the influence she had on, of all people, Lucas and Spielberg(significantly, neither of them were what I'd call highbrows)and, of all things, on animation(he could have gone much further with this line of thought, I think). Trimborn seems to dismiss the idea of her post-War work as having fascist elements. Indeed, he seems to take issue with Sontag's assertion that Riefenstahl's work was consistently fascist in theme and technique from beginning to end(Sontag's argument, if you might recall, was deeply indebted to various essays by the Frankfurt School of thought on such figures as Knut Hamsun, etc.) Very interesting to me are the photographs in Jurgen Trimborn's book. Sontag said in her essay that Riefenstahl had a timeless beauty, comparable to the classical music singer Elizabeth Schwarzkopf. The photographs in Trimborn's book certainly do reveal Riefenstahl's beauty, but also sometimes they reveal a harsh, seemingly predatory side to her looks - emblematic, perhaps? Riefenstahl has been the subject of aesthetic and biographical rationalizations from her various American admirers, notably Andrew Sarris and John Simon(Trimborn talks about the latter, but not the former). Their respective interests are apparent. As a promulgator of the so-called auteur theory, Andrew Sarris perceived the need (felt by all critics, no matter how much they try to separate art from creator) to praise and defend someone who was obviously a great director/auteur. A great creator must be a great person? Oh, sure. The notorious John Simon, on the other hand, represented literary New Criticism/formalism with its strict divorce of artist and art and, as such, felt some need to insist on the divorce in Riefenstahl's work. Art and artist stand above mere temporal political concerns, in effect. Of course, this did not stop Simon from trying to rationalize and defend both Riefenstahl as a person and her art. Trimborn's study makes the work of such apologists somewhat more difficult. In the end, we are left with the fact that Riefenstahl was a very talented person(perhaps even a genius) and, regardless of the politics, she created at least two truly great films. But no matter how great these films are, Riefenstahl will always be stained, as it were, by her unfortunate personal and political associations. She might not have slept with Hitler(as Trimborn convincingly argues, in my opinon), but, metaphorically speaking, she sure did sleep with the Beast. And no matter how hard you rub that's one stain that just won't come out. A merciless and provocative study of a very provocative figure. Greg Cameron, Surrey, B.C., Canada.