Dietrich & Riefenstahl: Hollywood, Berlin, and a Century in Two Lives

by Wieland, Karin

  On April 20, 1938, the Ufa Palace was decorated with huge red swastika flags and white Olympic flags. Riefenstahl drove up in her Mercedes limousine. Clad in a white kimono-like dress, she strode through the line of men in their black uniforms. The premiere of the Olympia film served as the highlight and finale of the festivities for Hitler’s forty-ninth birthday. Riefenstahl could not have dreamed of a more sumptuous venue for her film. About two thousand guests were expected. Every one of the party leaders was in attendance, as were many members of the diplomatic corps, gauleiters, Olympic champions, film stars, and high-ranking members of the International Olympic Committee. Riefenstahl sat with her parents and her brother, Heinz, in box seats next to the Führer. She stood out in her Asian-inspired evening gown. After the first break, Hitler turned to her and shook her hand. The applause went on for several minutes. The Greek ambassador gave her an olive branch from the sacred grove on Mount Olympus on behalf of the crown prince of Greece. There she stood with the Führer, her face aglow with pleasure, clutching her olive branch. Her efforts had paid off; he liked the film. And if he liked it, its success was guaranteed. At the end of the second part, Hitler handed her a bouquet of white lilacs (representing Olympia) and red roses (for the swastika), and the audience went wild. Then Goebbels hosted a reception at the propaganda ministry.93 Riefenstahl had demonstrated to the world what National Socialist Germany was able to achieve. To assure her international success, she issued several versions of the film, in German, English, and French, and thus sought outreach to an audience that was not especially fond of watching Hitler. With Olympia, Riefenstahl had succeeded in making an overtly political motion picture that is still considered one of the finest sports films ever made. Olympia set new benchmarks for cinematic sports coverage.

  Festival of Nations, as part one was called, opens with a prologue that establishes a connection between ancient Greece and National Socialist Germany. Riefenstahl used this introduction to make it clear that the audience would not be seeing a newsreel; this was a work of art. The camera meanders over deserted temple ruins, smoke rising, and clouds passing. The image of Myron’s Discobulus statue dissolves into a flesh-and-blood athlete. A lone torchbearer runs along the sea, on his way to Berlin.

  The Olympic stadium, seen from an aerial perspective, resembles an ancient coliseum yet highlights the technological progress of the twentieth century. The action clearly takes place in the present, complete with rounds of Heil Hitler accompanied by Hitler salutes. It is as though the director wanted viewers to awaken from the dream into which the prologue had transported them. The film started with the statue of the discus thrower evolving into a human being, and the competition itself begins with the discus throwing event. The camera shows us the feet in motion, the concentration, and the athletes’ utter devotion before, during, and after the throw. Footage of the competitions is interspersed with shots panning up to the scoreboard, the Olympic flame, Hitler, or the spectators, who take on the role of commentators with their gestures, facial expressions, and shouts, as we see Germans, Japanese, and Italians worrying about, rooting for, or rejoicing with their athletes.

  The spectators, who have turned out in large numbers, are elegantly dressed and international. A Wehrmacht officer settles in happily next to an English gentleman. Together, they chuckle over a false start, groan when the baton is dropped during a relay race, and form groups to cheer on the athletes. During the men’s 110-meter hurdles, the bodies seem to fly synchronously over the hurdles. Often, the pace of the filming varies during a competition, and one can study the athletes’ technique, muscle tension, and strength giving out in slow motion. Riefenstahl shows the joy of the winner, but also displays the effort and exhaustion that accompany this victory. The images of the runners lurching to the finish line, their faces contorted with pain, are tantamount to an autobiographical reminiscence of the film’s director. She knows what it means to triumph over the body. The men’s pole vault goes on for five hours. Japanese and American competitors fight the battle for medals until nightfall. The athletes are photographed against the backdrop of the twilight sky as they push off their poles and soar through the air.

  Festival of Beauty, the second Olympia film, opens with shots of the Olympic Village. In the morning fog, a group of runners approaches, their bodies reflected in the lake as they complete their morning training session. These elated men head into the sauna, crowding together on the benches and massaging each other’s sweaty bodies, then jump into the lake. The naked men sitting together on the landing stage in the early morning form a tightly knit group. It is evident that the female bodies in artistic gymnastics held little interest for the director. The shots of divers flying through the air like birds make it hard to tell whether they are moving toward the sky—and out of the water—or the other way around, and show the directorial mark of the former dancer. At the editing table, she was able to fulfill the unfulfilled dream of every dancer: weightlessness in space.94

  Riefenstahl perfected the blend of physicality and technology. Technology enabled her to pull away from reality and create images that suggest pure energy. The diver’s body melts into the infinitude of the sky, then we see it shoot into the water. His body appears to be sheer force and motion juxtaposed with images of composure and serenity. We see happy bodies soaked with sweat. With perfect organization, artistic intuition, and technical proficiency, she was able to shoot a film that helped her rise to the position of exemplary artist in 1930s Germany.

  On May 1, Goebbels awarded Riefenstahl the National Film Prize for 1937–1938 for the Olympia film. Then she went on tour. She had been radiantly happy since the triumphant premiere. She had finally made a film that was understood throughout the world and aroused interest everywhere. Over the weeks that followed, she showed her film in Brussels, Belgrade, Athens, Zurich, Rome, and Paris. The young German director was acclaimed by people of note. A photograph taken of her with the film director Sasha Guitry after the premiere in Paris shows a well-to-do gentleman in lively conversation with an elegant lady. Riefenstahl hoped that her appearance and demeanor would quell the rumors about the evil Nazis. Her visit shocked the German emigrants in Paris, who thought they had found a safe haven. Riefenstahl was advised not to attend the premiere because of feared protests by the emigrants, but she could not follow that advice. She slipped into the movie theater without revealing her identity, and supposedly she witnessed the French breaking into applause whenever Hitler appeared on the screen. She was eventually recognized by the crowd, which gave her an enthusiastic reception. The German magazine Lichtbild-Bühne carried this report from Paris: “The emigrants here were left speechless by this success. . . . This powerful document of history in the new Germany is tearing away at many a web of lies, and many foreigners will be seeing the Third Reich in a whole new light.”95

  There is no doubt that Riefenstahl was on the move as a cultural ambassador for Adolf Hitler. This artist confounded people’s images of a National Socialist. She did not have a husband or children at her side, did not braid her hair, wore elegant evening gowns, and was not averse to having fun. In late July, another tour took her through Scandinavia. Her itinerary included Copenhagen, Stockholm, Oslo, and Helsinki. The artist was received by prime ministers and kings, and her premieres were attended by generals, diplomats, princes, and princesses. On August 26, she headed to the Venice Biennale, where Olympia was competing with Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Marcel Carné’s Port of Shadows. Völkischer Beobachter reported, “At the very beginning, the creator of the film, Leni Riefenstahl, who was in attendance and sitting in the first row of the balcony between Minister Alfieri and Count Volpi, was given a special hearty round of applause.”96 Everyone rose when she entered the room. She was awarded the Coppia Mussolini, and gave a radio interview that was broadcast throughout Italy. Riefenstahl looked dazzling. Her hair was upswept; she was wearing an eye-catching gown and long glittery earrings; her face was relaxed, and her fingernails red. Duri
ng the summer months of 1938, she felt like an internationally acclaimed artist. She finally had the feeling that she was a star.

  In order to keep her image as an actress alive, she arranged for The Blue Light to be brought back to movie theaters right after her European tour. However, the names Béla Balázs and Carl Mayer, and the financing by Harry Sokal, were kept from view.97 Her name dominated the film posters.

  This summer of triumphs also marked the beginning of Riefenstahl’s comedown. Her art paled in comparison to politics. During the summer months, the Sudeten crisis was keeping Europe on tenterhooks, with people fearing that Hitler would initiate a military strike against Czechoslovakia. The coming weeks were spent in negotiations with England and threats against Czechoslovakia. On September 26, Hitler gave a speech in the Sports Palace. The whole world awaited this speech with bated breath; it was a matter of war or peace. He bellowed about getting his Sudetenland on October 1. Foreign observers noted that for the first time, he seemed to be losing his self-control. On the evening of September 27, when The Blue Light was rereleased, a motorized division rolled through Berlin, heading to the Czech border. People on their way home from work hurried to the subways and made a point of ignoring this military demonstration. The Munich Agreement, which was signed in the early morning hours of September 30, 1938, averted war for the time being.

  One month later, Riefenstahl traveled to the United States on the German luxury liner Europa. Triumph of the Will had given her quite a reputation in this country, and the Americans were curious to find out more about the career of this unusual artist who bore no resemblance to their vision of a Nazi German. Riefenstahl and her seventeen monogrammed suitcases arrived in New York on November 4. She preferred to travel under the pseudonym “Lotte Richter,” but she was quickly recognized on the ship. Riefenstahl was accompanied by Ernst Jäger, her personal adviser, and Werner Klingenberg, who had served on the preparatory commission for the 1936 Olympic Games and was now acting in the same capacity for the 1940 Games. Klingenberg, a fervent National Socialist, had lived in the United States and spoke fluent English. Now that Riefenstahl had achieved fame and fortune at home, she wanted to conquer the world, and in the world of the cinema that meant conquering the United States. Her suitcases contained several versions of her Olympia film. Jäger later insinuated that she was actually intending to spread propaganda for Hitler, but that is unlikely for such a self-centered individual. She was looking to boost her own fame. Whatever became of the others—and in this case Hitler was no exception—was of secondary importance to her. Her expectations were high, but she soon realized that not all Americans were on her side. The influential Anti-Nazi League sought to prevent her film from being shown in the United States. However, she also found influential supporters, such as Avery Brundage from the IOC, who was kindly disposed to National Socialist Germany. Before she could show her film to anyone, though, something happened that threatened to upend her further plans in America.

  On November 9, the synagogues in Germany burned; Jewish businesses were set aflame; Jewish private residences were destroyed; and Jews were locked up, assaulted, and killed. Everyone urged Riefenstahl to head home. People tried to make her realize that no one in the United States had any interest in seeing her film now, let alone acquiring it. She could not accept that, and insisted that the news was fictitious. Riefenstahl refused to believe what she was reading in the American newspapers. She claimed not to have noticed any anti-Semitic sentiment in Germany before her departure. She bore the consequences of this willful ignorance when doors were slammed in her face. After flying high in Europe, she came crashing down in America. The negative headlines about the National Socialists dashed any hopes she had for success in the United States.

  Determined as ever, she continued on to Hollywood and arrived on November 24. No red-carpet treatment awaited her, and the Garden of Allah, where rooms had been reserved for her, did not wish to have her as a guest. “American films are barred from Germany, so we have nothing to show Miss Riefenstahl,” a studio executive informed her curtly.98 The major studio bosses saw no need to get together with her. Parties that had been arranged for her were canceled, and she was ignored when she showed up at a gathering, even though she had packed her best designer clothes and sassy fur hat. Eventually there was a private showing of the film in the presence of Glenn Morris and Johnny Weissmuller, followed by articles in the Los Angeles Times and the Hollywood Citizen News that praised Olympia. These two reviews and a visit to Walt Disney were all she had to show for the weeks she spent in the United States.

  Although Riefenstahl had ample opportunity to stay informed about the events in Germany, she chose to keep her eyes firmly shut and side unequivocally with the National Socialists. On January 15, 1939, she returned to Berlin from the New World. An entry in Goebbels’s diary dated February 5, 1939, reveals her true feelings about her trip: “In the evening Leni Riefenstahl tells me about her trip to America. She gives me an exhaustive picture, which is far from gratifying. We have no say over there. The Jews are running things with terror and boycotts. But for how long?” Leni Riefenstahl must have been glad to be back in the familiar totalitarian terrain. Hitler was busily preparing for war, and she was planning her next motion picture. In a sense, they were both setting the stage for the roles of their lives: Hitler as the self-proclaimed greatest commander of all time, and Riefenstahl as the Amazon warrior Penthesilea.

  On March 8, 1939, one week before German troops invaded Czechoslovakia, there was an initial meeting about the “Construction Project Leni Riefenstahl.” In order to meet the requirements of the major tasks ahead, she would be getting her own studio lot. A plot of land near her villa was being sought for this purpose. Albert Speer was involved in the project and attended the meetings. The Party would cover the full costs. Riefenstahl could ask for whatever her heart desired: spacious, brightly lit workspaces; a film archive; a casino; a gymnasium; dubbing rooms; cutting rooms; projection rooms, all on a lot measuring 2,700 square feet. The prospect of a mini-Hollywood in Dahlem made it easy for Riefenstahl to put the ignominy in America out of her mind. In addition to working on this major project, she devoted herself to her dream role, Penthesilea. She lost no time in founding Leni Riefenstahl Film Inc., then hired her loyal crew members Walter Grosskopf and Walter Traut as officers in the company, practiced horseback riding, and engaged in “Amazon gymnastics” to tone her body.

  When Riefenstahl went on vacation on August 30, bombers had been thundering over Berlin for a week. Two days earlier, a comprehensive system of food rationing had gone into effect for the population, and troops were heading east. All signs pointed to war. In this highly charged situation, Riefenstahl went off to the mountains so that she could relax before traveling to Libya for the film shoot. She most likely encountered military vehicles on the autobahn when she left Berlin and headed to Bolzano in her sports car. On August 31, she stood on a mountain top, “happy, and filled with dreams of the future,” blissfully unaware that Penthesilea would be called off.99 As of September 1, there was war.

  THE

  AMAZON

  The morning of September 1, 1939, was gray and cloudy in Berlin. Anti-aircraft cannons had been positioned in the vicinity of the Kroll Opera House to safeguard Hitler during his speech, which was set to begin at ten o’clock. He wore a gray military uniform and looked fatigued and agitated. Leni Riefenstahl heard him announce that as of 5:45 a.m., the Germans had been returning fire: “Once again, then, I have put on the coat that was most sacred and dear to me. I will not take it off until victory is achieved, or—I will not live to see this outcome!”1 The radio was reporting the rapid advance of the Germans into Poland. Riefenstahl now felt so close to Hitler that she incorporated his decision to go to war into her own plans for the future.

  Most people in Berlin did not experience major changes in their everyday lives after the outbreak of the war. Attendance at opera houses, theaters, soccer stadiums, and movie theaters held steady. Income
taxes went up drastically, food was rationed, and windows were darkened at night, but people were confident that this war would soon end in victory.

  Riefenstahl regarded the war as a test of her loyalty to Hitler. In view of her prominence, she could not go on as before. If Hitler went to war, she had to follow him. She knew full well that he would continue to support her after the war only if she had done her part to support the war effort. She frantically considered her options, which even included becoming a nurse, then concluded that film was her best vehicle.

  In Riefenstahl’s account, her staff urged her to set up a film group to provide media coverage of the war. She went to the Reich chancellery and presented her case to a high-ranking officer, and received authorization within twenty-four hours. A major in Grunewald gave her and her men quick instructions in handling pistols and gas masks, and they slipped on their slate blue uniforms and headed off to the front lines. This account does not really clarify what she hoped to achieve by taking the trip. Riefenstahl scrapped her plans to film Penthesilea and followed Hitler to Poland. She was the only one of the artists in favor with the National Socialists who was so willing and eager to do so. Her eagerness is explained in part by the fact that Hitler had made provisions for his artists in the event of war. Toward the end of the summer of 1939, his military adjutant had requisitioned from the district defense offices the papers of the artists the Führer wanted to keep out of military service. The papers were simply torn up, so these men ceased to exist as far as the military registration office was concerned and thus could not be drafted. Singers and actors made up the largest group of exempted artists, but there were also architects and sculptors. There was certainly no expectation that Riefenstahl, as a woman, would be heading to Poland just a few days after the outbreak of the war. She could just as easily have stayed in her villa in Dahlem. Her trip to the front was important as a symbolic gesture. Riefenstahl was putting on a display of anticipatory obedience.