Professor David Peimer
The Filmic Genius of Leni Riefenstahl: Art, Camera, Propaganda and Germany

Professor David Peimer - The Filmic Genius of Leni Riefenstahl: Art, Camera, Propaganda and Germany

- So, as ever, thanks so much, Emily. And hi to everybody and hope everyone is well, wherever you are, north and south of our little planet. Okay, today we’re going to dive into what’s been called “The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl.” That’s the title of a German documentary made in the early ‘90s. And I’m going to show clips of that as well. Today I’m going to look primarily at a bit about her life, this remarkable and really interesting and also quite scary sense of her life, her use of art and documentary, what we might today call docufiction. And her role primarily in helping Goebbels’s ministry of propaganda and specifically the role making one film, “Triumph of the Will”. And we’re going to look at some interviews with her, which have made much more, well, the last couple of decades by German TV with English subtitles, and some actual clips from “Triumph of the Will.” And many, many scholars, many film critics, cultural thinkers have described it as the, if you, in inverted commas, the best or the most powerful or the most significant propaganda film ever made, which she made in 1934, “Triumph of the Will.” It’s, you know, I’m sure everybody remembers, knows Hitler comes to power early 1933. And then in 1934, the Nazis have the huge Nuremberg rally. And we’ve all seen images from that rally of the Nazi party together with some of the military, the rally of the 1934 of the Nazi party. And most of those clips come from her film “Triumph of the Will.”

And I want to show some of the, as I said, some of the clips from the film, some of the clips of interviews with her, and just talk about this idea of, through a contemporary lens of propaganda, what she innovated, what she brought to the camera, and also how she shaped and moulded the image, which has gone down the decades, you know, 70, 75, 80 years later. And yet, it’s still so powerful for us today. And I want to try and look at why and how, and of course, as a deeper question, what is the role of the artist in relation to political change, political events? What is the role of the artist vis-a-vis propaganda? And the difference between what we might call a documentary based on fact and accuracy and, if you like, we might call docufiction or fiction influence documentary, which is more the artistic influence which moulds and shapes the actual historical event into something that we might call propaganda with aesthetics or propaganda with artistry today. She is the originator, really, of it all. The first remarkable filmmaker to put all of these ideas together and the very controversial and very complex and very controversial, complicated life that she lived. Okay, so just to give a couple of things about her, Leni Riefenstahl, she lived for over a hundred years. Those are her dates. She starts as an actress and a dancer. And it’s important that she begins her, if you like, artistic life as a dancer because the body is what she’s so fascinated by and how to show the body on film in all its ways, how you can sensationalise it. You can romanticise.

You can glorify. You can make it grotesque, horrific. You know, it’s all I think for me located in the body and the camera angles, and how you make the body erotic actually, and how these rallies became an eroticized event, obviously making it for primarily the German audience at the time. So, these are some earlier pictures of her life. The left when she’s an actress. Then, because she starts out as an actress, acts in theatre, in film, becomes a dancer at a very young age in her teens, then becomes a film director, and life changes completely. On the right is her dressed in a German military uniform with some of the troops. So we get a little sense of this young teenager, you know, emerging to become this very powerful propagandist, an artistic figure during the 12 years of Nazi rule in Germany. She’s also a very strong swimmer and a dedicated swimmer and dancer. It’s all located in the body and the artistry of the mind, how to produce it for me. 1925 to 1929, she starred in five movies 'cause she was picked up quite early 'cause you can see she was pretty photogenic in terms of the camera. But this is before the Nazis come to power. She stars in five films in Weimar, Germany. She’s one of the very, very few women in Germany during the Weimar period to direct a film. And it’s in 1932. It comes out in 1932. It’s made the year before. And 1933, we remember is when Hitler, the Nazis come to power. And the film is called the “Blue Light.” And then in the 1930s, 1934, Hitler personally wants her to direct “Triumph of the Will”, the first and the biggest propaganda film.

And then later she goes on to direct “Olympia” which is, it’s her film of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, you know, the famous images of Jesse Owens, and many of the other countries and athletes of that period. She’s the one who’s the filmmaker. Those are the two primary films that stand out from the pre-war period. And then later she makes some propaganda films for the German Army and so on. As I said, what I’m going to focus on is “Triumph of the Will” 'cause that’s really the propaganda film. “Olympia” is more of an aesthetic artistic film about the Olympics. And obviously, it’s influenced by some of the notions of the Nazis. But she’s trying to show more the idea of the glorification of the body, which, you know, Jesse owns his body is as romanticised, if not the most romanticised, compared to any of the others. Obviously, there’s some of the German hammer throwers and javelin throwers, you know, and others, et cetera. So, but yeah, we’re going to focus on that one. And she gains worldwide acclaim and considered amongst the most effective from an aesthetic point of view, a propagandistic point of view, and from a technical filmmaking point of view, the great, the very powerful and significant innovations that she makes. Okay, she was in close collaboration with Hitler once he gets to power in the early '30s. And they developed what I suppose we might, you know, to put it perhaps more objectively, a semi-friendly relationship. After the war, Riefenstahl was arrested four times, put on trial for war crimes, four times, but found not guilty. And she always denied having known about the Holocaust. And she was seriously criticised in Germany and globally for the attitude of how could we have all known, how could I have known, how could we all Germans have known, you know. These are tropes that we all know only too well.

And you know, that was her line of, if you like, defence, which is obviously, I think, nonsense in my opinion. She was found guilty of having Nazis sympathies but not actually having caused a war crime specifically. I guess it might be a legal phrase, but in terms of the role of propaganda, it becomes very important. She then, in her post-war life after 45 at the end of the war, she gets no work in Germany. And she basically exists on money she’s made already, 'cause she obviously made a fortune, a lot of money during this period. And in the late '50s going to the '60s, she goes to Kenya and to the Sudan, and she spends a lot of time learning the culture of the Nuba people and taking photos and publishes photographs from Kenya and Sudan based on the Nuba people that she’s living with for quite a while. Again, it’s about the body in culture in a way that she really shows in a highly aestheticized, often romanticised way, you know, and as Susan Sontag said in a great essay about Leni Riefenstahl, you know, it’s romanticising the noble savage image. In the '20s, what was interesting was that she, in the 1920s, she attended dancing academies and was a travelling actress with a lot of theatre and dance companies. Interestingly with Max Reinhardt, we all know the great German Jewish director and funded by the Jewish producer Harry Sokol.

So the funding and the directing is coming from that background. Then her dancing career stops because she has major foot and knee injuries, surgery and so on. And that’s when it leads to her film made in 1932, well, shown in 1932. And it won the silver medal at the Venice Film Festival. Hitler was a fan of the film. He invites her to speak, invites her to make the film in 1934, as I said, and films after that. Now, this is important. She goes to hear Hitler for the first time in 1932 at a rally and is, in her word, mesmerised. And I’m going to quote from her memoir, written year, decades later, after the war: “I had a apocalyptic vision. It seemed as if the earth’s surface was spreading out in front of me and suddenly split apart in the middle, spewing out an enormous jet of water, so powerful that it touched the sky and shook the earth.” That was her response to being mesmerised by one speech of this man Hitler at one rally. It’s completely infatuated. It’s romanticised and in a grotesquely, terrifying way. Because if it had that effect on someone like this, we have to, I guess try and imagine the effect on the millions of Germans who might have seen clips of it in film or maybe the hundreds of thousands who heard him in rallies, you know, travelling all over. And this is before he comes to power, and the letter, of course, once he is in power. 'Cause this is 1932, the year before he comes to power. She has that infatuated, terrifying response. Hitler asks her to do, of course, as I mentioned, and it’s regarded as the most powerful or if you like, in inverted commas, greatest propaganda film ever made, and has influenced so much propaganda today, and still does and so many filmmakers today. And I’m going to show a fascinating short clip later from a sequence of “Star Wars,” which borrows almost exactly a couple of specific frames from “Triumph of the Will”.

And not only George Lucas, but so many film directors, you know, if they’re honest, will say they were influenced by some of her images. She denies for the rest of her life any deliberate attempt to create Nazi propaganda and obviously was savagely criticised for this. She constantly said she was trying to make an autistic event out of an historical event. And that’s the debate. Artistry versus historical accuracy. Of course. What is the role of a documentary versus propaganda? How do you create effective propaganda? And what do you think it speaks to us today? 1935, she made the first 28-minute film with the German Army and she then made other films in Poland, the German Army, in other things, et cetera. “Olympia” I mentioned was the one she made of the 1936 Berlin Olympics funded by the Nazis. All of this was funded by the Nazis. She was the first one in both “Triumph of the Will” and “Olympia” to use tracking shots. The camera’s put on like almost many train rails. So the camera is tracing as quickly as the runner is going. You know, we know those shots only too well. We can follow exactly stride for stride the runners in 100 metres, 200 metres, whatever.

She was the first, put the camera on little many rails, the first to use slow motion in both documentary or propaganda and sports films. The first to show underwater diving where a camera is there with you underwater, whether it’s behind glass or there in the water with you. You’re creating that feeling. She’s the first to go very higher shots from almost up in an aeroplane. She does in “Triumph of the Will”. And then very, and then cut to a very closeup shot that quick transition, panoramic aerial shots, shots for fast action, slow action. All the shots that are used in fiction film, she incorporates into propaganda or slash documentary, if you like. And these kinds of approaches were almost unheard of at the time in terms of making propaganda and documentary and certainly unheard of in filming sports events as we know of today. Okay, 1937, she, sorry, in 1938, '37 and '38, she went on a tour in America 'cause by this time she’d achieved worldwide acclaim for those two films in particular. And she’s interviewed by the Detroit News in 1937. And I’m quoting her, “To me, Hitler is the greatest man who ever lived. He truly is without fault, so simple, and yet at the same time possessed of masculine strength.” So this infatuation becomes even stronger. It becomes highly sexualized and eroticized for her of masculinity. She’s received by Henry Ford in Detroit, shown around.

He invites her to do work. She is invited by Louis B. Mayer and Walt Disney to Hollywood, and they beg her to come and do work. She turns it down. In the diaries of Goebbels, Goebbels writes, Riefenstahl was friendly with her, with Goebbels and his family and his wife Magda going to opera with them, going to parties with them, so on. In the documentary I’m going to show later, she denied it all. Hitler is the focus of attraction and then everyone else is a mass of ants, literally, you know. Ahe gets that relationship set up completely in the film. The influence of sound, all different music and sound is coming to influence art cinema from today, of today, and of previous decades. When Germany invades Poland, she is photographed, and I’ve got the photo I’m going to show, and she goes in early September with the German Army as a so-called war correspondent filming. And we see her in a military uniform with a pistol. She was in the town of Konskie, forgive my pronunciation, where 30 civilians were executed. And in her memoir, she writes, she did not know or realise that they were Jewish. I leave you to make what you want of it. 1939, this is it, she also then goes back to Warsaw and films Hitler’s victory parade through the city. 14th of June, 1940, Paris is occupied by the Germans. Riefenstahl writes to Hitler, 1940. No longer this young person. “With indescribable joy, deeply moved and filled with burning gratitude, we share with you, my Fuhrer, your and Germany’s greatest victory, the entry of German troops into Paris.

You exceed anything human imagination has the power to conceive, achieving deeds without parallel in the history of mankind. How can we ever thank you, my Fuhrer?” Well, this has been going on for years and years. I don’t think this is just childish, you know, teenage infatuation or a crush to put it in a crude way. This is much more deeper. This is going deeper and this is beyond the level of infatuation, I think, you know, the attitude to this megalomaniac. Only from 1944 onwards does the relationship with Hitler, the friendly relationship, in inverted commas, start to decline. That’s when her brother’s killed on the Russian front. And of course the war is changing completely during 1944. She was taken to court, as I mentioned. She was found guilty of having used Roma and Sinti people in some of the sets. And then they were sent back to the camps and then they were killed. She, again, claimed she didn’t know what the camps were, didn’t know where they’d come from, didn’t know what would happen to them. And of course she gets no sympathy from filmmakers or producers afterwards.

But after the war, 1945 into the '50s, many investors from Europe and America and England and elsewhere want to invest and encourage to her to make films. But the free democratic press is so big at the time and anti that they step back from the final offering of money. Okay, there are many other stories about her and her fascination with the Nazis, her fascination with Hitler, her fascination with this entire terrifying period and how it came about that she was the one who has made so many of these films that we have come down to see and still watch today. And even in showing the, as Susan Sontag’s essay speaks of, in showing the Nuba peoples, we are not immune because we see, again, the glorification of the body. It is important that in 1972, the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, she is the photographer. Most of the pictures, often a lot of the pictures coming out of Munich come from her camera. She also photographed Mick Jagger. We’re not quite sure whether it Jagger’s invitation or not. I do not have a clue and it’s impossible to find out. But it was done for the Sunday Times in England. She was the guest of honour at the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games invited by the Olympic Committee. She’s been compared the most with Welles Hitchcock, et cetera, et cetera. In the documentary, she said, “What good would it do to apologise for what I have done? Apologies do not turn the clock back or raise the dead from dust.” Was she an opportunist artist? Was she a believer in Nazism and Hitler? Was she just naive? Was she an artist who got seduced by the ideals and the opportunity, the power, the money to go on this path? What is the role of the artist in relation to, you know, this kind of terrifying ideology?

All the questions are provoked by her life and her career. And much later in the early 2000s, Jodi Foster wanted to make a biopic and film based on her life. And it was never made for various reasons, but she was quoted as saying she would like Sharon Stone to act her if it was ever made. I’ll leave that for your thoughts. Okay. What is interesting is that many of the directors of this Nazi period afterwards went on to have careers, whether smaller or greater. And in fact a film, which we all know, I’m sure, Jud Suss, you know, which is the most evil film I have ever seen. A pure anti-Semitic propaganda of hate towards Jewish people made by this director called Veit Harlan. Well, after the war, he was engaged by the film industry and made films. So the debate continues to this very day. Was the final sin of hers hubris? That she was too proud to admit that she knew what she was doing, and that to at least, if not more, apologise, but much, much more? Was this inability to admit that she was doing anything wrong through hubris? Was that the ultimate sin, if you like, or the ultimate decision in her life? You know, in this role. And then finally in 2002, her final movie was called “Underwater Impressions”, which was made after she learned how to scuba dive as she was in her early to mid 80s. She learned how to scuba dive and she made films underwater of fish and other creatures underwater. The Daily Telegraph in England said she was the most talented female film director of the 20th century, the independent of England. Was she just a young, talented, ambitious woman caught up in the tide of events which she did not fully understand?

Or an opportunist, propagandist and Nazi believer? The New Yorker. Riefenstahl’s a genius cannot be questioned. She was obsessed with bodies in motion, particularly dancers, athletes? Pauline Kael who is widely regarded as one of the most important film critics and film scholars, you know, over decades, Pauline Kael called “Triumph of the Will” and “Olympia” two of the greatest films ever directed by a woman. Time magazine goes on and on and many others go on about praising her. Okay, if we can go straight onto slide four, please. 1934, yeah, she is arranging the film and the angles, et cetera, with Himmler at Nuremberg. Can go on onto the next one, please? 1934 at Nuremberg, the rally, yeah, she is in front Nuremberg City, in front of Himmler’s car, and just see her on the right in the middle of your picture, in front of Hitler’s car with her camera crew. So this access to Hitler, this access to Hitler’s inner circle is absolute. Hitler grants her and Goebbels total access. Can we go on to the next slide, please? 1937 with Goebbels. This is no longer the young infatuated or young, perhaps we might say, impressionable teenage actress and then, you know, in the early '20s dancer. Very different. Next one, please. Thanks, Emily. Poland, 1939, dressed as a soldier, calling herself a war correspondent. There’s a picture of her in Poland after the war started in September, and she’s in military uniform with a pistol with her camera crew filming. Go onto the next slide, please.

On the cover of Time magazine, 1936, after she’s made the Olympic Berlin Olympics film “Olympia” and after she’s done “Triumph of the Will” two years before that. Time magazine puts her on the cover is one of the greatest, one of the greats. So I want to give us a context of a global, not only a German context, of how she has scaled the heights. And this is literally, you know, she’s the filmmaker of the Berlin Olympics. This is her as if, you know, the body again skiing top of the mountain. I mean, the metaphor of ambition, achievement, Germany, everything speaks volumes in the metaphor of this image of Leni Riefenstahl, and how she was regarded globally, not only in Germany itself. Okay, next slide please. We’re done. 1940, yeah, she is making a film with a German Army and so on and so on. So I just want to give a sense of this, the range of her life from the beginnings and the pinnacles she achieved before the war, and then what happens after. Okay, now the next one that we’re going to show is a short clip from the beginning of “Triumph of the Will”. Can you show please, Emily? Thanks. We have almost this serene god-like images. You know, this huge bird in the sky, serenely god-like coming slowly down to earth. The clouds parts and the god comes down to the world of the mortals. Static smiling, waiting faces. Children, adults. And the images of rock stars arriving more contemporary times. As the hero comes through. Okay, if we can go onto the next clip, please. And this is also from the opening of “Triumph of the Will”. Young boys. So militaristic. Choreograph bodies, but one massive conformity. And then the star comes in, descended from the heavens. Okay, if we can hold that. Thanks.

One other thing is when they were making Cabaret, we all remember the clip “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” and look at the image difference. You know, Bob Fosse is aware of this film and aware of the difference of showing these young blonde boys the way it does show the singing there. But then he gives us the context. And we get that terrifying, grotesque chill down our spine in that scene from Cabaret “Tomorrow Belongs to Me”. Here, we don’t. Here we meant to just be swept up in the grandeur and the pageantry of, you know, the great heroic god-like figure arriving and the militaristic utterly uniform, little boys welcome him. Okay, then if we can go to the next one is interesting. This is from… you’re going to have a look at the top. We’ll see a clip from “Star Wars” in 1977 and a clip underneath it from “Triumph of the Will” and watch how absolutely close the '77 film copies or captures aspects of Riefenstahl’s film. I just want to show one little clip. There are many other films can show the influence of little clips here and there and so on, but that’s a very graphic, almost close one. And I think that it’s so important this debate continues, you know, when one looks at contemporary and films and these propaganda films made before. Okay, then the next clip we’re going onto, this is from the really fascinating documentary made in the 1990s by this German film, documentary filmmaker Rob Muller interviewing Riefenstahl together with clips from “Triumph of the Will” and it’s called “The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl.” Okay, if you can show, please, Emily.

CLIP BEGINS

• [Narrator] Soon Leni Riefenstahl this afternoon suggested a film about Hitler to her. She was enthusiastic. In the evening, to Madama Butterfly with Magda and Leni.

• [Narrator] Drove back with Hitler in the evening. Later at home, Philipp von Hessen and Leni Riefenstahl called very nice.

• [Narrator] Saw a film with Hitler’s starring Hans Albers, terrible rubbish. Gerda, Maria, and Leni Riefenstahl were the three beautiful women.

• [Narrator] What to believe? The diaries of Goebbels or the memories of the last surviving witness.

• [Narrator] The looming closeups of Hitler in this film were the first that the German people had ever seen.

CLIP ENDS

• We just take a couple of these ideas. First of all, what’s fascinating for me is that Muller is making a documentary where he is trying to show the power of this propaganda film using the techniques of artistry and fiction in the fairly new medium at the time of film. And at the same time interrupting it with interviews where it’s sort of like pouring, you know, we caught up emotionally and then pour cold water over our heads as we get the interview, and she’s speaking, which I think is a very powerful technique and still powerful today to make us aware of terrifyingly impactful events. She talks about the beginning, “Goebbels, not my type,” that’s why she never went with him? Not about what his beliefs or ideology is, but he’s not my type. Then, you know, the both times she gets the most angry, Goebbels just notes in his diary, went to the opera with Leni, did this with her, did this matter, et cetera. She gets the most animated and angry in those moments. Of course, you know, we are going to believe what Goebbels writes in his diary compared to what she is defensively trying to justify now. The talk about an art film and not just a newsreel of the time where, you know, you’d have more of the talking heads or just, you know, the predictable shots. And there’s always this sense of the one individual god-like man and all the rest of the humans are ants. Some of the ants may be louder or playing music, whatever, but they’re all part of a mass swarm of conformist ants who cannot wait but to perform at the bidding of the one individual. Going back to Goebbels’s idea in his diaries where he said that in his opinion, one of the big ideas that Hitler realised was that the masses of people crave the strong man image and how to then show that visually and in propaganda, We also get the sense of her. There’s no commentary.

Now that’s interesting because there’s no commentary or narrator or voiceover even, which would distance us from what’s actually going on. And a lot of newsreels of the times would have that and even of today. So to capture the more immediate emotion is to show us the images and what’s happening directly. She edits out the voiceover commentary as a very powerful technique, also used today. And then of course how she filmed his speeches. And you’ll see on the next clip that she has a camera going round on little rails, but you can’t see the camera, of course, but you know. So we don’t just see the man speaking, but the camera is going round slowly. Again, it’s almost like this day affectation of this terrifying god-like figure. Well, I think it’s important. I don’t want to try and give a sort of PhD lecture on this, but I think what’s important, because I think we underestimate the power in our times today, whether it’s on the internet or TikTok, Instagram or films, or whatever today, if we don’t have some education, some knowledge about how these things are artistically crafted and edited, you know, it’s at least six months in the editing room probably with hundreds of hours of footage back down. And not only in the editing room, but how many cameras all over filming all the time, you know, as she did for the Olympics. And the same for this 1934 film. Okay, if we can show the next clip please.

CLIP BEGINS

• The camera going around.

• Now, she’s almost infatuated going back 60 years in time.

• What’s interesting for me here is that the camera’s going round this Hitler, but also as she says, you know, there’s just the individual, just Hitler and then the masses, the people. But different to some of the other speeches where we watch him of this really loud ranting, ranting lunatic is actually captures almost a sense of, she’s trying to show us, he’s speaking to us individually and she’s trying to say that’s the effect on these hundreds of thousands of people, whether they’re literally in Nuremberg or they’re going to watch all over Germany, all over the world for that matter through her film. So it’s this combination of this god-like and this human individual. And so many films have taken it up from the influence of here of Riefenstahl to show, you know, the image of the great leader and the masses of the people. But how to balance that. On the one hand I can connect to you as a human, you know, 'cause I’m just one of you. But on the other hand, of course I’m the great leader way god-like almost above you. And remember he’s come down slowly swooping from the aeroplane, from the clouds birdlike before, you know, come down the clouds part almost down to where the mortals are in the city. Okay, moving on to the next clip, please. The last clip from this documentary. The music replaces the narrating voice to heighten the emotional effect on us.

CLIP ENDS

• I think this, no question in my mind, that we get the sense not only, I mean, this is her in her 90s of the infatuation with the project. She’s so engaged passionately, emotionally. We watch her watching, watch her analysing and talking decades and decades later. And I do think there’s hubris, there’s pride, in what she has achieved technically, artistically with the film, turning this historical event, turning documentary through the use of artistry into remarkably powerful, obnoxious and horrific but remarkably powerful propaganda and almost set the bar. And not only that showed the way forward for many, and I would suggest not only dictatorships, but many countries around the world who have adopted some of the techniques that she initiated, whether it’s from the technical camera positioning, camera usage point of view to the editing, the cutting out of the narrator, you know, voice overall, the analytical figure, everything to heighten emotion, frame for frame, Eisenstein’s idea of montage where you create the story by just juxtaposing images. You know, what the dialogue, everything else comes secondary. And she knows how to juxtapose the images, you know, following Eisenstein’s idea from way before her. So, it’s in the end, this does provoke the question for which of course there’s no answer. Was she individually an opportunist? Just an opportunist artist trying to, you know, get up the ladder of power, prestige, and money? She’s on the cover of Time magazine in the late '30s. You know, that’s global fame, not only in Germany or Europe. Was she a true believer in Nazism and in the megalomania and the power of Hitler, the individual? From her writings as well as from the way she shows him in the film. Was she naive? You know, and later reflecting back this sort of naive artist image. Or a combination of all of these questions?

And I don’t want to just draw a simplistic answer to these. I just want to post these for all of us. Because I think we are faced in similar darkening times today. We’re faced with how different regimes, different countries, and sadly I have to include some of the democracies, how the news, how film is shown today, how documentaries are shown, fiction, nonfiction, all the boundaries are blurred. You know, the academic jargon is intertextuality, but the simple reality is how all the techniques of the genres blur, fiction, nonfiction, documentary, artistry, all of these things blur to order to heighten the emotional effect on the audience ultimately. And it’s important because there has to be, at some point the point of view of the filmmaker has to be taken into account. I don’t think her point of view is in question, in my opinion. I think that this documentary that Muller made much, much later, “The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl” which goes on for a couple of hours and it’s brilliant, is so much more nuanced because we see the individual just brief interaction with her and then a clip from the film, and then back and et cetera and so on. So we see more of the tennis match between cold fact, if you like, cold truth, and you know, fictionalised artistry based, which is going to create some of the most powerful and effective propaganda ever made. Okay, so I’m going to hold it there. And thanks, Emily. And we can look at some questions.

Q&A and Comments:

Q: Estelle, if she photographed the 1972 Olympics, was she involved?

A: Yeah, I know in filming the massacre of the Israeli team. I tried to find out, and I couldn’t find specific images conclusively of any that she actually filmed, but I can’t say definitively. There might have been some I couldn’t find. Great question. Judy.

Q: Do you have any idea who would be the investors in her work after the film, after the war?

A: Well, I mean, what’s interesting is that when she was an American in the late '30s, pardon me, before the war, Henry Ford, Louis B. Mayer, Walt Disney, all these people are wanting her, desperate almost, for her to come and make a movie 'cause they see how effective she is, how good she is. So, I don’t know, and I did try to find out, but I think the true names have either been hidden or lost.

Q: Jean. You may have mention this, did she ever marry?

A: Yes, she did. I romantic attachments she did. All different. I didn’t want to focus on that in just this one talk, but yes.

Q: Barbara. What music?

A: Now that’s interesting because she used the composers of the time. She used some German folk music. She used influences of music from all over, from classical to folk music to more contemporary music of her times. She was eclectic. Basically, whatever is going to heighten the emotional impact on the audience in the same way as juxtaposition images.

Clive, hi. Yeah, hi. Great, thanks. Both of these films are available on Amazon. Yeah, I think “Triumph of the Will” was quietly banned by YouTube, but it’s available for educational purposes and others. And thanks for that client, it’s available on Amazon.

Q: Lawrence. Do you think she would’ve been found guilty at Nuremberg if there’d be no prospect of a death sentence? The possibility of her being executed deterred judges from condemning her?

A: That’s a very interesting question. And the question is, how far does one go with the role of the artist, the role of the director, creator? Because at the time, I found, you know, interesting debates that happened around that time and happened much later, you know, and arguments were used, well, she didn’t use one canister of Zyklon B. She didn’t go to any of the concentration camps. She didn’t… The stories got on and on and on. She may have not have done that, but she certainly did a lot of other mixing, mingling, talking, connecting on a social level, not just a, you know, so-called professional level. So I am sure many things were spoken about. And it’s, never forget, Veit Harlan from Jud Suss and many others. She would’ve known and she would’ve known the, not only the ideology, but was happening, you know, in the times, I think, you know. I think her anger and at the interviewer when he says, “But Goebbels’s diary say, 'You came with me and Magda to opera and we went with her to parties.’” You know, I think that angers, that defensiveness shows the truth. Great. Judy.

Q: There were many film canisters piled in her closet, is in archive?

A: Ah, that’s a great question. I don’t know, but I would imagine there’s certainly an archive probably in Germany or Berlin and elsewhere, I would imagine.

Q: Josie. Please talk a little bit about what made Riefenstahl so-called less guilty than say Speer.

A: Well, I think the only difference, well, the major difference perhaps, Speer became not only the architect, but then he becomes minister for armaments. So he’s directly responsible for a couple of years of, and I’m going to talk about this when I talk about Speer, he is responsible for employing millions and millions of slave labourers and how many millions die from starvation, disease, beating, shooting, everything, in order to keep the war factories going in Germany. Not only did Speer privatise it of mainly, get Tyson, Crook and Siemens and the others back involved much more directly, but he brought in, it’s estimated 8 to 10 million slave labourers, and kept the German war machine going. So, you know, we can see that as opposed to her propagandistic role, if you like, but it’s an important and endless question, Josie. Thank you.

Q: Ah, Suzanne. I read Dietrich and Riefenstahl by Wieland a while ago, born at the same time, same place. That’s another whole fascinating series of questions there. Why the divergent paths they chose?

A: You know, there’s so many ideas we can speculate on why they chose what they did, but they certainly did, and I think it’s very important. In fact, that would make a great film. The comparisons between the two are great play, the comparisons, the choices that, you know, Dietrich made and Riefenstahl made. Monte. The Nazis assembled what they considered to be degenerate art turned out to be an exhibition of great works.

Q: Shall we watch Riefenstahl’s films as works of propaganda and degenerate or consider them great works of art?

A: Monte, you hit the nail on the head. This is the debate, you know. Susan Sontag tries to grapple and so many, many others try to grapple. You know, this is clearly, she talks about it, you know, that she’s bringing artistry into newsreels as opposed to just the standard way of making newsreels at the time in, you know, the ‘20s into the early '30s, and the role of the artist vis-a-vis propaganda, vis-a-vis historical accuracy, and these fine lines I think amongst them all. One thing I think that cannot be disputed is one cannot be naive about the ideology of the people one is making the film for. And if you’re making the film and you know certain ideas and what they’re saying and believe in, you know you are aligning yourself there. You may not necessarily be having guns and killing and shooting, but you are trying to propagandise minds.

Agnes. Hitler was infatuated with Wagner and his ideas. Yeah, how strange. He didn’t use Wagner’s music. Very, very interesting question, Agnes. And I was thinking about that before today’s talk. I think she probably knew that Wagner was so used and so, and, you know, so many of these Germans we can imagine at the time were probably trying to play catch-up and listen to Wagner and listen to Wagner’s operas. And you know, that she maybe was trying to go a bit of a different route. And in that way try and attract, you know, a massive, massive audience. And also I would imagine she had in mind a global audience, not only a German audience. Let’s never forget that image of Time magazine. She hits global celebrity. I mean, she’s really at the top. She’s right up there, you know, with global celebrities of the late 1930s.

Ed, makes one think of how we reacted to propaganda for me today at the- I’m not going to get into that. I’m going to sit on the fence and duck that one, Ed. It’ll take us into another whole series of questions of the royalist versus the Republicans and so on.

Okay. So, thank you very much, everybody, and hope you have a great rest of the weekend. And, Emily, thanks again.