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The Peril of Narcissism : Reflections on the Death of Leni Riefenstahl by Jana Bruns <jana.bruns@liu.edu>, Department of History, C. W. Post campus of Long Island University. In his 1992 documentary _The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl_, the director Ray Mueller accompanied Riefenstahl, who died on September 9, 2003 aged 101, to some of her old film locations in order to record her reflections as she strolled across her former haunts. Among the places they visited was the former site of the Nazi party rallies in Nuremberg, immortalized in Riefenstahl's 1934 film _Triumph of the Will_. The visit, however, did not pan out as planned. Rather than acting the part of the gracious genius-artist on her pensive walk down memory lane, Riefenstahl made a mockery of herself by inadvertently exposing her utter narcissism and intransigence. When Mueller asked her about the origins of _Victory of the Faith_, her film of the 1933 Nazi party rally, which is less innovative than _Triumph of the Will_ and whose existence Riefenstahl often tried to deny, she lost her composure and physically assaulted him, grabbing his arms and violently shaking him. Her fury intensified despite Mueller's attempt to calm her down and she finally refused to continue the conversation, cursing at him for distorting the truth and making her look old on camera by using natural instead of artificial light. What is remarkable about this scene is that Riefenstahl's ugly behavior, ensuing from her utter discomfort with not being in control and not looking her best, is caught on film. In other interviews, her performance is perfectly poised and the impression of the innocent avant-garde artist and pleasant old lady remains intact even when she is criticized. A roundtable discussion broadcast on German television in 1976 shows how cleverly she managed her public image. She won the audience's sympathy and deflected attention from refusing to engage in a serious debate about her films by bursting into tears when one of her critics (the anti-fascist songwriter Knut Kiesewetter) sang a touching ballad. During the commercial breaks, however, she verbally assaulted the host and threatened to leave if she were exposed to more "unpleasant" comments. She subsequently laid down stricter conditions for interviews, agreeing to talk only if she could choose the discussion topics and edit the tape before it was aired. In _The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl_, Riefenstahl's obsession with appearances, relentless desire to create images of perfection, and need to be in control make her look spiteful, pompous, and pathetic. On the other hand, these attributes were the source of her remarkable ingenuity as a filmmaker. In addition, they made her receptive to the Nazis' offer of unlimited resources and creative autonomy and, on the level of aesthetics, a perfect match for their political agenda. The Nazi regime nurtured her vanity and ambition by admitting her to its inner circle, showering her with honors, and accommodating her demands for vast amounts of money, personnel, and equipment. In the early 1940s, foundations were laid for a gigantic "Riefenstahl studio" financed entirely by the state, which included a full-scale cinema, an archive, a gym, and a restaurant. In return for this benevolence, the filmmaker delivered dazzling works of perfectly regimented beauty and surface splendor celebrating the values of the National Socialist _Volksgemeinschaft_: discipline, obedience, uniformity, and male valor. In _Triumph of the Will_, innovative camera work and editing techniques transformed Hitler into a hypnotic, quasi-divine symbol of authority. While Riefenstahl's feature films _The Blue Light_ and _Lowlands_ centered on female characters (played by Riefenstahl herself) and constructed ethereal images of female beauty, in _Triumph of the Will_ and _Olympia_ the role of the otherworldly star is reserved for the Fuehrer. That Riefenstahl felt a strong bond with Hitler, a narcissistic performer who capitalized on the suggestive power of appearances, is not surprising and her Nuremberg films can indeed be seen as adulations of one narcissist by another. What makes Riefenstahl important, whether or not one considers her films artistic and technical milestones, is that she personifies the ambiguities and paradoxes of twentieth-century German history-- Weimar democracy's climate of openness and conflicted ingenuity, the tragic moral amnesia that befell Germany in 1933 and National Socialism's peculiar fusion of reactionary values with avant-garde forms, the difficult process of acknowledging, understanding, and remembering Nazi crimes and rebuilding German identity after 1945, and the absorption of styles associated with the Nazis by postwar commercial culture. Riefenstahl's career and films pose difficult questions about the ruptures and continuities marking the transition from democracy to authoritarian rule and allied occupation, the relationship of art to politics and commerce, the public role of artists, and the changing status of women in twentieth-century German society and culture. Why did an emancipated, educated, and enterprising young woman like Riefenstahl--the epitome of Weimar's New Woman--support a regime that reversed many of the freedoms women had gained during the 1920s and whose idea of a woman's place stood in stark contrast to her own? What does the regime's promotion of a woman to the position of official filmmaker of the Party and first artist of the Reich reveal about gender politics in Nazi Germany? Do Riefenstahl's postwar photographs of the African Nuba advance the same flawed values as _Triumph of the Will_ and _Olympia_ because they bear many stylistic similarities and depict tall, athletic male bodies engaged in violent skirmishes? Do artists like Helmut Newton or Herb Ritts, whose portraits explore themes like domination, submission, and conquest and construct highly staged images of muscular beauty, automatically partake in the same murky ideological discourse as Riefenstahl? And how can Riefenstahl's films, which pioneered many techniques that have become standard features of TV advertising, help us understand manipulation and control in the mass media? Riefenstahl's death closes an important chapter in German history and will hopefully inspire new assessments of her career. While we may dislike her work and condemn the choices she made, she fundamentally changed the relationship between art and politics. [For those with access to German television: "Leni Riefenstahl: Die Macht der Bilder" airs in two parts, tonight and tomorrow night (September 15 and 16, 2003) at midnight CET on NDR. --Ed.]
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