Dietrich & Riefenstahl: Hollywood, Berlin, and a Century in Two Lives
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Riefenstahl was so stricken by this breakup not only because she had hoped for personal happiness with Schneeberger, but also because this relationship held out the promise of professional advancement. She wanted to get him a position as an assistant at Ufa so he could gain experience in studio work. Supposedly Schneeberger had her to thank for becoming the assistant to the famous Günter Rittau. Rittau had filmed Metropolis together with Fritz Lang and was now under contract with a much sought-after director from Hollywood, who was preparing his next movie in Berlin. The director was Josef von Sternberg. Schneeberger left Fanck and Riefenstahl in order to shoot the sound film that everyone in Berlin was talking about—The Blue Angel—with the Hollywood director. In her memoirs, Riefenstahl included von Sternberg in the throng of her admirers. To take her mind off her heartache, she went to the movies quite often. She was fascinated by The Docks of New York. She wanted to meet the director, and managed to do so. He invited this young woman from Berlin, of whom he had never heard, to have lunch with him at the Hotel Bristol. She dressed up for the occasion, and over a meal of beef and savoy cabbage, she claimed to have learned all about his film project and search for a lead actress. The name “Marlene Dietrich” came up, and she recalled meeting a woman by that name at the Schwannecke artists’ café. “I was struck by her deep, husky voice, which sounded a bit vulgar and suggestive. Maybe she was a little tipsy. I heard her saying loudly, ‘Why does a woman always have to have beautiful breasts? They can sag a little, can’t they?’ Then she lifted her left breast slightly and enjoyed the startled faces of the young girls sitting around her.”107 It seemed apt to hire a whore for the role of a whore, she thought, and she advised von Sternberg to cast Dietrich in the role of Lola Lola. In Riefenstahl’s account, he came over to her place for supper nearly every evening, and afterward they would head out to the set in Babelsberg. Von Sternberg would show her the dailies and ask what she thought of them. Although he was an attractive man, she spurned him as a lover, and he went home to his hotel alone every evening. Even so, they spent “poetic and entertaining hours” together.
Given the close spiritual affinity Riefenstahl felt she had with von Sternberg, she figured Dietrich was sure to be jealous of her; she even claimed that Dietrich threatened to kill herself. When Riefenstahl visited von Sternberg during his rehearsals in Babelsberg, she reported that Dietrich sat down on the barrel and “offered an unobstructed view of everything she ought to be hiding.”108 Von Sternberg, Riefenstahl claimed, furiously tried to bring her to her senses, whereupon Riefenstahl, a decorous young woman, decided it would be better to stop visiting the studio. Heightening the drama was the fact that the two women lived on the same block. Riefenstahl could see into Dietrich’s windows from her roof garden, but the latter knew nothing about this neighbor and probably would not have cared.
Von Sternberg watched Piz Palü and asked Riefenstahl to go to Hollywood with him, but she still believed in her love for Schneeberger and did not want to leave Berlin. She also described the “stimulating evening” she supposedly spent with von Sternberg at the home of Erwin Piscator.109 We are told that the famous director kneeled at her feet while she was spooning up caviar—which she was inordinately fond of—and implored her to come to the United States with him. “When I finally said farewell to von Sternberg—it was in January 1930—it still wasn’t clear whether Marlene or I would be following him to Hollywood.”110 After the advance publication of the Riefenstahl memoirs in 1987 in Bunte magazine, Dietrich immediately leaped into action by writing a letter to the editor, declaring that if von Sternberg and Remarque (who, Riefenstahl had claimed, was her friend) were still alive, they would die laughing from Riefenstahl’s descriptions.111 Von Sternberg’s autobiography mentions Riefenstahl only once, as one of the many visitors to Babelsberg. “And students of my work were present at all times, among them Leni Riefenstahl, the future director of the Nazi films Triumph of the Will and Olympiade (in which latter film the winners were not all of the master race).”112 No talk of dreamy dinners, bouquets of lilies, avowals of love, savoy cabbage, or movie offers.
Like many other actresses in Berlin, Riefenstahl surely got her hopes up when she heard that an American director was looking for a leading lady. Von Sternberg could free her from the burden of the Fanck films at long last. His working method differed markedly from Fanck’s; von Sternberg created a synthetic world in his films, using technology as a means of manipulation. She surely did not hesitate to ask Schneeberger to put in a good word for her with von Sternberg. It must have galled her that the man who had dared to leave her succeeded in attaining something she had dreamed of, namely shooting a film without Fanck. The critic Hans Feld claims that Riefenstahl bragged that she had the role of Lola Lola all sewn up. He was at Riefenstahl’s apartment for dinner when she got a telephone call with the news that the role of Lola Lola had gone to Dietrich. She was so upset that she ditched both him and the goulash she had been warming up.113
Fanck was tantalized by the world “Above the Clouds” (his working title for Avalanche) and decided to film it. The movie’s main character, who monitors a weather station, lives above the clouds. As always in Fanck’s films, the male lead had to do battle with cold, isolation, hurt pride, heartache, disappointing friendships with other men, and the tempestuous harshness of nature. The shooting took place at Cabana Vallot, the highest shelter hut in Europe, beneath the summit of Mont Blanc at an altitude of 4,400 meters. The experienced trio of Angst, Allgeier, and Schneeberger was in charge of the camera work; Riefenstahl, Sepp Rist, Mathias Wieman, and Ernst Udet formed the cast. The soundtrack was by Paul Dessau. In no other Fanck film did Riefenstahl appear more modern and self-assured than in Avalanche. Since other film offers were not coming her way, she apparently tried to gain influence over the design of her next mountain film. She selected Rist to play the male lead. He was actually a police radio operator, and Avalanche was his first movie. Riefenstahl was taken with his striking facial features, angular head, and strong body (in one scene, we see his naked, muscular torso). His acting is immobile, introverted, and inert. In the past, it had been Riefenstahl’s goal to follow the men onto the mountain and to be accepted as one of them, but this time she wanted to try out the role of a modern young lady. She cut her hair short and wore slacks, sweater vest, blouse, and bow tie. In this role, Riefenstahl embodied the New Woman enjoying après-ski. Wearing high-heeled shoes and a figure-hugging flounced dress, she hurried through the streets of the big city.
The film opens to the world above the clouds. Hannes, the weather station monitor, makes a fire in his hut, puffs away at his pipe over the sea of evening clouds, and uses the latest technology to stay in contact with the people in the valley via Morse code. Technology has taken over in Fanck’s world, and Riefenstahl, alias Dr. Hella Armstrong, is the ruler over this technological realm. She and her father fly with Udet up to Mont Blanc to visit Hannes at the weather station. Hella sits right down at the microscope, and Hannes starts to wash the dishes. Her father turns to him and says: “I’ve certainly brought up a lovely housewife for you. This is a girl who has only skiing and science in her head—nothing else.” Hella: “You men could tidy up.” The father: “At your command, Fräulein Doktor! Girls today are good for nothing.” Hella: “Darning socks is not exactly my specialty.” In Piz Palü, Maria Maioni may have acted like a housewife from the moment she entered the hut, but Dr. Hella Armstrong has no intention of doing so. She is interested in science and leaves the housekeeping to the men. Eventually she sets out with Hannes to a measuring station higher up on the mountain. Once they have reached the summit, the man looks down at the world below, lost in thought, and she looks up at him coquettishly. While the two of them are enjoying their respective views, Hella’s father plummets to his death during a walk in the mountains. Alpine guides come to get her, and she descends the mountain with her father’s corpse.
While she is in town consoling herself with Hannes’s friend, a snowstorm with howling winds de
scends on the mountain. Hannes seeks refuge in his hut, which is already covered in snow. His frostbitten hands make it impossible for him to strike a fire. The scene of him attempting in vain to strike a match shows that he is lost. These are impressive shots of him making his way on skis through the icy desert and trying to find a crack in the ice that is narrow enough to jump across. He eventually returns to the hut, where the door is open; everything is covered in ice and abandoned to the fury of the snowstorm. The freezing man desperately resorts to using his elbow to send an SOS message in Morse code. Hella, wearing a trenchcoat, receives the distress call. Udet eventually finds Hannes in the hut. Hella arrives, makes a fire, and lays her head in Hannes’s lap.
This Fanck movie was also a success. In the words of one critic, “Leni Riefenstahl led the way. A sportive girl looking for like-minded people, she is also agreeably natural as an actress; the utterly unsentimental acerbity of her nature casts a strange spell, and what is more, one notices here too, in one scene, that Riefenstahl has the soul of a dancer.”114 Hans Feld declared that this film carved out “new cinematic terrain”: “Fanck films are for everyone. They convey visual experiences, visual beauty. Their effects remain untouched by the conflicts of the day. They are not unpolitical, but rather apolitical—on a different level.”115 Once again, Fanck was making a movie about one woman and two men, but Avalanche still offered a great deal that was new. Technology took on key importance here as he featured an airplane, a telescope, a radio, a microscope, a telegram, and a Morse code machine. Fanck had technology win out against the forces of nature. The fact that a woman had mastered this technology was revolutionary for Fanck. Although the end of the movie shows the tender side of Hella Armstrong, there is no indication that she will cease her work with microscope or telescope in the future. However, the viewer cannot help being struck by the blatantly sexual staging. Fanck placed his leading lady in front of a big phallus-like device aimed directly at her lap; she sits in front of it with veiled eyes. Fanck, who had started bombarding Riefenstahl with lubricious letters once again during the shoot, used the technical device in Avalanche as a means of expressing his desire. Another love affair had a tangential role in the making of this film: Udet, who liked to bring his lover of the moment along with him while filming, had come with Marlene Dietrich’s Aunt Jolly. It is not known whether Dietrich was aware of her aunt’s whereabouts at this time.
Avalanche was Fanck’s first sound film. It was shot as a silent film; the sounds, music, and voices were dubbed in afterwards. Riefenstahl realized she had to keep up with the times, and once she returned to Berlin after shooting the film in the mountains, she sought out a speech teacher. She had heard of actors’ careers taking a nosedive because their voices were off, and she was determined not to let that happen to her. To ensure that she was equipped for the future, she took daily lessons from Herbert Kuchenbuch, the phonetics consultant for Avalanche, and was photographed for Scherl’s Magazin during these lessons.116 Lotte Jacobi shot five pictures of the teacher and his pupil. Riefenstahl, wearing a leotard and pumps, looks intently focused, as always. Still, the outcome of these lessons left something to be desired. Her high-pitched voice clashed with her exalted performance style.
She used the media to let her viewers know what she had gone through to make this movie.
Oh, my dear colleagues over at the studio in Berlin, if you ever had to come in for close-ups the way I did up there! Whenever I was in the midst of this primitivity, which came up against the limits of human existence, and happened to picture the studio set-up down there, where you have your own hairdresser and sit in front of the mirror for hours until you’re put together in a way that you can sort of believe will result in a beautiful close-up, I was often struck with horror at the thought of how I might look in these close-ups, where a soot-covered stool with a little pocket mirror on it and a comb in front of it were the only utensils on hand to prepare for a major international film.117
Filming began when the sun rose at 4 a.m. It was hard to get a decent night of sleep at these altitudes. Riefenstahl was never really warm because the hut had neither furnace nor stove, even though the temperature sometimes dropped down to five degrees. There was a constant sound of ice cracking, and the crevasses were so large that an entire cathedral could have fit inside them. Life was trying for her as the only woman in the group. “They all tried to outdo one another with obscene jokes. Some of them constructed blatant sexual symbols of ice and snow around the hut. Naturally, I was harassed.”118 Not that she wanted to share her position with any other woman; in fact, when a young actress showed up during the shooting of Avalanche, Riefenstahl demanded that the woman leave. She would not put up with competition, though she needn’t have worried, because it would have been a rare actress indeed who would capitulate to Fanck’s demands. When she was told to cross a ladder spanning a crevasse that was quite deep and fifty feet wide, the men took bets as to whether she would chicken out. She didn’t.
In 1930, she went to Vorarlberg to shoot The White Frenzy, a ski comedy, with Fanck, Schneider, and Angst. Once again, Sokal was the producer. The plot of this movie was trivial, the humor vapid, and Riefenstahl’s acting underwhelming. She played her standard role as a woman idolized by all men. This time, however, she was playing herself—she wore a sweater monogrammed with her own initials. Riefenstahl made skiing popular among women.119 In 1930, the famous photographer Martin Munkacsi—who was also one of her lovers—had taken pictures of her skiing in a bathing suit to show how attractive this sport could be for a young woman, although there were rumors (which persist to this day) that she was using a body double.120 The athletic Marta Feuchtwanger, wife of the writer Lion Feuchtwanger, who went skiing in St. Anton every year, reported that Riefenstahl would sit at Hannes Schneider’s reserved table. The man who decided who could join this table was Walter Bernays, brother-in-law of Sigmund Freud and supporter of Schneider. The only criterion for inclusion was an ability to ski well. Feuchtwanger claimed that Riefenstahl did not live up to that standard, “but she always had to get the first prizes because that was publicity for the films.”121
The many months under extreme conditions on the mountain made Riefenstahl strong, as is evident in a portrait of her painted by Eugen Spiro that was submitted to the contest “The Most Beautiful German Woman’s Portrait of 1928,” sponsored by Elida Cosmetics.122 Spiro’s portrait shows an unsmiling, energetic woman staring straight into the camera wearing a plain white sleeveless dress and a black belt, the simple cut of the dress accentuating her strong body. The only piece of jewelry she wears is a red beaded necklace. She has chin-length hair, a slender face, and striking dark eyes, and her hands are crossed in her lap. Riefenstahl comes across as a reserved yet resolute woman who has no need for decorative accessories and is fully aware of her own beauty, strength, and courage.123
For Fanck, Riefenstahl was both comrade and lover, not only in her role in Piz Palü, but also in her position on his team. Riefenstahl’s fellow mountaineers were shaped by the experience of the war. Fanck had worked with counterintelligence then, and now felt the need to prove himself over and over again. After the war, he gathered together a group of young men who excelled as athletes and were utterly devoted to achieving visual precision and objectivity in their filming. Sepp Allgeier (born in 1895) was the first ski jumper who also knew how to work with the camera. He was an adventure seeker who was rooted to his homeland; before the war, he had filmed in the Arctic region of Spitsbergen, Norway. In 1913, he spent time in the Balkans, where he photographed the second Serbian-Turkish war, presumably on behalf of the Serbs. Allgeier served on the western front as a volunteer in the army, “where I was happy to swap my shotgun for a nicer ‘weapon,’ my camera, which was always primed to fire.”124 As a war correspondent, he took pictures of war graves before they were crushed by grenades; he also took photographs of soldiers to send home to their girlfriends. Allgeier survived heavy combat, his “faithful war camera” always at his side. A
fter the war, Fanck trained him on how to use imagery in creating mountain films. Allgeier continued to film with Trenker, who was three years his senior, after Trenker stopped working with Fanck. Trenker, who had been awarded medals for bravery, had been a training officer in World War I for the high alpine troops. He later drew on the experiences and knowledge he gained during this time as a lifelong reservoir of stories to establish his career. The illustrated portion of Struggle in the Mountains, the book he published in 1931, suggests that Fanck reenacted scenes from Trenker’s life during the war in cinematic form.125 The images depict uniformed men deep down in crevasses, in ice tunnels, or at the entrance to a subterranean ice city. Schneeberger, who was also born in 1895, had been an officer decorated with a gold medal for valor. As a lieutenant with the Tyrolean infantry corps, he and his men held on to a position in the mountains until it was blown up by the dreaded Alpini, the elite mountain warfare soldiers of the Italian army. This experience formed the basis of his narrative chronicle, The Exploding Mountain, which was not published until 1941.126 His fellow filmmakers noted that Schneeberger still looked at mountains from predominantly military perspectives. While filming on the mountain, he would spend the long evenings devoted to outdoor shots talking about his experiences as an officer in the Habsburg imperial infantry corps.127 His close relationship with Ernst Udet (born in 1896) also stemmed from his connection to the war. For Schneeberger, Udet was the great hero of the Richthofen fighter squadron. Gustav Diessl (born in 1899) had also been in the mountain infantry. In 1930, he costarred in the Pabst film Westfront 1918, the first German movie about life at the front and in the trenches. Sepp Rist (born in 1900) was part of a submarine convoy fleet during the war. At the risk of their lives, these men had to guide departing ships through the minefield. And Hannes Schneider, a skiing ace born in 1890, trained a mountain regiment in World War I and goaded the soldiers over the mountains. A good skiing technique made the difference between life and death. Harry Sokal also spent two years at the front.