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

by Wieland, Karin

  The Blue Light tells the story of a man and woman traveling through a mountain village on their honeymoon. They stay in a room that is decorated with pictures of a beautiful, Madonna-like woman. When they ask who she is, the innkeeper brings a book, La Historia de Junta, which recounts her story. This is where the actual plot of the film begins. It takes place in 1866, which distinguishes it from Fanck’s films. By setting the narrative in the nineteenth century, technology and modern comfort are essentially absent; only in the brief frame story at the beginning do the objects we associate with modern life appear: the honeymooning couple drives a car, and both wife and husband wear trenchcoats rather than traditional costumes. The two main characters in the movie, Vigo, a painter from Vienna, and Junta, who is from the mountains, are not clad in traditional garb either. They do not belong to the local community, which regards Junta as a witch because she is keeping a secret and will not reveal it to anyone else. She is the only one who knows how to gain access to a grotto in the mountain with crystals that glow when there is a full moon and emit a blue light. Magically attracted by the strange light, young men from the village try to follow her, and in doing so fall to their deaths. After every full moon, the corpse of a young man is carried into the village. Why can a woman scale the mountain, yet the young men plummet? The villagers conclude that something is amiss. Junta skulks through the streets like a hunted animal when she comes to offer the berries she plucks to the villagers. The sight of her arouses disgust or desire: contemptuous stares from old women and lascivious glances from young men. Junta wears her hair loose, walks barefoot, and is dressed like a ragamuffin; her shabby clothing reveals a good deal of skin. She is a wild, alluring creature who does not go to church and scratches and shouts when anyone comes too close. In one scene, Tonio, the son of the innkeeper, pulls her into a dark corner in an attempt to rape her, but she is able to escape. Riefenstahl remained true to her signature role; she is the woman between two men, although in The Blue Light, Junta is not interested in men. When Vigo saves her from the angry crowd of villagers that seems intent on lynching her, he wins over her trust. He visits her up on the mountain, where she lives with a shepherd boy and goats in a simple hut. Vigo leaves the village to be with Junta, while Tonio watches warily. Vigo speaks German, and Junta Italian; neither understands the other’s language. Yet Vigo seems to be happy in this largely mute relationship; he stays close to the object of his desire, gazing at her with a somewhat moronic, leering grin. But Junta finds crystals more beguiling than sex. When the full moon returns, she sets out on the climb to her crystal grotto, with Vigo and Tonio behind. Tonio plunges to his death, but Vigo follows her inside and sees her sitting amid the glittering stones, which wield a strange power over her. Back in the hut, Vigo decides to tell her that he will go down into the valley and reveal the approach to the grotto to the townsfolk. Junta, who is indifferent to wealth, does not understand the implications of this action. The locals arrive with pickaxes and wheelbarrows to loot the grotto, and Vigo is celebrated. Suspecting the worst, Junta clambers back up to the grotto only to find it empty. The crystals are gone, and the beauty is destroyed. Junta loses the strength to live and falls to her death; Vigo finds her corpse. This brings the story in the book to an end, and the honeymooning couple gazes up at the full moon.

  Vigo, representing the viewer’s perspective, realizes from the start that he has come to a village in which something is awry. Before he meets Junta and their story begins, he arrives in a coach in which the coachman and the other passengers seem strangely lifeless. The door of the coach slams shut by itself, as if by magic, and the coach drives off. The innkeeper is suddenly standing next to Vigo, having appeared out of nowhere. He takes Vigo with him to the eerily silent, dark village. This beginning is reminiscent of Jonathan Harker’s ride to the count’s castle in Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau’s Nosferatu, and since Mayer had worked with Murnau, this opening scene appears to be a deliberate nod to that film. Riefenstahl was also quite taken with Murnau’s films, especially with his Faust. In contrast to Fanck, who favored a “stylized objectivity” achieved by accentuating contours, she worked with soft focus and filters, which yielded a painterly effect. Riefenstahl shot her films on location; her camera went inside alpine huts, farmhouses, and even the village church. For the first time she used a lighting truck for indoor shots. She was on the quest for faces of people who were not out for fame or wealth, and found “her” villagers in the remote Sarntal in southern Tyrol. If they rebuffed her attempts to photograph them, she would stay in town for a few days. After going to church on Sundays, the villagers sat together in the tavern over a glass of wine. She approached them, showed them photographs she had taken of them in secret, and ordered several additional pitchers of wine. The alcohol had the desired effect, and they agreed to serve as extras in the movie.

  She set her film in the secluded world of Sarntal. Riefenstahl continued to be proud to the end of her life that she had found her way into the community and was able to film the locals even during a church service. The villagers were photographed with stark lateral lighting, which gave their faces a wrinkled, weatherbeaten, and gaunt cast. Junta, by contrast, the mysterious, seductive creature, was filmed in soft focus. Riefenstahl exploited the effects of light and shadow to make it difficult for viewers to distinguish between day and night, or fantasy and reality. She gave shape to her dream world by implementing technical innovations. “I contacted AGFA, hoping to find a film emulsion that is insensitive to certain colors but, when used with special filters, could produce color transformations and unreal visual effects. AGFA was quite cooperative; they did some experiments, and the result was ‘R-material.’ Later on it was used universally, especially in day-for-night shooting.”22 She was able to make the sun rise over the mountains like a mysteriously radiant full moon. The scenes in the village are often dark to draw attention to the menacing narrowness of the streets and the hostile severity of the faces. The viewer thinks it is night and fails to notice that it is actually daytime until Junta has left the village. By contrast, light streams up to Junta’s mountain pasture, and the ominous darkness in the village gives way to blazing brightness.

  In The Blue Light, Riefenstahl did not have to cope with snow and ice and could wear skimpy outfits, because the movie takes place in the summertime. She uses her body language to good effect in this movie when she slinks through the village crouched over and poised to attack, advances fitfully, or skips across the mountain pastures looking relaxed and graceful. In contrast to the people in the village, she moves about freely and exposes her physical allure to the gazes of others. The villagers are encased in traditional costumes that seem like protective armor, while Junta blithely reveals quite a bit of skin. Barefoot, nimble, and lithe, she clambers up the mountains, and no man can follow her. Junta is more animal than human, and she feels closest to her crystals. The cosmic energy of crystals complements Junta’s sexual energy. Riefenstahl portrayed her as a footloose, wild woman whom men desire and women despise. Junta remains true to her ideals. Vigo is sadly mistaken in his belief that she will belong to him after the grotto is destroyed. Junta would rather die than live without beauty.

  Riefenstahl made two movies in which she played the lead role: The Blue Light and Lowlands. In both films, her characters are a Gypsy-like amalgam of erotic fantasies and social ostracism. Junta, a woman of uncertain origins, does not belong to the village community and is free of its conventions. She drives decent men out of their minds. Junta desires not the man, but an image of herself, which she finds in the crystals glowing during a full moon. The blue light they emit is exceptionally beautiful, but cold. Junta is protected by a supernatural power and is the intermediary for a ritual that costs young men their lives. At the end of the film, Junta herself dies. The looting of the crystals has sealed her fate, and all she leaves behind is the legend of her life and her picture, rimmed by crystals.

  Riefenstahl claimed that this movie foretold her ultimate fate “as if it
were a premonition.”23 That is nonsense. The Blue Light was so important for her because she subsequently used it to verify what she was capable of without Hitler’s patronage. She counted on its success to whitewash her reputation. In her capacity as a screenwriter and director, Riefenstahl shaped the image of male fantasies. It is the woman herself who sets the stage for her sacrifice in the film. This sacrifice enabled her to emerge as an artistic construct. This was ultimately Riefenstahl’s most effective means to set herself apart from Fanck—by robbing him of his heroine.

  Balázs’s influence on Riefenstahl and her first film should not be underestimated. Her images of the Volk, which would continue to play a role in her collaboration with the National Socialists, were strongly influenced by the communist Balázs’s sentimental visions. Before she met Balázs, she had not been so keen on fairy tales. Balázs was the one who had been fervently devoted to these stories since his childhood. In the People’s Commissariat, he set up a unit for fairy tales. Riefenstahl responded well to the simple form of the fairy tale. The characters are clear-cut and the plot moves quickly. People in fairy tales do not grow through experience; they are isolated, yet connected to everything. Nothing has to be explained, and everything is sublimated to weightless images. Riefenstahl claimed that she was a medium for fairy tales, and that her movies welled up unconsciously from deep within her. In making this argument, she was disclaiming any responsibility for their content.

  The premiere for The Blue Light, which took place on March 24, 1932, at the Ufa Palace in Berlin, was staged as a major cinematic event. Riefenstahl, the coproducer, screenplay writer, director, and lead actress, envisioned it as a celebration of her breakthrough. Before the premiere she liked to claim that she was the first woman film director, thus conveniently overlooking the work of Olga Chekhova, Leontine Sagan, and Hanna Henning.

  She wore a white, low-cut evening gown and was flanked by five men in tuxedos. Riefenstahl was ready to graduate from a mountaineer to a movie diva. Balázs did not attend; he had headed off to Moscow. She described her movie as a “sensation” and claimed that the critics at home and abroad were falling all over themselves with excitement. Like many of her accounts, this was half true at best. In the Film-Kurier, she was lauded as “a courageous woman in her work and her singleminded dedication.”24 The Berliner Tagblatt, however, deemed the movie a failure: “The characters of the legend are not fleshed out; they are ambiguous and blurry; they have too little contour and content, and hence the plot is wishy-washy.”25 Riefenstahl’s mountain climbing, readers are told, was more impressive than her acting. The critics praised Riml’s photography and Schneeberger’s camera work, but Riefenstahl’s directorial and acting skills were either disparaged or ignored.26

  Riefenstahl continually drew attention to the silver medal that The Blue Light was awarded at the Biennale in Venice. In 1930, control of the Biennale had passed from the city of Venice to the national fascist government. For the eighteenth Biennale, in 1932, film artists were invited for the first time. The Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte Cinematografica was held at the Hotel Exelsior. From August 6 to August 21, 1932, the high dignitaries of the fascist state hobnobbed with film artists from around the world. Greta Garbo, Clark Gable, James Cagney, and Joan Crawford were among Mussolini’s guests. Riefenstahl did not write anything about a trip to Venice, so it would appear that she did not attend. The movies were shown to large audiences; however, there was no competition held at the film Biennale in 1932, so exactly which silver medal The Blue Light might have been awarded remains Riefenstahl’s secret.27

  The Blue Light was certainly a remarkable movie that highlighted her talent, but she had not achieved a masterpiece. Sokal claimed that her bitterness about the reception of this film, by Jewish critics in particular, turned her into an anti-Semite on the spot.28 The foreword Paul Ickes wrote for Riefenstahl’s Struggle in Snow and Ice reveals just how disappointed she was with these reactions. The many conversations that critics had with her convinced him that she was a great artist who had turned her back on the typical machinations of the “industry”:

  Surrounded by a male-oriented, liberalistic outlook on the film industry, Leni Riefenstahl did not meekly accede to the role division of the often unscrupulous supervisors of so-called German film. . . . As a woman, she showed the men who cared only about profit that a personal commitment is well worth the effort if there is an idea behind it. Her success proved her right, because material success is sure to follow sooner or later from a commitment to ideas. . . . But the same press that was under the spell of the profit-oriented economy and encroached on the spiritual revival of the people with this attitude withheld its allegiance from the artist Leni Riefenstahl, because allegiance is contingent on understanding, and no understanding was possible here.29

  Riefenstahl clung to this image of the highly gifted woman who pursues her goals in a man’s world and is thus unloved throughout her life.

  In May 1932, she traveled to icy Greenland to make the movie S.O.S. Iceberg. This last film she would work on with Fanck in some respects represented an exception to the movies they had made together. Universal Pictures in the United States had asked Fanck for a good screenplay. He sensed that the time was right to make a dream of his come true: he wanted to outdo his standard mountain theme by shooting a feature film about nature set in Greenland. Because Greenland was a country closed off to foreigners in order to protect the Eskimos, he persuaded Knud Rasmussen, the renowned polar explorer, to oversee the film. At the invitation of Carl Laemmle, the head of Universal Pictures, who was originally from Germany, Fanck traveled to America in April 1932. In honor of his German guest, Laemmle threw a party at which many Hollywood stars were present. Fanck had the honor of sitting next to Marlene Dietrich. She had just shot her second movie in the United States, but Fanck failed to appreciate this honor. Dietrich was supposedly too “painted” for his liking; in any case, he wrote that he had no idea what to talk about with this woman who was not interested in skiing or mountains. They had “absolutely nothing in common,” and so he sat next to Dietrich “as awkward as a schoolboy.”30

  Universal insisted that Leni Riefenstahl had to act in this film because she had made such a good impression on Americans in Piz Palü. Fanck protested that Riefenstahl would have to play a pilot in the movie, and everyone knew she could not fly. He would rather cast Elly Beinhorn, a famous female pilot, in the role. Besides, no woman had ever taken part in an Arctic expedition. But Fanck made no headway with this argument; the Americans insisted on Riefenstahl. “It was only when our Leni came to me in tears in Berlin and begged me not to take away the ten thousand dollar fee she would get did I give in, to compensate for all the strains she had already endured in my films. This decision detracted from the film by introducing a false note—although just a minor one.”31 Most likely he could not stand the fact that he was not enough for the Americans on his own. Fanck and Riefenstahl had little choice but to grit their teeth and take another stab at working together. This film would bring in quite a bit of money, as well as the prospect of their making the leap to Hollywood.

  Riefenstahl claimed that the deciding factor in accepting this offer was her wish to go on an expedition of this kind with her old friends. In fact, she had no option but to work with Fanck once again. However, she did manage to get Paul Kohner at Universal on her side. Fanck’s literary estate contains a letter from Kohner to Fanck, dated May 21, 1932, in which he asks Fanck to give Riefenstahl a more substantial set of lines than just the occasional “Oh, fine!” in The White Frenzy.

  Kohner would appear in Riefenstahl’s life again. Carl Laemmle had brought him to the United States when Kohner was eighteen years old. At the age of twenty-two, he was named casting director and sent to Germany. Word quickly got around that Kohner was conducting a talent search in Europe. Riefenstahl may have read the article about him in the Film-Kurier, which said, “Kohner merits the attention and support of the German trade press, since he is one of the mo
st zealous proponents of the European spirit in the American production center. Against all odds, he is paving the way for German literature and art to be considered by American film producers.”32 Between 1930 and 1933, Kohner was in charge of Universal’s film production in Germany. To comply with German import regulations, German Universal produced low-budget films in Germany to offset the many films imported from the United States.33 Kohner was thus a man of influence who could establish a connection between Berlin and Hollywood.

  The meetings to plan for the elaborate expedition took place in Fanck’s villa. His literary estate contains a personal photograph showing Fanck, Udet, Kohner, and Riefenstahl enjoying a glass of wine. They are sitting close together on the couch. Fanck is staring intently off to the left at Riefenstahl, who is seated between Udet and Kohner. Udet is gazing pensively at Fanck; Riefenstahl has turned to Kohner and is beaming at him, her dark eyes shining. Kohner appears to be smiling at her in response. This photograph seems to suggest that Fanck is worried that the flirtation between Riefenstahl and Kohner could blossom into an affair. In this gathering on the couch, her familiar position as the only woman among men was preserved, although the expedition itself would start with many female participants. Because they would be on location in this icy terrain for months, Fanck decided that the women could accompany their men. Together with the American affiliates, who would be filming a comedy with a different director at the same time, the number of participants grew to forty. Thousands upon thousands of pounds of food and supplies, four airplanes, two motorboats, and three polar bears were transported to Greenland; the preparations for the expedition posed quite a logical challenge. One of the men who had to solve this problem was the uncle of historian Eric Hobsbawm. Hobsbawm, who was living with his uncle Sidney in Berlin in the early 1930s, recalled these goings-on quite well later in life because this was his uncle’s last job in Germany.34