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

by Wieland, Karin

  Fanck had taught her how to lay claim to uncharted territory. Her work in the mountains had also taught her the importance of waiting for just the right moment. Still, everything had to move very quickly in Nuremberg. She needed cameramen she could rely on. Every detail was planned out, yet was subject to spontaneous change if an enticing opportunity arose. “The sheer abundance of events threatened to overwhelm us all the time,” she wrote. “The mass of material being presented to us could have kept a hundred crew members busy. That was the only possible way for us to capture the key moments on celluloid.”25 Her cameramen had to be on site for all the important speeches and events, but they could neither be noticeable nor disturb the events with their equipment. The final day of shooting in the Luitpoldhain municipal park would pose a particular challenge in this regard. The cameramen would follow the rally from the scaffolding and also stand among the SA men as they filmed so that every last spot in the huge complex was covered. Everything was worked out to the last detail to bring together a film of lasting historical import.

  Victory of Faith begins without people. After catching a glimpse of the clouds, we see a city from above in the morning light. The city awakens, an old city with densely clustered buildings, crooked alleyways, and a great many church towers. The camera comes back down to earth, and the following shots look as though they were taken from a moving car. Fountains, clocks, statues of saints and kings go by, accompanied by a music track. Suddenly, people appear: young men are building bleachers in front of a church; the mood is elated. Carpenters hoist a small swastika banner, which flutters gaily in the wind—the first indication of what lies ahead. Not a word has been uttered. Then a sea of swastika banners comes into view. Scenes of urban traffic with backlit passersby, legs cut off, and a muddle of bodies and automobiles recall the aesthetic of the previous decade.

  In the following shot, we see formations of SA men marching into the city. Boots in lockstep, singing, old and young men in rank and file—that is the new aesthetic. The SA arrives on foot, on horseback, in carriages, or by car, and is hailed as it marches through the villages. The onlookers stand at attention and give the Hitler salute. Several times, Riefenstahl also shows children with their arms raised in the air. Cheerful party officials emerge from trains and limousines in uniform, though a few are in civilian dress. An airplane lands. Hitler appears in a trench coat, a dismissive look on his face. Voices can now be heard for the first time: the spectators are roaring “Heil!” Hitler has a magnetic effect, and everyone streams toward him. The camera shows him from behind, standing in the car as it moves past the rapturous crowd. At this moment, the viewer can almost share Hitler’s perspective. The city is full of life. People are now climbing all over the fountains that were still empty in the earlier morning shots. The storefronts are decorated with swastika banners, their own ornamentation blocked from view. Bells are ringing. There are unintentionally funny scenes, such as when Hitler fidgets with his hair or when he is flummoxed by two children handing him a bouquet of flowers, and so passes it along to Hess, who is seated next to him.

  Hess opens the Reich party congress. The people jump up from their seats, laughing and shouting “Heil,” barely able to grasp the fact that Hitler is among them. Riefenstahl shows a heterogeneous, enthusiastic crowd. There are close-ups of elegantly dressed women, but at the stadium ceremonies we see only determined, angular faces of young men. Röhm, the head of the SA, displaying his facial wound from World War I like a mark of honor, is clearly Hitler’s right-hand man. He reports that one hundred thousand SA, SS, and Stahlhelm troops have lined up. When Hitler speaks of the “young German freedom movement,” he is referring to his own party. In long sequences, Riefenstahl shows marching SA men, then the SS, who appear in the film for the first time. Hitler is clearly the master of the German people’s emotions. He radiates equanimity while unleashing frenzied fervor in the crowds. The film closes with fluttering swastika banners and the anthem of the Nazi party, the Horst Wessel Song.

  Hitler was the first politican who sought to be portrayed in a full-length film. The earlier films of party rallies ran only thirty minutes; Riefenstahl’s film would be twice as long. She regarded herself as an artist, not as a filmmaker with a party badge. Her goal was not merely to edit footage, but to find a rhythm and a cinematic language for this massive political event in the new Germany. Together with her cutting-room assistant, Erna Peters, she headed back to Bergmannstrasse in the Kreuzberg section of Berlin, where the Tesch printing laboratory was located, to edit the film. The work took longer than expected, and she excused herself in the pages of the Film-Kurier for the weeks of waiting. It required great effort to “create a flow for events that were repeated again and again, escalate the action, find transitions, in a word, to give rhythmic form to this great film of the movement.”26

  Riefenstahl’s decision to present the material without voiceovers and out of chronological order gave her more latitude to diverge from the sequence of events at the rally. Apart from the music track, she used only original sounds, thus rendering the film an acoustic acclamation for Hitler. The shouts of Sieg Heil roar, boom, and break forth again and again, while the ardent crowd stands with right arms outstretched at eye level, palms open in the Hitler salute. On July 13, 1933, this salute had been made mandatory. Riefenstahl’s first film for the National Socialists served as instruction in the proper ways to act in this new era. It is unlikely that even a single German was unacquainted with the need for a Sieg Heil accompanied by a Hitler salute. The film demonstrates impressively how many people on the streets of Nuremberg adhered to this ritual of compliance and subjugation. Victory of Faith would be shown in villages as well as big cities; the idea was to reach as many Germans as possible. Many of them now got to see something about which they had heard or read but had not witnessed up close. “The movie shows the Germans’ dedication to the idea of National Socialism,” according to a review in Die Filmwoche.27 Victory of Faith is a kind of object lesson in how a National Socialist needs to behave.

  On December 1, 1933, the premiere took place in the Ufa Palace in Berlin. Just three months earlier, Riefenstahl had stood on the stage here after the premiere of S.O.S. Iceberg. The time between the filming in Nuremberg and the premiere in Berlin had been brief. “One simple telephone call to Hitler got her the use of his big tri-motor airplane, along with a personal pilot, Captain Bauer. We can imagine the effect of this unexpected arrival on the eyewitnesses, when the big silver bird landed in Tempelhof and the triumph of Leni when she stepped out, with a smile on her lips and accompanied by a handsome blond lad!”28 S.O.S. Iceberg was well received by the critics, but they panned her acting: “Leni Riefenstahl, whose acting is just as rudimentary as it has been for years, plays a stereotypical feminine adjunct in monumental mountain films and thus runs the risk of being typecast in these outdated kinds of movies.”29 Not even Joseph Goebbels had liked her in this movie: “Film S.O.S. Iceberg. Magnificent nature scenes. Plot quite anemic. Leni Riefenstahl seems awfully conventional. She was not effective here.”30

  Her success with Victory of Faith more than compensated for this criticism. The premiere was splendidly orchestrated. Hitler, Goebbels, Röhm, and Hess were present, along with von Papen, von Neurath, and Frick, to celebrate her debut as a political film star. The curtain rose, and for a good hour, the audience of party members could bask in its own glory. “When the final sound faded away, the audience, which was visibly moved, rose to its feet spontaneously to express its bond with the Führer and his movement by singing the National Socialist song of security and strength. Even then, there was no clapping, but rather reverent silence, followed by a burst of enthusiasm and resounding applause.”31 The audience roared its approval of Riefenstahl, and the Führer handed her a bouquet of flowers. The two of them were the stars of the evening. To celebrate the premiere of the film, Hitler threw a big party.

  After 1945, Riefenstahl dissociated herself from Victory of Faith. Her only mention of it was to dis
miss it as a mere “short film.” For a long time this film was thought to be lost, and her statement could not be verified. She claimed that after telling Hitler about the impediments to her work in Nuremberg, Goebbels had been enraged and became her enemy on the spot. However, Goebbels’s diaries reveal that he was a supporting and calming influence on her during the three months it took to make the movie.32 On November 29, when she showed her film to an intimate group, he noted: “Dinner at Alfieri. . . . Hitler comes later. Film Victory of Faith. Marvelous SA symphony. Riefenstahl did a good job with it. . . . Hitler moved. This will be a huge success.”33

  With Victory of Faith, Riefenstahl cut her critics and enviers down to size. Hitler thought more highly of her and she stayed in close contact with Goebbels. She would have been ill-advised to have a falling-out with Goebbels, who, in turn, could not do without her because there were not too many talented directors remaining, now that most had fled the country. Her moment of triumph came through in the film’s opening credits. Her name appeared in large and bold print; Raether’s was small and thin. He had failed in his attempts to upstage her as artistic director. Now even mid-level party officials knew that Riefenstahl was a force to be reckoned with. In the 1990s, a copy of Victory of Faith surfaced in the State Film Archive of the GDR, and Riefenstahl faced a barrage of questions. She deflected director Ray Müller’s question with the remark that she had a few scenes on hand and simply assembled them. In her eyes this was not a film at all; it was nothing but exposed film stock that satisfied the party members who had commissioned it. She was not prepared to take their satisfaction as praise, she insisted, because “Let’s face it: they were happy with every newsreel. The main thing was to have swastika banners on view.”34 A statement of this kind makes it clear how superior she felt to the average party members. Riefenstahl savored the privileges of her insider status, no longer dependent on the evil “industry.” As Hitler’s darling, she did not have to worry about box office success. Riefenstahl could rest assured that her film would be shown nationwide, and everyone would see it.35 She reported to the press that she was thrilled to have experienced the rally in Nuremberg. “What I saw in Nuremberg,” she declared, “was one of the most impressive experiences of my life. All of it was so enthralling and grand that I would not be able to compare it to anything I have experienced in my previous work in the arts. I will never forget the processions of the hundreds of thousands of people [and] the cheers of the masses when the Führer and his closest associates appeared.”36

  Before setting off with Walter Prager on a ski trip to Davos, she met with Julius Streicher, editor of Der Stürmer and the gauleiter of Franconia. He was known as a fanatical anti-Semite and a corrupt businessman. This was the man to whom Riefenstahl chose to grant power of attorney just a few days after the premiere of Victory of Faith: “I hereby grant Herr Gauleiter Julius Streicher from Nuremberg, editor of Der Stürmer, power of attorney in matters concerning claims by the Jew Belà Balacs [sic] pertaining to me. Leni Riefenstahl.”37 This power of attorney was handwritten on Hotel Kaiserhof stationery. It is not known whether Balázs had taken legal action against Riefenstahl to get his payment.38 In any case, Riefenstahl had no qualms about pitting her new friends against her old ones on both financial and artistic matters. She wholeheartedly supported and exploited the terrorist dimension of the Volksgemeinschaft (people’s community).39 If The Blue Light were to have a revival, she wanted to reap the fame all on her own.

  The change of mood that emerged among the German people in the spring of 1934 set the stage for Riefenstahl’s second party rally film, Triumph of the Will. After a year of National Socialist rule filled with celebrations and terror, the excitement curve had leveled off. It was not that the Germans missed their civil rights or opposed the National Socialist violence against the Jews, but rather they were frustrated that the miracles they were anticipating failed to materialize.40 There were also National Socialists—the men in the SA—who were dissatisfied with what had been achieved. Their chief of staff, Ernst Röhm, was the only one in this group whom Hitler addressed with the familiar du. The SA men equated politics with brute force, which had enabled Hitler to become chancellor. Röhm was well aware of his special status and boasted that he was preserving the revolutionary legacy of the party. Röhm judged the world exclusively from the standpoint of the soldier. His goal was to make the SA the most powerful military organization in Germany and have the Reichswehr generals obey him. His vision was summed up in this statement: “The gray cliffs must be swallowed by the brown tide.” The Reichswehr officers looked down on the proletarian SA men, who were neither disciplined nor schooled in the art of national defense. The Reichswehr may have been inferior to the paramilitary SA in terms of numbers, but its prestige was much higher. It enjoyed support from the nobility and the conservative middle class; it had weapons; and it established a connection to President Hindenburg, who had served as a commander in the Reichswehr. To secure total power in Germany for the long term, Hitler had to have the support of the Reichswehr. If Hindenburg died in the near future, he would be able to bury him only if the Reichswehr stood by him.41 Even so, he could not afford to sever his ties to the SA, which was experiencing an enormous increase in membership. In the spring of 1934, Röhm had command over 4.5 million men. In the course of a single year, the number of SA men increased sixfold. In Victory of Faith, Riefenstahl showed that these young men were drawn to the SA by its military features: the uniforms, male bonding, banners, and marches. Röhm spoke more and more often about a “second revolution” that had yet to occur. Hitler could not allow this “revolution” to take place. His useful private army SA had become a growing destabilizing factor. To defuse the situation, Hitler arranged with Röhm to send the SA on vacation for the entire month of July 1934. In early June, Hindenburg had moved to his manor in East Prussia; evidently he was close to death. It was time to designate a successor. As usual, Hitler had been letting things slide and avoiding confrontations with the SA, but Hindenburg’s imminent death forced him to take action. All SA leaders arrived at the town of Bad Wiessee in Bavaria on the morning of June 30 for a meeting with Hitler, who got with Goebbels there shortly after 6 a.m. The SA leaders were brought to Stadelheim Prison in Munich, and many were executed that same day in a purge that has come to be known as the Night of the Long Knives. In Röhm’s case, Hitler waited until the following day. Two SS men brought a pistol into Röhm’s cell in the expectation that he would take his own life, but when he did not do so, he was shot. Göring saw to the smooth liquidation of the death squads in Berlin. Among those murdered were Kurt von Schleicher, the former chancellor of Germany, and his wife, who were shot in their home. Other prominent victims included Edgar Jung, a consultant to Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen; Gregor Strasser, the former national organization leader; and Erich Klausener, the head of the Catholic Action group. The SA was stripped of its power, and Hitler emerged victorious from this bloodbath.

  Hitler asked Riefenstahl to make a film about the 1934 party congress, and she was offered every conceivable advantage, including distribution of the film by Ufa.

  The managing board hereby authorizes a distribution agreement with Leni Riefenstahl as a special agent of the NSDAP Reich leadership. . . . The artistic and technical direction of the film goes to Fräulein Riefenstahl, who was commissioned by the Führer to do so in the name of the NSDAP Reich leadership in a letter dated April 19, 1934. According to a letter sent the same day, Fräulein Riefenstahl will have up to 300,000 reichsmarks at her disposal. The Führer has given his approval to having the film distributed by Ufa.42

  She chose Walter Ruttmann, who had made the film Berlin: Symphony of a Great City, one of the most important cinematic expressions of New Objectivity, to be her codirector. His film was driven not by plot but by atmosphere, dynamics, and rhythm. Riefenstahl knew that this film of the party congress would also revolve around atmosphere and dynamics, and that Ruttmann was the right man for the job. Ruttmann and Riefenstah
l shared an aversion to the motion-picture industry, which in their view only stood in the way of art. In the late 1920s, he had worked as Abel Gance’s first assistant in Paris, and in 1932 had gone to Italy. To the surprise of his friends, he returned to National Socialist Germany in March 1933. Ruttmann was a friend of Philippe Soupault’s and was held in high esteem by René Clair. James Joyce was said to have felt that only Eisenstein or Ruttmann would be capable of adapting his Ulysses for the big screen.

  Riefenstahl was in a lesser league. In 1934 she was largely unknown outside of Germany, and within the country her name was associated with athletic prowess in mountain films and her close relationship with Hitler. Ruttmann does not appear to have thought much of her talent as a director, and he even coined a term specifically for The Blue Light: beautise, a portmanteau of foolishness (bêtise) and beauty (beauté). Still, he accepted her offer and was reported to have declared: “I am nothing but a whore; I have sold myself to Riefenstahl.”43

  It appears likely that he was dependent on Riefenstahl if he wanted to pursue his career in National Socialist Germany. And Riefenstahl would stop at nothing to recruit and retain other men of talent for her projects, as she had already shown with Béla Balázs and Carl Mayer, and would do so again with Ruttmann. Riefenstahl was well aware of what a talented artist she was placing under her command by hiring Ruttmann. She was superior to him solely on the basis of her good relationship with Goebbels and Hitler, even though not a single one of her cinematic achievements measured up to Ruttmann’s. Her awareness of this inequality doomed their collaboration to failure from the start; as always, she strove to outshine everyone else.

  In October 1933, Ruttmann applied for admission to the Reich Film Department. On June 1, 1934, his application was granted and he could start in on his work. According to Riefenstahl’s version, she thought of Ruttmann because she had no intention of making a second party rally film by herself. It is odd that she still consulted with Goebbels about her new film. She was involved in two projects at once, traveling to Spain with a small team (Hans Schneeberger, Sepp Rist, and Heinrich George) to make the feature film Lowlands while Ruttmann laid the groundwork for the party rally film in Germany. We can only imagine her feelings of omnipotence as she played the beautiful, passionate Marta in Spain and everyone awaited her orders in her Führer-appointed role of director back in Germany.