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

by Wieland, Karin

  The film crew’s base camp was Ruhwald Castle, a nineteenth-century, thirty-room villa with a park in the vicinity of the Reich Sports Field. Riefenstahl and her 180 crew members lived there under one roof for the whole month of July and the first half of August. A work schedule on which everything was planned down to the last minute determined the sequence of events. The day in Ruhwald Castle began at six in the morning with a meeting in which Riefenstahl assigned tasks to each individual crew member for that day. In the evening, they met again to plan the following day. Riefenstahl seems to have been the only one who was not worn out after a sixteen-hour workday. She responded to complaints by reminding them that they could sleep once the Games were over.

  The weather was cold and rainy. The weary cameramen worked around the clock; they were hollered at by the marshals in the stadium, and at times they were booed by the audience or thrown out by the security guards. A major source of interference for the cameramen, in turn, seems to have been Riefenstahl herself. Even during the most exciting competitions, she was running from one camera to the next and giving important stage directions with sweeping gestures. To make matters worse, her personal photographer, Rolf Lantin, was following her to shoot publicity pictures. The party officials, who had to sit with the spectators and lacked any important role, were annoyed at how Riefenstahl was crafting an image of herself as the great director. Ertl suspected that it was Riefenstahl’s foes in the party who started chanting “Leni, Leni, let’s see you!” to make her look ridiculous. Narcissistic as she was, she waved delightedly to the crowds, and was promptly booed. At several points she came close to suffering one of her nervous breakdowns. During the filming, Riefenstahl would go from displaying remarkable energy and steely resolve to losing her temper over petty matters and revealing her frayed nerves. Her crew was used to her breakdowns, and their deep respect for her artistic ability was undiminished. She was able to snap out of her bad moods, halt her torrent of tears, and show that she was a tough director. She made no concessions in her quest for the best camera angles. A New York Times reporter complained bitterly about the way Riefenstahl took charge of everything. Any cameraman who stood on a spot that she did not approve of would get a pink slip from one of her attendants, which said: “Remove yourself from where you are now—Riefenstahl.” If people disregarded her instructions, she threatened to have them removed from the premises.82

  Often even Riefenstahl’s own crew members were thrown by her behavior, but they stuck by her. They knew full well that her adversaries from the Reich Film Chamber were just waiting for her to fail, in which case the hetaera (courtesan), as they referred to her, would lose her power. Her crew was not about to let this happen. These party members were no match for the bond Riefenstahl had formed with her men.

  In the stadium, pits were dug and steel towers erected to give the cameramen perfect vantage points. Riefenstahl did not care in the slightest whether that would bother the guests of honor. Frictions arose between the propaganda minister and the director. Goebbels, who was otherwise quite satisfied with the way the Olympic Games were going, noted in his diary on August 6: “I bawl out Riefenstahl, who is acting unspeakably. A hysterical woman. Clearly not a man!”

  In the Olympia film, Riefenstahl added a human component to Hitler’s portrait. In the party rally films, she had portrayed him as a Führer who stood apart from all others, but in Olympia she played up his affable side. He watched the events through his binoculars, chatted with his neighbors about the competitions, fretted about major decisions, and grinned when the Germans won. Although it was somewhat odd for the German chancellor to show up in uniform at a peaceful event designed to promote understanding among nations, in the Olympia film Hitler played the dictator who knew how to behave himself. He let the athletes shine and happily assumed the role of spectator. Der Film reported, “We have never seen Adolf Hitler looking so human, warm, and up close in any newsreel. A deep immersion in the noble games is the mark of the true Führer, who can bring enthusiasm and a sense of humor to these ‘non-political’ matters.”83 Riefenstahl’s imagery conveyed the message that the world ought to trust this man.

  Complex logistics were required to get all the cameramen sufficient film stock. Two cars went back and forth constantly to bring negative stock to the shooting locations, and two trucks had been converted into darkrooms in order to transport the exposed film from the Olympic stadium to the Geyer laboratory in Neukölln. By the time the group gathered for the evening meetings to plot out the following day, Riefenstahl had already viewed the footage and made up her mind about the coming day’s work. She devoted five minutes to each crew member. Each photographer’s work was marked with a number; once she reviewed the footage, she knew who had taken the good and the bad shots.

  The fact that she fell in love in the stadium heightened her desire to make this film a perfect success. Her passion for the American decathlete Glenn Morris was proof positive of her love for athletes, whose beauty and strength she sought to immortalize in her film. When she met him for the first time, we are told, she was thunderstruck. He had won a gold medal, and the stadium was darkened for the awards ceremony. “When Glenn Morris came down the stairs,” she later recalled, “he headed straight to me. I held out my hand and congratulated him. Then he grabbed me in his arms, ripped off my blouse, and kissed my breasts, right in the middle of the stadium, in front of a hundred thousand spectators.”84 Not wanting to complicate the situation, she then avoided him. Morris returned to the United States and tried his hand at acting in a 1938 flop, Tarzan’s Revenge (he played the lead role), but his onscreen role of a lifetime was in the Olympia film. He eventually became an insurance agent.

  The closing ceremonies took place on August 16. The National Socialists had offered the world a refined, well-orchestrated exhibition; Hitler had received royalty at his table; Goebbels and Göring had hosted lavish parties. The National Socialists had put on a show for the Olympic Games, but they had no intention of changing. Thomas Wolfe described the situation in his 1940 novel You Can’t Go Home Again:

  The sheer pageantry of the occasion was overwhelming, so much so that he began to feel oppressed by it. There seemed to be something ominous about it. One sensed a stupendous concentration of effort, a tremendous drawing together and ordering in the vast collective power of the whole land. And the thing that made it seem ominous was that it so evidently went beyond what the games themselves demanded. The games were overshadowed, and were no longer merely sporting competitions to which other nations had sent their chosen teams. They became, day after day, an orderly and overwhelming demonstration in which the whole of Germany had become schooled and disciplined. It was as if the games had been chosen as a symbol of the new collective might, a means of showing to the world in concrete terms what this new power had come to be.85

  Riefenstahl’s film helped shape this symbolic complex.

  She spent the period from October to mid-December archiving the material.86 She was eager to revel in her success even before the film was complete. On September 16, 1936, she wrote a letter on her personal stationery to Paul Kohner at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios in Los Angeles:

  Dear Mr. Kohner,

  I am also convinced that the Olympia film will enjoy colossal success throughout the world. It has never been possible to make such a magnificent sports film with these kinds of resources and artists. As you have already read in the reports, this will of course not become a documentary, but instead a timeless, artistic film that is a hymn to the beauty of the human body, and its dramatic elements are competition and record-setting. Because the American Olympic champions, such as Morris, Meadows, Carpenter, Towns, Owens, and many others, have made themselves available for an incredible number of special shots and close-ups and we were thus able to obtain unprecedented footage, particularly of the Americans, I think that this film will be of great interest to America. . . . The ultimate decision regarding who gets the film lies with Herr Reich Minister Goebbels. Olympia Film Inc
., of which I am the business manager, has had an enormous number of inquiries and offers for the Olympia film from all over the world. . . . If an American company of the size of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer makes a very good offer for foreign distribution to Olympiafilm GmbH, it is conceivable that it will be able to acquire the film for foreign distribution. If you really are quite interested, I would suggest that you make offers to my company as soon as possible, because in the space of the coming four weeks it will be decided whether Tobis will be getting the film for foreign distribution as well. . . .

  With best regards,

  Leni Riefenstahl

  Kohner wrote to his boss, Ben Goetz, on September 30:

  In view of my previous connections with her (having made some pictures with her in Europe) she offers Metro an opportunity for the foreign distribution rights of the picture in all countries of the world outside Germany. In view of the unquestionable importance of this picture, for the completion and perfection of which neither time nor money is being spared, I thought that possibly Metro might be interested in it. In this case it will be necessary for me to cable Miss Riefenstahl. Details of the negotiations could, I presume, be handled by Metro’s representative in Germany, but it is essential at the present moment that I advise Miss Riefenstahl in principle whether or not Metro is interested. Paul Kohner

  And he replied to Leni Riefenstahl as follows:

  Dear Leni Riefenstahl,

  Many thanks for your letter of September 16. I just wanted to let you know that I have passed along your proposition to Metro’s head office in New York and as soon as I have an offer, I will get in touch with you right away. Until then I remain with best regards

  Sincerely yours, Paul Kohner.87

  This correspondence clearly shows the influence Riefenstahl wielded. In a somewhat condescending tone, she was deigning to offer Hollywood her film. Kohner, who had experienced the enthusiasm for National Socialism up close and worked in Vienna, Paris, Rome, and London until 1935, knew who was making him this offer. He would have known Riefenstahl’s film of the party rally, and met the ambitious Riefenstahl out at Fanck’s home in Grunewald. We know that he learned everything he could about her because in his literary estate there is a collection of newspaper clippings about Riefenstahl’s prominent role in National Socialist Germany. Kohner was Jewish, and in the following years he would devote himself tirelessly to securing sponsorships and affidavits to save as many persecuted people as possible. Even so, he did not dissuade his boss from entering into negotiations with Joseph Goebbels. By the time Riefenstahl paid a visit to Hollywood in 1938, the situation had changed.

  In early January 1937, she decided to make two films out of the Olympic footage. In mid-January she moved to the film laboratory in Neukölln and began to edit it. Her work was part logistics and part intuition. The logistics of the hunt for images had been successfully concluded, and it was time for intuition to take over. Michel Delahaye asked her in an interview for Cahiers du Cinéma whether she set down her ideas in writing before the filming began. She replied that she did not need even one page of a script for either Triumph of the Will or the Olympia films. “It was purely intuitive.”88 Like Albert Speer, she used a combination of cold methodology and organizational mania. She identified completely with the planning and execution of a project, and regarded her subsequent work in the cutting room as the actual creative process. Riefenstahl withdrew from the outside world for nearly two years to edit the Olympia films. She did not come home until five in the morning. No one could help her to find the proper rhythm for the images. The slightest deviation could mean the loss of the desired effect. People who saw her at this time described her as a ghost. She edited and assembled the film alone. She stated in an interview in Cahiers du Cinéma that this was how she achieved the special character of her films. There is a photograph of Riefenstahl in the cutting room in a white lab coat with many filmstrips around her neck. With the same enraptured gaze as her cinematic counterpart, Junta, when staring at the mysterious glowing crystals, Riefenstahl’s eyes are trained on the images, oblivious to the outside world, in a state of ecstatic devotion to the artistic process that is her calling in life. However, this art exacted its price. Riefenstahl made endless demands. Her disputes with Goebbels centered on a report from the supervisory board of the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda on October 16, 1936, which alleged that the financial management of Olympia did not meet the requirements of proper accounting. The Film Credit Bank planned to launch a full evaluation of this project. She fought that with everything in her power, arguing that she did not have to answer to anyone besides Hitler, and obstinately applied for a budget increase of five hundred thousand reichsmarks. When Goebbels turned her down, she went to see him. After her visit, Goebbels noted in his diary: “Fräulein Riefenstahl is turning on the hysteria for me. It’s impossible to work with these wild women. Now she wants ½ million more for her film, and to make two films out of it, even though things are more rotten over there than ever. I stay cool. She weeps. That is a woman’s ultimate weapon. But it doesn’t work on me anymore. She ought to be working and keeping things in order.”89 In the end, Riefenstahl got her money from Hitler.

  In addition to coping with these disputes, she had to finish her work on Olympia. The dubbing posed a special challenge. Herbert Windt had written most of the film score, which was played by the Berlin Symphony Orchestra. Once Riefenstahl was finished editing the film, she got together with Windt and told him precisely what effect she intended to achieve with the music. Every sound had to match the image on the screen down to the last second. Even the composer worked with a stopwatch. This was the first time Riefenstahl was using announcers. Two radio sports reporters were charged with this task.90

  Hitler decided to put an end to all the talk about Riefenstahl’s and Goebbels’s quarreling and arranged for a visit to Riefenstahl’s new house in Dahlem. At roughly the same time that Hitler settled on the idea of building the Berghof, it also occurred to Riefenstahl that she had always wanted a house in the country. Now she could build the house that her father had never been able to afford. The ground floor had an expansive living area with a sunroom, kitchen, and pantry, and a work area with an anteroom, workroom, photo laboratory, screening room, and vault. Upstairs was the bedroom, along with a spacious dressing room, two bathrooms, several guest rooms, and a large massage room. The detached garage had an adjoining living room and bedroom as well. Riefenstahl had built herself a house that was tailored to her personal and professional needs. A family was not in her plans.

  A reconciliation visit took place at her home in the summer of 1937; Goebbels and Hitler were joined by Heinz Riefenstahl and his wife, Inge. A photographer took a picture of the group for the press. The men wear civilian clothing, and Hitler tries to look easygoing—Goebbels fails utterly in this regard. The hostess has on a white dress and is smiling bashfully. “With Führer at Riefenstahl’s for lunch. She’s built a very nice little house. We talk for a long time. She is so effusive.”91 Riefenstahl was not just sitting at the cutting table in Neukölln and drinking coffee with Goebbels and Hitler in Dahlem; she also took trips abroad to rub shoulders with the international gilded youth of the 1930s. When Erich Maria Remarque was in St. Moritz for two months in the spring of 1937, he avoided the ski slopes, but spent his evenings at the hotel bar where he saw Riefenstahl in the company of a long list of luminaries.92 Remarque’s lover, Margot von Opel, was a close friend of Riefenstahl’s. They spent several weeks together on the island of Sylt before the outbreak of the war. In 1940, von Opel would be living in New York with her new lover, the Swiss writer Annemarie Schwarzenbach, a close friend of Erika Mann, Thomas Mann’s eldest daughter. Riefenstahl clearly kept in contact with the emigrants in the art world.

  In July 1937, she left her editing room yet again to attend the International Exposition in Paris and introduce her films in person. The art that the dictators displayed in Paris staged totalitarian power as public and pop
ulist theater. Albert Speer was honored for his pavilion, and Riefenstahl for three films: the Olympia teaser film, The Blue Light, and Triumph of the Will.

  On the trip back to Berlin from Paris, she was invited to visit Hitler at Berghof, his residence in the Bavarian Alps. This was a privilege that was extended to only a select few. He wanted to meet with her in an intimate setting and hear about her impressions from Paris. A black limousine picked her up in Berchtesgaden. An adjutant greeted her and brought her into the empty entrance hall. As she stood there alone, she saw that a film was running and recognized Marlene Dietrich on the screen. Then Hitler came to get her.

  Hitler congratulated her on her successes, and they chatted while strolling outdoors. There may not have been any new agreements or promises made during this get-together, but the very fact that it took place at all was an unequivocal message: Leni Riefenstahl enjoyed the Führer’s protection.

  On March 11, 1938, German troops crossed the border into Austria. Two days later, the “annexation” of Austria to the German Reich was announced. When Riefenstahl found out that these political developments would likely postpone the premiere of her film until the fall, she sprang into action by taking the next train to see Hitler in Innsbruck. When she voiced her concerns to him, he initially reminded her that politics now had to take precedence over films. But then Riefenstahl thought of a date that would draw a great deal of attention to the film and connect it to the political situation: April 20, Hitler’s birthday. As was so often the case, she found a way to turn a seeming minus into a plus for herself.