The weekend after that incident, I received a telegram from Jo.
He told me to meet him on Lindenstraße so he would not have to pass Hildergardstraße. When I got onto Lindenstraße, I did not see him, but walking down the sidewalk I suddenly heard his voice: In here!
I turned and saw that he was sitting behind the wheel of a car. Hurry, he said, beckoning me in as he checked the rearview mirror. His eyes were bloodshot. I got in and shut the door, worried he was in some sort of trouble.
Marlene’s a madwoman, he said as we sped off.
I fastened my seat belt and rolled the window down as Jo began to confide in me.
* * *
—
JO SAID MARLENE endeavored to make him breakfast and dinner even when they were in the midst of a shoot—when of course, you know, the most helpful thing any actress can do for her director is to rehearse her lines and get eight hours of sleep so her skin will look fresh on camera. That would have been my modus operandi.
Instead, Marlene was stewing a vat of beef with vegetables and forcing Jo to finish all of it. It gets worse—Jo told me that Marlene would rouse him in the middle of the night by rubbing her you-know-where on his sleeping hand—till he woke to find his wrist wet. Oh dear, I remember saying to Jo, and he said that wasn’t the end of it, for Marlene would goad him: Is Jo-Jo really going to be a spoilsport now?
What’s more, Jo told me, an aquiline-nosed woman in a newsboy cap had been tailing them around town. Thinking she was a tabloid photographer, Jo told Marlene to walk on ahead as he stopped to tell the woman to leave them alone or he would smash her camera with his cane. To his surprise the woman stood her ground and told him to return Marlene or she would crush his giblets between her bare fingers. In shock Jo caught up to Marlene. She was peeping around the corner. He told her what had happened, and all Marlene had to say was: Did she really say that? Giggling, she told him that was Ingeborg, a paramedic she’d met in a girlie bar.
The last straw came that very afternoon I met up with him—he and Marlene were crossing Alexanderplatz and an ambulance narrowly missed them. Jo said he was still trying to gather his wits when Marlene exclaimed: Doesn’t the ambulance look good on Ingeborg? Maybe she should put on the siren?
Jo’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel as he related all of this to me. I’m going to have a nervous breakdown, he said, tapping the gas pedal. You know how hard it is to shoot a movie, all that notwithstanding. And I can hardly tell the men about my problems. They would just make a joke of it. It would lose me respect on set, or someone would pass it on to someone and his wife would pass it on to my wife. You know I had thought this would have been a quiet affair since both Marlene and I are married.
At least you know you’ve cast Lola Lola right, I said.
He brightened up a little. That’s big of you, he said.
After that, I remember clearly that we went to the river and rented a canoe. Jo rowed us out. All around in the Sunday sun were young couples, and families with small children. He seemed calmer now that he’d shared his troubles. Rowing smoothly, he said: So you would like to be a director now?
Caught off guard, I squeaked: Perhaps, who knows?
Who knows? he said. You know whether you have it in you.
He straightened his oversized jacket, cleared his throat, and put on a magisterial tone.
Let us not mince our words in this decisive matter, he said. Art is not like baking apples or chopping firewood.
He said that an artist must apprehend the primal nuances of his or her medium, and that cinema is time on the axis of sight. Jo told me that the best films were not those that looked the most real—then we filmmakers would be mere stenographers. Nor were the best films the most lavish, or the most absurd. Those were too clean a break from reality. They called too much attention to the artist and the object for the viewer to really see. Throughout my career, I thought back often to this afternoon, and Jo’s generosity in sharing his wisdom with me. Take the right risks, he said, to contrive a meeting with the committed viewer in the eye of the storm. Pull her into your pale, he said, make her recognize she is in the act of seeing. Honor her captivity, he said. Make a silent pact with her. The best films are those that create a hypnagogic state for the viewer, so she can be thinking through seeing, in dreams awake. I remember being so enthralled by his words, and Jo must have been so caught up with speaking them, that neither of us had noticed that one of our paddles was floating away from us. Unbuttoning his jacket, he reached out to retrieve it.
Jo, I asked him. Why do you wear your jackets so oversized?
Everyone notices that, he said as he rowed us back to shore, but no one has thought to ask. I wear them too large, Jo said, to remind myself that there is always room to grow into becoming the director I want to be.
XIX
What I learned from Jo: if you are an original, you might as well compete only with yourself. Whatever I did, whether it was a fiction film or a documentary, people could smell my originality, and it would set off copycats. Even when I switched from filmmaking to photography after the war, when it was too hard to find investors for my movies, my photographs of African primitives in their natural state were acclaimed right away.
Let me say here say how much I love Africa.
Have you seen my photography?
Here, feel free to refresh your memory, I brought out the coffee-table editions.
Black skin is more beautiful than white skin. Like Rodin in black marble. When a black man is naked, I never notice it. I don’t know if you remember, but my nature photography of these Nubians set off a storm in the seventies. Not only in art, mind you, but tourism! Africa was in. Well-heeled adventurers organizing their trips to the safari started booking tours not only to shoot some big game, but to take their own photographs of the Kordofan tribespeople. This changed the lives of the Nubians completely. When I first visited, they did not even know what money or a camera was. Now they could receive large tips just by stopping to smile for a picture. I am glad I got to know them before they became aware of the camera. They were not posing for me then. I was just capturing their way of life.
What problem? We got along fabulously.
* * *
—
I DID WHAT my instincts told me to.
People were so impressed that I was a woman. Don’t be impressed that I am a woman, I told them. Be impressed that my work broke ground I didn’t even know I was breaking.
Look, I appreciate what you are saying, but I am not “the first female filmmaker.”
I am a filmmaker.
This is what I have been saying from the start.
It is 2003 now, and I am still saying the same thing.
Put it this way, it doesn’t make me happy or unhappy. That would be short-sighted and vain. What I have come to understand is that people will find meaning in your story, in their own way, regardless of the meaning you have inscribed, and that with time, meaning can change.
Even by the late sixties and early seventies, things were evolving.
Some American poststructural film theorists wrote to me.
They’d watched Tiefland and termed it a “psychobiography.”
What is that? I asked.
Watching Tiefland, they said the symbolism encoded by my psychological state was obvious. The Nazi state was the greedy Marquis and Hitler was the lone wolf menacing the village. As Martha, the gypsy dancer wooed and coerced by the Marquis, I was caught between two opposing forces. At heart, I wanted to be with the shepherd and his sheep, who represented the common people of Germany. Wow, I thought to myself, these academics sound so loony! I mean, that’s a lot to speculate on—concerning a time you know nothing about, a person you know nothing about—from one film. I am sorry to disappoint you, I wrote back, but I do not want to lie. Your interpretation is riveting, but it is not what I intended
. I did not intend any particular meaning, because that would be a limitation. Meaning is individual, range bound. But beauty in form is total. The cinematic language is universal.
They found my words so impactful that they wanted to fly me over for some lectures. There, they wrote, we would be able to discuss my work in its full context, outside the blanket notoriety and willful ignorance dogging any objective discussion of my films. That sounds splendid, I agreed. Everything was coming along so nicely—I was getting quite friendly with the coordinator, business-class airfare was arranged—till they went to the head of the film department for his sign-off. The coordinator told me afterward exactly what he said:
If I met that woman, I would cut her nipples off.
* * *
—
BLESS YOUR HEART—yes—I was just as shocked by how inappropriate this statement was!
Exactly. He was free to reject my guest lecture, to flay my movies, and even to judge my character, but did he have the right to say he would cut my nipples off if he saw me? If I were a man, was there any chance he would say something like this?
But no, that’s where you’re wrong—it’s not just “misogyny.” It’s not just “the things men say.” I am sorry to say this, but women can be far more vicious. They only hide their tracks better. For example, it was very chic and calculated what that Susan Sontag did.
You’ve read “Fascinating Fascism,” where she bashes my work and discredits me, yes?
Going from my films and photography to sadomasochism and fascism in one essay. I can see why people would want to read that. She is good at mixing and matching topics. And she has such a way with words, she can throw together a few things that have nothing to do with each other, tie it all together with a big ribbon, and make you believe.
When in fact, she is exactly what she says I am: an insincere, attention-seeking liar!
And I can actually prove it, in print, her two-faced games.
Now, you say you’ve read “Fascinating Fascism.”
But the real question is, have you read “On Style”?
No? You’re in for a surprise. In this earlier essay, she defends me, Olympia, and even Triumph of the Will. See for yourself—her collected essays. Take note, “Fascinating Fascism” was published in 1975, “On Style” in 1966.
Here—
My favorite part, highlighted.
This bit, where she compares me with Homer and Shakespeare. What does she say?
“The greatest artists attain a sublime neutrality.”
* * *
—
THAT’S WHAT SUSAN SONTAG wrote about me. Not so righteous and angelic now, is she? Over the years I began to understand. It was all opportunism for her, wasn’t it? In 1966, when the rest of the world hated me, it was daring for her to defend me. In 1975, when everyone was coming around to me, why not flip the tables? Start a witch hunt with a zappy title, have it published in a magazine in New York, get some street cred for stirring up a shit storm. Next to Sontag’s hypocrisy, “If I met that woman, I would cut her nipples off” seems direct and honest. That’s what men are good for. Women? I shudder. Sontag’s personal attack hurt for a long time, but it all made more sense to me when I found out that she was an aspiring filmmaker.
You didn’t know that either, did you?
Of course you didn’t, she’s tried so hard to bury them.
When the twenty-day Yom Kippur War broke out, little Miss Susan hopped on a plane, landed in Israel, and started rolling a camera—yes, that’s what she thinks a movie is! That was her third movie. What does a movie like that do for anyone, I ask you? What does it prove? That an American intellectual has enough ignorance to pull off a stunt like that? Her first movie was even worse. Set in Sweden so it could be an Ingmar Bergman rip-off, everyone ends up in bed with everyone else—either she has a dirty mind or she has no idea how to end her story.
When I saw her films, immediately I understood why she had written those nasty words about me. Sontag says I am “no thinker.” Yes, but I never pretended I was one. I was happy just making my films.
As to her films—
You know what? I shan’t do to her what she did to me.
I’m going to take the higher ground here, one woman to another.
* * *
—
IN ANY CASE, I am used to people, men and women alike, being jealous of me. From the outside, before it all came crashing down, it might have looked like I was immensely lucky, that I had boundless resources at my disposal to shoot big-budget films that no one else did, but I fought tooth and nail every inch of the way.
There she goes, Goebbels would say, Leni’s being a woman. A crisis a day. A ball of nerves. Her health is poor. She is addicted to painkillers. Of course a man with a clubfoot will want to put down a successful woman who has rejected him! Please have this in print: Joseph Goebbels fondled my breasts at the opera. It was a Wagner premiere. We were in the box with his wife. I never said anything to anyone because I was afraid that no one would believe me, or that he would punish me for it. Success is lonely, in particular for a woman of my time.
There were so few of us, and no one saw us for what we were.
People said I was an egomaniac for casting and directing myself, but that was not so unusual. Look at Charlie Chaplin or Orson Welles then. Look at John Cassavetes or Woody Allen now. People don’t call them egomaniacs. They call them geniuses.
Being a woman is a very complicated thing.
During my postwar trial, my lawyer told me to soften my courtroom demeanor. Listen, Leni, he said, it doesn’t matter if you really knew nothing about the camps, if you knew something, if you knew everything. I believe that a large part of whether we win or lose the case is hinged on whether you can act like a woman. Dedicated and talented, yes, but also vulnerable and helpless. If you were a man, he said, do you think anyone would believe for a second that you did not know anything about politics, that you were simply an artist obsessed with beauty? You have to show to them that you are a woman.
He did not know that as a woman, you are always acting as a woman!
* * *
—
BEFORE I ANSWER that I should clarify: what is your definition of feminism?
I can’t, as you say, “identify” or “not identify” with that. You see, when I was growing up, when I was making work, there was none of this “feminism.” So I think it would be dishonest of me to jump on the bandwagon. It’s true, though—in recent years, young women have reached out to me of their own accord to say that I am a role model in my own right. They write to me about “glass ceilings” and “smashing patriarchy.” But I tell them in good faith, as I am telling you now, that I do not identify with stances. I am just a woman who works. If they find my life inspiring, that is very touching. You see, every tide turns. Fifty years ago, rape threats. In this new millennium, feminist inspiration!
It is just the passage of time. I have remained constant.
This, if nothing else, is what I would like people to understand.
* * *
—
WELL. IT’S IRONIC you would ask this question right after your last one, don’t you think? No, that’s all right, you don’t have to backtrack, but let’s at least do away with the euphemisms. If you want to ask me that question, just say it like it is: did I ever engage in sexual relations with Adolf Hitler?
Tell me, is sex really the most intimate thing that can happen between two people?
What if I told you the most intimate thing he ever did to me was to support my talent? When we first met, he told me he saw my potential, and that he would place his resources at my disposal. Do you know how much that meant to a woman with a dream back then?
Men were. Women behaved. Men did things, women watched.
I wanted to do things, too, but I was not born into money. My father
had a small business making bathroom pipes and toilet bowls. My mother was a housewife. I was not the wife of an aristocrat, or the girlfriend of a banker. If I wanted to make things happen, I needed someone to share my vision and believe in me.
That’s intimacy.
* * *
—
MARLENE LIKED TO say that Hitler had a thing for her, but she meant that only in a superficial sense. And I have to jump in to say that for the record, even on the surface, I don’t think that could be true. If you knew him at all, you’d know that he did not like vamps. He thought Vivien Leigh was okay, but Louise Brooks was too modern. Of course, the funny thing is that while Marlene would be trying to start up rumors that Hitler had the hots for her, I could hardly put out those flames wherever I went.
In America they called me his mistress.
To be very honest, I was not his type, and he was not mine.
My kind of guy: well-built and clean-cut. I had quite a number of those. A tennis champion, a weight-lifting cameraman, a Wehrmacht general who won the Iron Cross. A perfectly formed boy I found wandering the foothills of the Acropolis, who looked just like one of the Greek statues. We hired him to appear in the opening sequence of Olympia, even though he was neither Greek nor German, but the son of Russian farmers. Also during the filming of Olympia: the American sprinter who won the four-hundred-meter decathlon. He walked off the prize podium with his gold medal and came toward me in the spectator stand. When I leaned forward to congratulate him, he kissed me on the lips in full view of the cameras!
So if you look at my track record, you will see that it was practically impossible for Hitler and I to have been lovers. As for him, he preferred homely, unassuming plain Janes who remained in the background, who were not too attractive.
Look at Eva Braun, right?
Delayed Rays of a Star Page 29