* * *
—
THE LAST TIME I ever saw Hitler?
Toward the end of the war.
He made a surprising request of me then.
I was in Kitzbühel with bladder colic, on medical leave from shooting Tiefland. I thought he would chastise me for budget overruns or hurry my production schedule, but the first thing he did was to give me his personal homeopath’s calling card.
Leni, he said, take better care of your health.
Then he called for some tea. No coffee, no alcohol. Tea and mineral water. That’s what he liked.
He told me he was tired, and looking for a political successor. Nobody was quite right, but he would leave it up for the Party to decide. After the war, he said, come visit me at the Berghof, and we can cowrite screenplays. He smiled at me. I did not dare to ask if he was joking. He heaped on many teaspoons of sugar and grew preoccupied with swirling his teacup to dissolve it without using the spoon. He took a sip and looked up at me. Leni, he said. Will you do me a favor?
Yes, I said, because who says no to him?
I remember feeling nervous—I did not know what sort of favor this was.
Once you have finished your movie, he said, please contact the top scientists at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin. I’ve been meaning to discuss with them a most important matter, but I have not had the time to do so. It could take years to perfect, he said, and we have no time to lose. I want the best brains in Germany to start on this right away.
I swallowed and listened carefully.
With scientists involved, I feared the worst. It must have something to do with weapons for the war. He put down his teacup and went on. Silver nitrate is not good enough, he said, it is perishable. We are losing so many images from our time, he said. How would everyone be able to see what we have created in the future?
I did not understand what he was talking about.
I asked him for a clarification. They were the last words I would hear him speak to me.
I am talking about the mutability of film stock, he said. Surely, our scientists can invent for mankind a film stock of the finest metal? An invincible alloy, which cannot be altered by time or weather?
In the middle of a war, I could not believe that was what he was asking of me.
Is it wrong for me to admit that I was moved by his request?
That even now, telling it to you, I’m getting the chills?
XX
Now we are in the age of digital video, but I see advertisements on the TV that are more artful than the movies. Has the digital erased time? A viewer can play, pause, rewind, and fast-forward at the touch of a finger. Filmmakers can see the shot on a screen as they are shooting or move through footage without taking time for it to unspool in reverse.
If you don’t have a feel for time, how can you make a movie?
In movies now, the sad thing is when you see that the camera is moving, but there is no meaning to its movement. You see this a lot in blockbusters. The camera is completely arbitrary. In our time, there was no distinction between an art film and a blockbuster.
Just look at my movies. Art blockbusters! They won prizes, but they also filled cinemas and made lots of money.
I prefer Hollywood movies now, without question. I’m not sure what happened across Europe after the war, everything became so ugly. I do not understand that whole genre of independent films. Italian neorealism is dreary. People go to the movies to be bewitched, not bored silly. If anyone wanted to watch something like that, wouldn’t they be better off looking out the window or taking a walk in the park? The French New Wave was made up of a bunch of whiny boys who are too intellectual. Without the fanciful things they say, the images they make do not hold up. If I could say something to them, it would be that art is not philosophy. Art is art!
There are a few filmmakers in Hollywood today with ambitions that are in line with what I had been trying to achieve. I like Oliver Stone, Francis Ford Coppola. I sense kindred spirits in Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, James Cameron. We know how to use scale. We know how to make a viewer swoon. We have a feel for the epic.
Women are still lagging behind, and I can’t see why.
If I was already making great movies sixty or seventy years ago, more women should have stepped up by now. Of those that have made a name for themselves, I confess I can’t understand some of the work they make. I tried to watch Chantal Akerman’s films, but nothing is happening in them! Agnès Varda and Catherine Breillat make me dizzy. Claire Denis is not so bad, but all these Frenchwomen suffer from the same problem. They think too much. A movie is for feeling, not thinking. Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides I enjoyed, she knows just what she is going for visually. But so soft, so delicate! I know she is trying to do things differently from the men, but is this really the only way to do it? Seven teenage sisters running around in flowing frocks like it’s a Vanity Fair fashion shoot?
If I were making movies today, I could definitely see myself making fantastical thrillers like Jurassic Park, space operas like Star Wars, romantic natural-disaster dramas like Titanic. I love Leonardo DiCaprio, he is so pure and handsome! I would have cast Leo in one of my movies in a heartbeat, he is 100 percent my type. I wept when he froze to death in the water in Titanic. And why couldn’t Kate Winslet share the wooden door with him? I mean her face is pretty, but maybe she was too heavy? If I had been directing, I would have had them lie one on top of the other. I like happy endings.
* * *
—
HOLLYWOOD GAVE ME a call over the summer.
Please keep this confidential—
Jodie Foster wants to make a movie out of my life, and she would like to play me!
Well, I have to consider. My reputation would be at stake.
I am sure that Jodie Foster is a lovely lady, I said to the execs, but I am not sure she is the most suitable actress to play me.
Ah, they said, was I worried about authenticity? Was I thinking of a German actress?
Typical. They had misunderstood me.
No, I told them, I was thinking of Sharon Stone.
When I said that, there was dead silence over the line. I’m guessing that if Jodie Foster is producing the movie herself, then it is not going to be possible for Sharon Stone to play me in Jodie’s production. Jodie wants the role for herself, of course—it’d be a great part to sink her teeth into, Oscar-worthy. I don’t blame her.
* * *
—
I DON’T MEAN to be rude, but “What would you have done differently?” is a stupid question for you to ask me, in my context.
Well, either it is stupid or you are angling for some kind of apology from me.
I’m not going down that path.
What I will say is that for all that I have been through, I am glad I was born in 1902, and not now, when all forms of art seem to be practiced at a distance. I had distance from my subjects when shooting them, but I have never had distance from my craft.
Nothing in the world feels closer to me.
These days, to be an artist seems to be about making some theoretical statement, showing that you do not care about anything! I should feel very sad if art goes down that route. I mean, I am acquainted with Andy Warhol, but to be honest his work leaves me cold. If you are sincere and serious about your work these days, people will laugh at you!
I am too warm for irony. Mine is the struggle of the pure artist.
That might be unfashionable these days—it doesn’t bother me.
When I said I was not interested in what is real, only in what is beautiful, people said, “You see, either way she is a monster!” But the true Romantics understand what I mean. For example, Jean Cocteau tried to have Tiefland screened at Cannes. He was the head of the festival in 1954. The whole committee vetoed him, but bless his heart for trying. And when the Venice Bien
nale wanted to rescreen my films as a fringe program in 1959, I agreed at once. I had such fond memories of Venice—I was in the main competition in 1937, and I won the top prize for Olympia, beating out Walt Disney and Marcel Carné.
It’s true, I was the first woman ever to be recognized at a film festival. I paved the way for all of them, Chantal and Agnès and Catherine and Claire and Sofia.
It is important, especially for women, not to shy away from owning our achievements, even when the going gets tough—I had been booed off carpets, shown middle fingers, asked to leave restaurants. It takes fortitude to keep showing up. If I never gave up, I don’t see why any young filmmaker today should, either. They’ll weep and fret over one bad comment in an internet newspaper! Chin up, I say. If art is in your bones, no one can take that away from you. Fight on. It’s not all about trophies and recognition—being able to say you’ve remained true to yourself is an artist’s biggest achievement.
* * *
—
LET ME TELL you about the time I went back to Venice.
I’ve never discussed returning to Venice in ’59—I used to think it was a shameful memory, but considering it now, I’ve every reason to be as proud of that trip as I was of ’37, collecting my Golden Lion. People were calling me a genius back then. “Golden Lion for the golden girl” and all of that. Everyone wanted to take my picture, I gave out hundreds of interviews, guests of honor requested to dine at my table. All my Olympia screenings were sold out. People queued outside for a chance at rush tickets. When I stepped into the cinema, the audience would leap to their feet and give me a standing ovation.
In Venice the second time, of course, everything had changed.
The war had been over for almost fifteen years, but people never let you forget. I looked at my press call sheet and there was only one interview, but at least it was for TV. We did it in a quiet corner of the hotel lobby, and I’d mentioned beforehand that I would answer only questions that were not political in nature. Everything went well until a well-dressed young man in sunglasses came in with a placard and stood in the background.
Tracking shots are a question of morality.
He had written it in German, French, Italian, and English.
He sat a few tables behind me, in the eye line of the camera.
I was not sure what exactly he was trying to say, but I knew he was saying something bad about my movies, about me. I pulled the line producer over. Could we please get him out of here? She went over to have a word with him. When she came back, she said to me: He is from Cahiers du Cinéma and he says that if you are not guilty, there is no reason to think that he is saying anything about you. The cameras were still rolling. I asked the crew if we could change an angle or crop him out of frame, but I soon realized that they were deliberately framing him in the shot. As a director I understood: it made for more exciting footage.
In that moment I began to regret the festival.
It was very well that they were screening my work, but I should have stayed home. A familiar pain began to bite at the back of my hip. I used to have very bad bladder colic. It was brought on by stressful situations. I thought of asking the production crew for aspirin, but if they caught me popping pills on camera, it would look bad on TV.
I took a deep breath and went on.
The interviewer was saying: Would you say that your obsession with finding form is very German? I got very nervous. This question could be mocking me, my work. I did not know how to answer. Right then an old man took a seat between my seat and the young man with the placard. Opening up his newspaper, the old man obscured the young man’s sign. I was relieved. I could speak properly again. When the interview was over, the old man rose, and I saw that it was Jo von Sternberg. It had been no accident that he had positioned his body between the punk and me.
Seeing that I had finally recognized him, he tipped his hat.
I had not seen Jo in decades. He had aged terribly. I was fifty-seven then, so Jo must have been in his sixties, but he looked much older. All his hair had gone completely white, and he was so thin. I noticed that the suit he was wearing was no longer oversized. It was tailored to fit.
I wanted to run over to say hello, but I stopped myself.
An old acquaintance had recently thrown her shoe at me at the Berlin Hauptbahnhof, and when I visited a production at the newly reopened UFA, where they were making an adaptation of one of my early movies, an actor I knew from before said he would not work until I left the set. Excuse me, I said, you are making an adaptation of my work, and you have not even paid for the copyright! He ignored me completely, and I was ushered out by security. Anyway, to be on the safe side, I had grown used to seeing if an old friend would welcome or reject me before I approached them. It was less embarrassing this way.
Jo was walking over.
He used to move with such a bold swagger, you’d have cleared out of his way even if you didn’t know who he was, but he was coming toward me in small, uncertain steps. He had the same mahogany cane he’d carried around for show all those years ago, but now the weight he leaned on it was real. It was painful for me to watch him. Reaching me, he did not ask how I had been. He kissed me on both cheeks and said: Coffee?
* * *
—
WE ORDERED ICED lattes in a café—I recall it to be a very hot day. Jo told me he had a new film in the official selection. Anatahan was the first movie he’d made in many years. It was not slated for the main competition—nor was mine, but in my case I was presenting old work, whereas his was a premiere. We did not discuss that of course; I did not want to hurt his feelings.
Jo said he’d fulfilled his lifelong dream of making a film in Japan, in Japanese, with an all-Japanese cast. He’d been quite pleased with his final cut but grew worried when no one else seemed to care for it. Distributors and festivals had not bitten, so he spent some time recutting the film, adding his own voice-over narration in English to explain the Japanese culture and rituals, till the last iteration was accepted by Venice this year. One can only hope their decision wasn’t motivated by sympathy, he said.
I understood what he meant: he wouldn’t have known where to hide his face if his comeback film didn’t have a premiere at a decent festival. I’d have felt the same, but I was also surprised that the great Josef von Sternberg had been cowed into edits for fear of being passed over. He told me he’d been asked by a French critic this morning at the hotel: Monsieur von Sternberg, why did you go to the Far East to build a studio set to shoot your movie, when you could have constructed an identical set in a Hollywood back lot?
I told him: Because I am an artist.
He laughed and wrote it down.
You are very quotable, he said.
After he left, I thought: I am not an artist, I am a con.
Why? I asked Jo. I don’t think you’re a con. Not at all.
He smiled at me and lit a cigarette with a gold lighter without answering. Jo was so different from how I remembered him to be. I knew him to be full of conviction and panache, yes, you could say he was arrogant, but he was so dedicated to his vision, such a perfectionist in his approach, that you would forgive him the bluster. Seated across from me in that café, not only was he quiet, hesitant—he looked defeated. I had to ask him what his film was about. It was based on a true story that had happened during the war, he told me. After losing a maritime battle, twelve Japanese seamen are stranded on an island in the Pacific Ocean. The island’s only other inhabitants are the overseer of an abandoned plantation and an attractive young woman. Everything is in good order to begin with, but soon it all descends into a struggle for power and the woman.
Men are brutes because they are so predictable, I remember Jo declaring. I would have made a fantastic woman, he said. Then I would not have wanted to be a good director. I would have wanted to be a great actress. For a moment I saw his old flamboyance. Then ou
r drinks came and Jo hunched over as he told me the Japanese reviews had lambasted his direction as stilted, his cast’s acting as amateurish, his world view as exotic.
Jo, I burst out. Since when have you cared for criticism!
He seemed surprised that I’d raised my voice. Look, I said, have you noticed to whom you’re whining? He looked at me, saying nothing. If I’d taken all the bad press to heart, I went on, I’d have hung myself years ago. Sobering up, he put his coffee down and asked quietly: Do you ever wonder what would have happened if I’d cast you instead of Marlene as Lola Lola in The Blue Angel?
No, I said to him. It has never crossed my mind.
Not once? he said, a touch playful. Might have saved you a whole lot of trouble.
I could never have been Lola Lola, I said. And are you still in touch with Marlene?
He reached into his pocket and took out the gold lighter. All that’s left, he said, passing it to me. I turned it over in my hand and read the inscription: TO MY CREATOR, FROM HIS CREATION. I gave it back and he flicked it open, passing a finger through the cold blue of the flame.
I’ve faced up to it, Jo said, it’s true. After we parted ways, it was all downhill from there. The seven movies they made together were his best, he admitted, but undoubtedly, they were Marlene’s best, too. With him, she had been an actress. Now, she was only an icon.
I had not thought of that before, and isn’t it true?
She went on making movies, I remember Jo saying, but it wasn’t the same. I could see it, critics wrote about it, she knew it. A Paramount cinematographer told me that during a take, Marlene trailed off midway through her lines to whisper: Where are you, Jo?
They didn’t light her the way I did, he said. They didn’t shoot her the way I did. They couldn’t see her the way I did.
* * *
—
JO TOLD ME with a sad sort of smirk that he’d heard that Marlene had become the first and only actress in all of Hollywood to apply for a union technician card, just so she could light herself. While acting, she kept an eye on the lighting configuration by way of a huge mirror on the other side of the set, making adjustments till the perfect butterfly shadow appeared under her nose and above her lips. She ordered her own lights to mimic his setup, tried working with his cinematographer, but they couldn’t achieve the same effect. Jo said he wanted to believe it was technical, too—that he needed to believe it more than she did. I tried to shoot every other woman the way I shot her, he said. They were no less beautiful, and some were far better actresses. But it never worked again, you know? They just weren’t Marlene.
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