Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.life From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Buried in Hitler's ashes Date: Wed, 11 Nov 92 14:23:38 EST Message-ID: \SE E;LIFE \SS (WS) \HD Buried in Hitler's ashes \SH Ex-filmaker Leni Riefenstahl sifts through a long lifetime of pain, glory \BY Janet Watts \CR LONDON OBSERVER SERVICE \DT LONDON LONDON - Into the sharp lights and black shadows of London's Museum of the Moving Image, Leni Riefenstahl steps uncertainly. "I am rather excited," she whispers to a friend. Her smile shines; her hair, clothes and skin seem burnished with gold. This is her party, and she glows in the dark. Yet not long before it she had wept. Miss Riefenstahl's life is like that. Triumph and misery. Success and disaster. She had broken down on being asked, yet again, about her sometime friend Adolf Hitler. It happened during an interview for a radio program, undertaken, like the party last month, to launch the British publication of her autobiography, "The Sieve of Time." In an interview the next day, she is controlled, but nervous. She looks remarkable, moves rapidly; her hands are as fluent and flexible as a girl's, her eyes still very fine. It's almost impossible to believe she is 90 years old. "I have survived," she says. "But it is a wonder." It took Miss Riefenstahl, the celebrated and reviled director of "Triumph of the Will" and "Olympia," five years to write her life. She didn't want to but finally recognized that no ghostwriter could. It was a hard task, and not a happy one. Now here it is, in 669 pages from Quartet Books: another achievement in a life of work that won't stop. "I want to be free, like other persons. But it never happened. Always new things are coming." For 50 years she has been the butt of gossip, enmity and contempt. She has been accused of being a Nazi sympathizer and received the unofficial sentence of a lifelong ban on her chosen career as a filmmaker. "I think it will always be my destiny to carry it, because what Hitler has done is too horrible. If these people would know me personally, they maybe would change. But for them I am only a symbol of everything they hate - 'She is the incarnation of Hitlerismus' - so anything I say doesn't help." Even as Nazi-style xenophobic violence and anti-Semitism erupt anew in a reunited Germany, she measures her words carefully. "If I think what Jewish people have suffered, it is correct. I have no hate against Jewish people, I was never anti-Semitic. But I have to carry this." Miss Riefenstal ascribes her survival to her parents' legacy. "My father had a strong will." When he found she had stolen apples as a small child, "I was severely beaten and locked in a dark room for an entire day." From her mother she inherited "enthusiasm," Miss Riefenstal says. "She was very active, and not a little bit afraid for anything, like me. I am not afraid for anything. What I am afraid of is bad people who are liars." She has defended herself and won more than 50 libel cases. The one allegation against her to end equivocally in court (about her use of Gypsies from a concentration camp as extras for her film "Tiefland") has been disproved, she says, by documentary evidence. Her longevity is a sort of curse. She knows that as long as she lives, she will never be free of her past. * * * In 1932, barely 30, Leni Riefenstahl was one of the most admired women in Germany. She had won fame as a dancer (spotted by Max Reinhardt), an actress (befriended by Josef von Sternberg), a film director and a mountaineer. She also had terrific nerve. She wasn't interested in politics and only read the arts reviews in newspapers. But when she realized the whole country was talking about one man, she went to a rally to hear Adolf Hitler speak. Then she wrote to him suggesting they meet. The Fuhrer responded. He was a fan of hers, too. Hours before her letter reached him, he had told his adjutant, "The most beautiful thing I have ever seen in a film was Riefenstahl's dance on the sea in 'The Holy Mountain,' " a dazzling silent movie of which she was the star. Their first meeting went well. There were others. She recalls every word. She has repeated these conversations many times - first for her secretaries and staff, who wanted to know every detail when she came home, and later for her interrogators. What did she feel for Hitler? She points out that everyone else bucks it. She doesn't give a straight answer herself. There are clues, in her book and in the spaces between her words. But this subject is a source of distress. She believes the truth is complicated, and unacceptable. No one wants to hear anything about a mass murderer that is not sinister and evil. But how to explain the influence he had over millions of Germans? In that first meeting with the Fuhrer, she saw a modest man. "I admired Hitler. You see the situation now in England: It is not the best. In Germany then, it was far worse. Six million people out of work. And then is coming a man who says: 'My people: I will give you work. I will give you bread. I will give you a better life.' And he has done this. So naturally you believe. They speak of peace. You have not fear of the danger of war." * * * From their first conversation came Miss Riefenstahl's greatest contributions to the art of film - and the crime of which she has stood accused for half a century. Hitler listened to her "patiently," she says, then he suddenly said: "When we come to power, you must make my films!" She declined. "I will never make prescribed films. I have to have a very personal relationship with my subject matter." Two years later, she made "Triumph of the Will," a record of the National Socialist Party's annual rally at Nuremberg in September 1934. She says she didn't want to make it, but Hitler insisted. She says it is "a document," not propaganda. But she cannot deny its sense of passion and its power to stir passion. The problem with "Triumph" is its artistic excellence. It has atmosphere, lyricism, imagination, even beauty. It bursts with originality, innovations, new ideas. It is a masterful and moving portrait. And it is a portrait of the Nazi Party. Its heroes are the monsters of the 20th century - Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, Goring, Hess. Above them, the swastika. "Triumph of the Will" was a triumph for Miss Riefenstahl, and her downfall. "If I had not done this film, I would have a normal life." It won acclaim not only in Germany but in the rest of Europe. Royal invitations, international awards. "People were very friendly. I have only good things written about me." This was before the war, of course. Afterward, "It changed. But I was the same person, with the same art, the same films." * * * "Triumph" brought her the commission to film the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. She didn't want to do that, either. ("I wanted to be an actress.") It, too, was another outstanding success, internationally hailed as a masterpiece. She describes the ways in which "Triumph" does not glorify Germany, but she does not deny that it greatly enhanced the prestige of the Third Reich. Propaganda? Perhaps - she so loathes the word because of her hatred for Josef Goebbels, the Reich's propaganda minister, who first tried brutally to seduce her and then became her implacable foe. In her book she quotes documentary maker John Grierson's tribute to her, one he likens to Churchill's salute to Rommel: "Leni Riefenstahl was the propagandist for Germany. I was a propagandist on the other side. . . . I took Leni Riefenstahl's films and cut them into strips to turn German propaganda against itself; but I never made the mistake of forgetting how great she was. Across the devastation of war, I salute a very great captain of the cinema." Miss Riefenstahl never joined the Nazi Party. Every court and tribunal she has faced has cleared her of being a Nazi. She claims she never shared Hitler's views on race and said so to his face. As proof, she cites her film "Olympia": Its biggest star was black American athlete Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals. She insists, as many Germans do, that she didn't know about the concentration camps. She says she always supported her Jewish colleagues and friends. "But when I found these things he has done, I hated Hitler. In this moment [he] broke the world. I was nearly dead. But it was coming too late." To this day she is accused of complicity in the Holocaust. She says she has written her memoirs "to tackle preconceived ideas and to clear up misunderstandings." She isn't proud of the result. "I am not gifted for writing." She said she knew it wouldn't benefit her. But "I feel it was my duty. I think it was necessary. I must do it." The book has been severely criticized. * * * Yet many people have loved Leni Riefenstahl, too. The Nuba people of the southern Sudan, for example, and they have played a part in her survival. When she finally admitted (after many struggles) that her film career was over, she went to Africa, discovered the Nuba and almost by accident began a new career by photographing them. Other loves followed. In 1968, at age 66, she realized she couldn't make her next expedition to the Sudan alone. She looked around for an assistant who could repair vehicles, carry cameras, generally help, and found Horst Kettner, a man 40 years her junior. They have lived and worked together ever since. She and Mr. Kettner are on the way to completing a film shot entirely underwater, mostly in the Maldives. They'll film in Papua New Guinea next but have to wait until their part in a major television documentary about Miss Riefenstahl is finished. "It helps me a little bit that there are people all over the world who love my films. I receive hundreds of letters of support. "I am not happy. But if I have not an interview . . . if I have nothing to do with the press . . . if I see my Nuba, if I dive . . . I fight against depression. "Even if it is hard, I say to the life, yes." SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM