Leni Riefenstahl, R.I.P.

i saw "triumph of the will" about two years ago in toronto. there is a guy there,a

college teacher,who shows it once or twice a day for one week once a year.

he gives a lecture after the film,and he says something like: " you may agree

or not with what i am going to say,that is your right,but you have no right to

give your opinions here,as i am the one giving the lecture". then he began

talking about the risk of propaganda and how to avoid falling for it,and of

course,the film by leni riefestahl was central here.

he told us that the year before an old lady came to see the film everyday. on

the third or fourth time he could not hold himself anymore and asked her why

she came averyday to see it. she told him that she lived in nuremberg when

the film was made and that she came to see herself and her father and

mother and brother waving nazi flags from one of the windows of a building

as hitler was parading the streets. they were jews...

as for leni riefenstahl, well,she was beautiful,she used leicas and she was a

good photographer,and any person that takes diving lessons at 74 to shoot

some underwater pictures,deserves my admiration...!

was she a nazi?, i do not think so, i also do not think eric hartmann( the

pilot,not the photographer),was one, and he fought on an airplane with a

swastica on the tail,and i also admire him.

as for the jewish hollywood, well i hate them, not because they are jews,but

because they produce crap!! my admiration in that area goes to the jew in

new york that can really make good films and tries his best to play the

clarinet...

 

todd: not only was weston a friend of a communist ( rivera), he was also going

to bed with another one!!! ( tina)

 

p.s: if you have not seen " the triumph of the will", you can buy it from amazon,

and a good portion of your money goes to a good cause. ( check the details

there).

 

david

Tony, can we declare this thread closed? I think that it has run its full course.

SpongeBob,

 

Can we not decide for ourselves when a thread is dead? Do you think that we need a third party to decide that for free thinking individuals, and ask the moderator to terminate a thread? If you haven't noticed threads have a life that is determined by the participants of that thread. Give this one enough time and it will be gone, otherwise just ignore it.

....or maybe you can click the option " i no longer wish to receive new

responses to this thread" and let the rest of us decide for ourselves.

Todd Frederick: « Do we reject someone's art because he/she is Jewish, black, communist, ..., a

woman, ..., republican, Buddhist.....? »

 

Of course, not.

 

« Do we reject someone's art because he/she is ... nazi ...fascist.....? »

 

Yes, of course. I do. I reject the whole person and the whole of his/her actions. I don't care if

he/she is a genius, I'm just not interested.

 

Forgive me for getting real bad and rude, but I hate the bastards!

 

Biased? You bet I am!

 

Come on, you just can't put the latter two labels in the same list as the former six!

I don't understand why some people get scared when we bring up the subjects of politics, race and religion......these issues rule our lives, they should be discussed, they are important. Probably a lot more important than discussions about Leica cameras and brokeh!

 

For me this has been one of the best discussions for a long time, I don�t want to bring it to a premature end. Photography/film is a powerful medium, IMHO we should discuss the implications of its use.

 

If I can take pictures that make people think I will have succeeded. What cameras we use, is of passing interest. Its what we do with the tool that is important.

 

Cheers

 

Martin

An extremely intelligent friend of mine once explained human

ethos to me in a way my pea brain could absorb. That is, we all

have aspects of our makeup that define our task on earth. We

have our talents and abilities governed by our intellect, as well

as our moral obligations as humans. Competence and

character is what it boils down to. In short, if we are not Einstein

and Mother Teresa rolled into one, we have work to do.

 

Trouble is, we tend to look at those who excell in capability as

someone who also excells in character. This is rarely the case.

For we are human. Riefenstahl was just a human being with

competence that outstripped her character, as is the case with

many who achieve greatness in ability. A flawed character, BTW,

as seen in hindsight, but perhaps not as crystal clear when it

happened...a fact no one here can speak to except through the

filter of sources other than themselves. We are connecting an act

to a result no matter how distant. So, Einstein and Oppenheimer

were responsible for the total destruction of two Japanese

cities? They had to know where it would lead to, and could have

refused to use their abilities right from the start.

 

However, we do have the work Riefenstahl left behind to evaluate

her level of competence, and to take what was good and use it

for good.

This brings up the discssion I had a history og photograohy class. Does it really matter whether the photographers is man/womana. black/white/other, or what ever minority that you want to support?

 

 

Would we feel any different of the lynchings of the 40's and 50's if we knew that a black photographer took the images, as opposed to a white photographer. Or that a nude female on the baech was done by a female verses a male photographer?

 

In the end is about the choices of the photographer and teh values they held at the time. And in the end who are we to judge their motivies?

ubject: Response to Leni Riefenstahl, R.I.P.

Granted you have to separate the personality from the works of an

artist. Politics and religious beliefs is another matter. I do not

mean by this that we are obligated to judge a person's beliefs when

judging his or her works. We do need to admit that a person's

convictions can influence what they create and will contribute to

either their creations' success or failure. It does not matter that

Degas was a Jew-hater. He painted ballerinas. It does matter that

Riefenstahl was a Nazi because some of her best work is devoted to

glorifying the Nazis.

 

Gernerally speaking, people who follow party-lines produce bad art.

The best Communist artists have been invariable from the West. The

greatest writer of the Socialist Realist school was Gorki and that

was only because he was a revolutionary most of his life and not born

into a fuctionary position. Part of the pleasure of Diego Revera's

work is that it is "agin the system." Bachin, the Chinese Anarchist

writer, was always somehow on outs with any system he lived under.

(The story goes that he was put before a crowd of thousands for

public humiliation during the Culural Revolution; but when the crowd

jeered him he shook his fist at them and jeered back.)

 

What is important to note is that there have been great Communist,

Catholic, liberal and conversative artists, but no great Nazi

artists, with the exception of the Norweign author Knut Hanson (who

stuck to his convictions after the war). Certainly Germany produced

no great Nazi artists, though Nazi propaganda itself was horribly

brilliant. That Riefenstahl is remembered at all for her film work

during the Nazi era is in itself remarkable.

 

Let's face it, Olympiad and Triumph of the Will are intellectually

stupid films. When the techniques cease to dazzle that is what you

are left with. What perhaps has saved Riefenstahl from oblivion was

her shallowness. She loved the dazzle of Hitler's speechs and the

glitter of Nazi parades--I think she got an erotic thrill from them.

 

It may be that the erotic elements in Olympiad and Triumph of the

Will is what makes them worth bothering with today. The content

conformed to what Hitler considered correct German art and it

incorporated the Nazi view of the Germans as the master race. The

premise was of these two films was false to begin with and history

has verified this falseness.

 

The star of the German olympics was an African-American, Jesse Owens,

not a member of the "master race," and World War II proved that

having will does not necessarily insure triumph.

 

This is an aside but worth telling. The German guy who came in second

after Owens immeditately shook his hand and they became fast friends.

They corresponded up to World War II. Owens's friend died in the war.

Once asked about how badly the evil Nazis threated him, Owens replied

that they threated him very well--exceptionally well. He had received

better treatment in Nazi Germany than he had gotten in the segregated

US he said.

 

The Nazi Germany of Riefenstahl was a land of festivals and high

times. The author Thomas Wolfe (Look Homeward Angel) was at first

dazzled by this and wrote about charming young people marching around

in brown uniforms. His Jewish lover wrote him anguished letters

telling him about what Nazis were truly about. Finally he saw the

light and wrote an impassioned essay denouncing Nazism. This is

something Riefenstahl never did.

 

It is no good to say that Riefenstahl was not a Nazi. She was. She

was devoted to Hitler to the end. I sense it was more personal rather

than purely political. If she had been Russian she would have had the

same devotion to Stalin. If she had been an American she might have

ended up as FDR's mistress.

 

We'll remember Riefenstahl for Olympiad and Triumph of the Will and

her Nubia series and not much else. The two films are not great art

and Nubia, while sexy, is not a great social study. So there you are.

The artist's thought and work: technically brilliant but empty-

headed.

Leni Riefenstahl actually paid tribute to herself in advance, as early as 1935.

Remember the scene of Hitler, Heinrich Himmler of the SS, and Victor Lutze of the SA marching to the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and extending their Nazi salutes over his grave?

Now that she's departed, the Unknown Soldier will be replaced by Leni, and those three men and their salutes will be her final tribute.

 

Herbert J. Weiner

same devotion

 

To anyone who would fill her pockets. Get real.

It's amazing how the Catholic Church has got away with murder. Their anti-Semitism was responsible for more deaths during the 3rd Reich than a thousand Leni Riefenstahls, and they still have not acknowledged their despicable role in the slaughter of Jews.

Pocket filling is a serious business. Can't let anything get in the way.

vic, i couldn`t agree with you more!!!

 

david lee

While the Catholic Church stood by and let the Holocaust happen, individuals as the late Cardinal Josephine Bernadin have attempted to redress this. He instituted Holocaust studies within the Church.

 

Leni Riefenstahl was a hired gun, but an enthusiastic one who was turned on by Hitler. She believed that he could save Germany. When she first heard him, by her account, the earth opened. She never recanted or apologized. She didn't like left wing intellectuals which underlines her reactionary attitudes.

 

If Leni thought solely of cash, she could have fled to Hollywood like Fritz Lang and Peter Lorre. The cast of "M", which had Peter Lorre in the lead, was divided in decision as to stay or flee. This represented a basic schism in the German film community. Marlene Dietrich, who also fled to our shores, and Leni seem to represent this polarity. My own gut feelings are that Dietrich was ten times the person of LR, and, in the great beyond, is doing a Jose Greco on the latter's face.

 

When George W. Bush landed on the aircraft carrier in celebration of his military operations in Iraq, I did think of Leni. She could have produced a film on Iraq. I could see the words on the screen: President Bush, after his successful military campaign in Iraq, landed on the aircraft carrier [uSS Abraham Lincon?] to celebrate with his loyal servicemen and servicewomen. She would have believed in this while collecting a handsome sum for producing it.

 

In sum, Leni was a well paid employee--and an enthusiastic one. Disarming in her charm and denying any responsibility for her acts, she remained unrepentant throughout her life.

 

When the Nazi Triumvarate saluted the Unknown Soldier, they were also honoring her 67 years in advance, the final payment for work wel done.

 

Herbert J. Weiner

Huh? What's the "officially sanctioned thread?"

Yhey didn't drop one uranium and one plutonium bomb to compare the effects. They dropped one uranium and one plutonium bomb because that was all they'd managed to produce, aside from the one plutonium bomb they blew up in New Mexico in testing.

<p>

And what in the world is Bender going on about, as usual? Why would Jews want to maintain that Hitler was insane or irrational? Earth to Bender: insanity and irrationality are generally considered <i>mitigating</i>, not aggravating factors. To be sane and rational and do what he did is infinitely more evil.

"A better read than the officially sanctioned thread"? I'm unaware of any "official sanction," but frankly, I would have concluded precisely the opposite. The exception, of course, is Mr. Bender's ongoing effort to point out the "politically correct" hypocrisy coughed up by the knee-jerk anti-Riefenstahl crowd on this and the other forum. For this, I congratulate Mr. Bender. The "I hate Leni Riefenstahl because she got money from Dr. Goebbels' ministry" crowd haven't made any better sense here than in the other forum. Wiedersehen!

Michael accused the USA of "starting imperial wars to secure carbohydrate sources." Are you <i>serious</i>, Michael? I can't believe what I'm <i>reading</i> here! <br><br>I'm quite sure that history will prove you wrong, Michael, <b>wrong wrong WRONG</b>! Whilst many Americans are, indeed, fond of carbohydrates (Hershey bars, popcorn, you name it), I hardly think they would go to war to secure their sources. Hydrocarbons, now, that's another story . . .