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rockermike
Mountain climber
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Topic Author's Original Post - Dec 3, 2008 - 02:11am PT
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Just watched a movie about Leni; "The Wonderful, Horrible life of Leni Riefenstahl" (1993). Interesting stuff and (dare I use the word) amazing women.
Of course much controversy surrounds her Triumph of the Will film (widely recognized as one of the best films of the 20th century - if not for the subject matter) and whether she was really a Nazi sympathizer - (she says she was just a technician doing her job)??
But I didn't know she was quite the climber way before the Nazi thing even started. Filmed, edited and stared in her own films including The Blue Light where she was an anti social counter cultural waif in a village in the alps, running off in the moon light to climb big steep mountains looking for magical crystals (sounds like some climber girls of today - ha). Anyway, she did her own climbing (as in picture above) free solo and barefoot.
Anyway, if you are into film check it out (if you can find it). I picked it up for a buck at the local video store which is selling off all the VHS stuff.
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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Thanks for the reminder, Rocker. An amazing movie for sure.
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Alan Rubin
climber
Amherst,MA.
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There is a fair amount about her in Andrel Heckmair's (FA of the Eigerwand)autobiography (forgot the name--sorry),they climbed together at least one summer and he was very impressed. If I recall they had an epic in a storm on the Campanile Basso in the Brenta Dolomites. As for her Nazi sympathies, as the Heckmair book makes clear, she was definitely more than a mere technician and was in fact a part of Hitler's social circle, at least in the pre-war years.
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Scared Silly
Trad climber
UT
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Al, Which Heckmair book are thinking of The Last 3 Problems in the Alps or My Life As A Mountaineer ? Both are great reads.
This is will make a few people jealous ;-).
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Brian in SLC
Social climber
Salt Lake City, UT
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Show off...
I have a copy of Kampf in Schnee und Eis. Neat pictures. Couple of them seem to show front pointing up glacier ice. Published in 1933.
Triumph of the Will is chilling...
Wonder if any of her other movies (the climbing oriented ones) are available...
-Brian in SLC
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Alan Rubin
climber
Amherst,MA.
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It was in My Life as A Mountaineer that Heckmair describes his climbs with Riefenstahl and subsequent trip with her to meet Hitler. My German is pretty limited so I haven't read (nor do I own) the last 3 problem book, so I don't know if there are references to her in that book as well. I'm at work (shame, shame!!!!)so don't have access to my library, and, anyway, I'm not tech-competent enough to scan the appropriate chapter into this thread, but maybe one of you folks can do that service......
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survival
Big Wall climber
A Token of My Extreme
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Gotta see Blue Light now.
Triumph of The Will is certainly a powerful film.
Those folks were ATE UP!!
I showed it to my older kids one time when they had an assignment about propaganda...weird.
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klk
Trad climber
cali
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Riefenstahl got her start in movies by starring in Arnold Fanck Bergfilms. Her first was Sacred Mountain (1925), followed by White Flame, White Hell of Pitz Palu, and SOS Iceberg. The Blue Light was her directorial debut.
Unfortunately, the commercially available dubs are pretty poor quality-- not nearly as good as the clips in Wonderful, Horrible.
Olympiad is probably some of her best film work-- another highly politicized film, despite Riefenstahl's post-war claims.
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survival
Big Wall climber
A Token of My Extreme
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Just a technician..mmmmmkay.
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Redwreck
Social climber
Los Angeles, CA
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Yeah. Her protestations of innocence in "Wonderful Horrible Life" rang pretty hollow to me.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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The fascinating thing about Leni Riefenstahl is that her work really defines the impossible collaboration of art and politics. Art in the service of political ideas will always be subordinated to the political; political issues will end up defining the aesthetic quality of the work, and some political art, as in the case of LR, will be seen by most as simply disgusting or at least frightening. James Joyce said it best when he declared any didactic (political) work as an example of improper art: art that doesn’t have the aesthetic experience as its primary concern. Interesting that so much contemporary art is so politically charged, though now that charge comes from the left, and is, I think, destined for the same fate.
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cintune
climber
the Moon and Antarctica
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Juan's new girlfriend.
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klk
Trad climber
cali
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"James Joyce said it best when he declared any didactic (political) work as an example of improper art: art that doesn’t have the aesthetic experience as its primary concern."
One of the most illuminating things about the Riefenstahl case is that much of her work, like Das Blaue Licht, DID have 'aesthetic experience" as its primary concern.
Triumph of the Will can easily be categorized as agit-prop. It's the other work, the more ambiguous stuff that truly was done for commercial or purely "artistic" ends that is so problematic.
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rockermike
Mountain climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 3, 2008 - 03:54pm PT
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Juan's doing alright
(stolen from Mighty Hiker's link above)
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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"One of the most illuminating things about the Riefenstahl case is that much of her work, like Das Blaue Licht, DID have 'aesthetic experience" as its primary concern."
Couldn't agree more. But few people can separate the subject from the form in "Triumph." I think there is a fascinating illusion that truth and morality somehow inhere in beauty. Nobody demonstrates the error of that idea better than LR.
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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Great point Paul R. Really. And there are plenty of philosophers of the last 2500 years who in one fashion or another believe or maintain this concept. A pretty romantic notion isn't it. And then there is Leni, and plenty of others for sure. Look, here is our girl now:
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rockermike
Mountain climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 4, 2008 - 01:46am PT
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She later, in her 60s, lived in east Africa for a year and came home with her Nuba photographs.
At least we can say she did have a good eye and an adventurous spirit.
I don't mean to be her apologist but its worth remembering that the majority of the German population (except for the intellectual elites, the aristocratic blue bloods and the communists) were into what can be called early Nazism, with its ideals of self sacrifice for the collective and a higher good. As Heir Hitler said, you can't deny people meaning in their lives. And given the reality of Germany in the 1920's the attraction is understandable. I think there is something there even we modern westerners can learn vis-a-vis our "each for themselves and one against all" ideology.
Of course what happened later is another story but I personally am not convinced that the first ideal necessarily leads to the second reality. Others will debate this.
Leni's "the body beautiful" themes have been criticized by many as an essentially "fascist aesthetic" and I can partly see their point. Not a lot of sympathy for the weak or dumb or ugly in Nazi society, but these same critics might also consider climbing as a fascist pastime - the search for the sublime, the glorification of courage, self control, and physical perfection is a little anti-liberal, western, American (call it what you will) in itself. The classical American is watching football on the tube with a beer in one hand and a bag of chips between his legs. There is a curious tension between these two ideals to my mind.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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It sounds ironic, but I would say that the Nazi movement in 1930s Germany was at its heart a romantic phenomenon. If you look at Hitler's paintings you see work dripping with sentimentality and alluding to the sublime, mountains scenes, villages and peasants, peasants reflecting the notion of the virtuous worker, the salt of the earth, the noble savage untouched by corrupt civilization and inextricably tied to the Fatherland. The ideas seem to come straight from Rousseau through Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. There is certainly a seductive power to such ideas, though German Romanticism seems to have a pathological side in which reason is wholly abandoned to emotional experience. Speers' hyperbolic architecture embodies this in the same way that Hitler's emotional speeches do and in the same way that "Triumph of the Will" does. I think it's important to understand this because we tend to think of Nazis as uptight unemotional zombies when the reality is that they were way too in touch with their "feelings."
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