Leni Riefenstahl was Hitler’s favourite film-maker. He personally asked her to make a documentary of the 1934 Nuremberg Rally which, more than any other movie ever made, expresses the fascist, totalitarian ethic on film in a captivating and totally immersive way. This was Triumph des Willens, or Triumph of the Will. It has provided stock shots of Hitler and his adoring audience of Nazi supporters for hundreds of film-makers ever since. Even if you have never seen Triumph of the Will in its entirety, you will have seen clips from it over and over again in television documentaries about the Third Reich. Riefenstahl’s images of Hitler and the Nazis have become enduring emblems of the regime.
Riefenstahl began her career as a dancer and then became a star in various ‘mountain films’ – a popular genre of German cinema in the 1920s. Highly dramatic adventures were acted out against the backdrop of the German, Austrian, or Swiss Alps. The films were as important to the German film industry as the Western was to Hollywood.
Having appeared in many of these movies, in 1932 Riefenstahl directed, co-wrote, and performed the lead role in a film called The Blue Light. She played a wild outcast girl called Junta, who shepherds goats and falls in love with a visiting painter while the rest of the village shuns her. Set against the extreme background of the Dolomite mountains, The Blue Light pits the mystical raw forces of nature against the corrupting influences of modern civilisation. Riefenstahl was young, attractive, and, by this point, one of the leading film stars in Germany.
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