Riefenstahl review: Unrepentant propagandist will make you want to yell at the screen, but this fine film gets her in the end
Director
:
Andres Veiel
Cert
:
None
Starring
:
Leni Riefenstahl, Adolf Hitler, Albert Speer
Running Time
:
1 hr 55 mins
One can easily understand how a documentary about Leni Riefenstahl, the notorious cinematic propagandist for Nazi Germany, might prove unsettling, but it is surprising how relentlessly infuriating Andres Veiel's fine film proves.
This counts as a sort of backhanded compliment. The film-maker flits over many corners of a long life. His main focus is, however, on Riefenstahl's tireless efforts to distance herself from the appalling crimes and crackpot philosophies of the regime.
Her argument seems to be that, like barristers explaining how the 'taxi rank' principle places them unstoppably in the employ of rapists, she was just a film director for hire. At one point she half-claims that if 'Roosevelt or Stalin' had given the order, then she would have complied. Only following orders? They heard that quite a bit during the Nuremberg trials.
The wonder is that, if Riefenstahl wasn't going to repent (and there is not an ounce of that here), she kept submitting herself to hostile interviews. Close to the end we see footage of a French programme that presents an empty chair after she refused to appear unless footage of the death camps was cut. To that point she seemed happy to trot out the same unconvincing evasions to any sceptical interlocutor.
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After an hour and a half of this, the temptation to yell at the screen proves close to irresistible.
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Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler's favourite film-maker: 'After the first page of Mein Kampf she became an enthusiastic Nazi'
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Veiel structures his film with grace and guile. We cut back and forth from a roughly chronological trawl through the early career to postwar footage of her standing firm against irrefutable evidence. She began as an actor and dancer before moving into film-making, ultimately directing herself in the lyrical The Blue Light.
The most problematic sort of immortality came with two propaganda features for the Nazis: Triumph of the Will (about the Nuremberg Rallies) and Olympia (about the 1936 Olympics). The film doesn't really engage with the debate about whether the films' innovations – see also those of DW Griffith's foully racist Birth of a Nation – can be considered in lofty isolation, but intercutting shots of Olympia with quotes from Mein Kampf helps to confirm that the moral poison is baked in.
For all the irritation along the way, Veiel does deliver a satisfactory conclusion. That is to say, he gets her in the end.
In cinemas from Friday, May 9th
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Photograph: Simone Padovani/ Awakening/ Getty Images Progressive politics and pleasure are not mutually exclusive. As a scholar of Irish writing and an avid romance reader, I find it baffling that fictional representations of individuals finding love and feeling good have attracted such contempt. My decades-long academic career has been built on the rigorous study of formally complex books and plays about challenging issues. But I also enjoy the accessible and uplifting narratives offered by romance fiction. Truth be told, during the darkest days of the pandemic, I received a mildly unsettling email celebrating my status as among the 'top 1 per cent of Kindle romance readers worldwide,' so I know of what I speak. Like other readers of romance, I am not naive. These books and their happy endings do not seduce me into believing that everything is just fine and inevitably will work out for the best; I am, after all, a woman currently living in United States. Irish romance fiction frequently depicts suffering, loss, shame and sustained bad feeling – but it also shows us how people can endure those trials and even thrive. These stories suggest that consensual emotional and physical intimacy, and mutual gestures of care and attention, might help make the world a better place. Both romance fiction and Irish women's writing are flourishing, so this is the perfect time to revisit the genre's contributions. As in any written corpus, some of these books are great, while some are forgettable. Yes, romance novels are predictable in that they end happily. But for the record, no one criticises football matches when they end, as expected, on a grassy field rather than in outer space. The 'happily ever after' is not a generic failure, as Marian Keyes observed in our interview for RadioMoLI. It is simply where the author chooses to end the story. Happy Ever After: Falling in Love with Irish Romance Fiction continues at MoLI until November 9th Paige Reynolds is Professor of English at the College of the Holy Cross. Her latest book is Modernism in Irish Women's Contemporary Writing: The Stubborn Mode (2023) Irish romance fiction favourites - by curator Paige Reynolds By taking romance seriously, we revise certain long-standing misconceptions of Irish literature. Photograph: MoLI Kate O'Brien's Mary Lavelle (1936): Banned in 1936, this gorgeous novel depicts Mary's affair, while working as a governess in Spain, with the married Juanito. It is one of many Irish romances with an untidy HEA focused more on self-fulfilment than lasting romantic love. Emma Donoghue's Stir-Fry (1994): This insightful novel set in 1989 is a campus romance featuring lesbian characters. Read today, it reminds us of the rapid transformations in matters of gender and sexuality. Maeve Binchy's Tara Road (1998): Light a Penny Candle and Circle of Friends are Binchy's acknowledged masterworks, but I have a soft spot for this tale of an Irish and American woman swapping houses one summer: a potent reminder that romantic relationships are often opaque not only to outsiders, but to the people in them. Marian Keyes's Rachel's Holiday (1997) and Again, Rachel (2022): Two of my desert island books. Keyes realistically navigates Rachel's decades-long path of addiction and recovery, showing the support offered, in good times and bad, by her quirky family and her super sexy love interest, Luke. Anna McPartlin, Pack Up the Moon (2005): The term 'chick-lit' has a bad rap, but I love the early 21st-century romances from Poolbeg Press that show Irish women exercising their newfound spending power and sexual freedoms. This one focuses on healing from grief. Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen, Oh My God, What a Complete Aisling (2017): Romance is one among many types of relationships in this first of the delightful Aisling series. When I first read it, I was impressed that a Brazilian appears among the cast of characters as a simple matter of fact – a confirmation that Irish romance fiction swiftly embraces and helps to normalise cultural changes. Sue Divin's Guard Your Heart (2021): Not many HEAs in Northern Irish romance, but this Young Adult novel set in 2016 is a smart, engaging account of two 18-year-olds from Derry (both born on the day the peace agreement was signed) who find love despite lingering sectarian discord. Caroline O'Donoghue's The Rachel Incident (2023): This is another campus romance, set in Cork. It cleverly spins a commonplace plot device found across Irish fiction, an affair between an older male professor and younger student. Naoise Dolan The Happy Couple (2023): Dolan's Exciting Times is more obviously a HEA romance, but in this second novel, she astutely (and hilariously) takes on the marriage plot with characters documenting the intricate path to Celine and Luke's wedding day. Sally Rooney Intermezzo (2024): In her fourth novel, Rooney reworks familiar tropes – the age-gap romance, the meet cute, star-crossed lovers – and grants her characters satisfying HEAs that fit the present day. Another favourite - by curatorial adviser Maria Butler Patricia Scanlan's City Girl (1990): This eighties-tastic novel was the first to apply the topics and themes found in the bonkbuster to a modern Irish context. Although parts seem a bit dated, it paved the way for everything we have now.
The Irish Sun
17 hours ago
- The Irish Sun
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