Just read a biography of one of my favorite Nazis, Leni Riefenstahl. She directed Triumph of the Wills, the documentary about the 1933 Nuremberg rally (thanks chris for reminding me!). Book says she was witness to an atrocity in Poland - the book is very sympathetic to her. Supposedly, some German soldiers were executed and mutilated and some Poles were told to dig a grave outside a church for the burial. Something happened, a gunshot somewhere, and the soldiers killed all the poles. Problem is, i dont believe it. Most of the poles in this town were jews, so jews were digging the graves. From the pictures of the poles digging the graves, it sure looks like jews digging their own mass grave. Who ever heard of German soldiers burying their comrades in a mass grave dug by jews? There is a picture of leni reacting to the execution of these jews: she is horrified. But that didn't stop her from continuing to meet with Hitler and share her nude photos with him. Even after the attempt on his life, when the war obviously was lost, she still met with him and obtained financing for her films. I really cant believe that Leni would give Hitler nude photos of herself, pose nude for him, and that something sexual wasn't going on (although there is not much evidence that Hitler was sexually active in any normal way - supposedly he only got off on kinky stuff like...I'll save that for another blog.) Anyway, as soon as the 3rd Reich ended, suddenly Leni wasn't a Nazi, knew nothing of death camps etc. She actually used Gypsies from a death camp as extras in one of her movies - i mean come on, she wasnt aware of death camps? Later she pops up in Africa with the Nuba tribe - i stumbled upon a photo book of hers in the UGa library when I was in Grad school - you should see pictures of these tall, muscular Nuba warriors, totally nude, with their wangs hanging down (i mean at least a foot long) and Leni smiling posing with them. She died 98 yrs old, still working as a photographer for Life, Look magazines.Here are a couple nudes of her from the internet - I am sure the ones Hitler saw were much better.
2 comments:
Hi Dr. Daniels its chris sessoms from your poltical film class, when you showed your blog i noticed this little post on Leni Riefenstahl, and i was confused just a smidge. I thought Olympia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympia_%281938_film%29
was the film based on the berlin olympics. Triumph was the propaganda from the Nuremburg rallies as i'm sure you know.
You being the film buff you are i'm sure you have a copy of it somewhere, but if not, you can download it for free here:
http://www.archive.org/details/Triumph_Of_The_Will_1
I downloaded it, i also downloaded the Battleship potemkin, from Sergei Einestien (sp) as well. But i thought you might be intrested in that site, because you can download a bunch of free movies that have slipped into public domain (land of the dead!) and other files. But i'm gonna take a look through your blog when i'm more awake and dont have a million things throughout my mind. (hence some of the bad capitalization problems, and i type too fast sometimes for my own good.)
Good night, and good luck.
Chris Sessoms
dear chris; you are absolutely right! It was the Nuremburg rally. I found this book on Leni in the library by accident (I was putting a video on reserve 2nd floor when I walked past the art book collection and saw her name on one of the books) and it was mostly about the olympics. I have not seen Olympia, only Triumph. I will check out the web site. I saw Battleship Potemkin decades ago (my age!) mostly because there is one scene replicated by Woody Allen in his movie Bananas (thats a strange reason to view the film...) dont worry about spelling on a blog, I am well known for misspelling grammar problems on the blog - its kind of like a sloppy diary. see you in class, mark (ps Great movie held over at Regent Sq theater, The Band's Visit. About an Egyptian police band that gets stranded in a small jewish outpost in the Negev desert - great film).
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