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.
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
