“Wherever you may run, you cannot escape him”: Leni Riefenstahl's
Self-Reflection and Romantic Transcendence of Nazism in Tiefland

by Robert von Dassanowsky

CONTINUED from PART 1

The capitalist support of authoritarian rule is introduced in the figure of Donna Amelia (Maria Koppenhöffer), a vain, calculating woman, the daughter of the Mayor of Roccabruna (Karl Skraup), who is goaded on by her father to become the wife of the Marquez for a sizable amount of money.65 The Marquez requires her finances to resolve his debts and Donna Amelia is therefore treated as a possession to be bartered by her father and as an object of financial desire by the Marquez. She readily accepts subservience to a man she hates for the sake of a title and to please her father. Riefenstahl, who celebrated the patriarchy in Triumph, creates powerful allegories of male domination and abuse of women in Tiefland. The class differences between Martha, Donna Amelia, and the servant women are revealed as irrelevant under the equal abuse and oppression by men. Women are excluded from active involvement in the sociopolitical hierarchy in Tiefland and suffer in what Monique Wittig would come to understand as the oppressed “class” of women.66

The image of Pedro on the mountain, the thinking, protecting man surrounded by gentle beasts is mirrored by his welcome in the cellar of the Marquez's castle, where he is surrounded by the giggling cast of servant girls who feed him, flirt with him, and gain as little attention from him as he gives his sheep. In dark opposition to Pedro, the Marquez dotes on his bulls and denies his male peasants, as he would unruly animals. The sheep/woman symbolism is restated in the triangle of Pedro-Martha-Marquez. Pedro's battle with the wolf over the fate of his sheep at the start of the film sets up the final conflict in which Pedro duels with the Marquez over Martha. He even calls the Marquez the “wolf.” The authoritarian figure who ought to represent order is instead equated with a wild animal that kills and steals.

The comparison of the Marquez's desire to conquer Martha sexually with the shy virginity of Pedro and his love for Martha, creates a fascinating pre-feminist indictment against the male warrior persona as a root of sexual dysfunction between man and woman. Although women are equated with weak, producing animals, the final shot does throw the woman/sheep equation into a critical light. Martha, saved from the Marquez by Pedro, walks with him back to nature, into the rainbow-graced mountains. They are the idealized couple, escaping urban decadence and male dominance. Martha carries her own belongings; she is neither being served as object of desire, nor is she a servant to Pedro. Berg-Pan finds this pairing of a “now sophisticated lady, accustomed to being served, well dressed and handsome at all times, and Pedro, the naive shepherd”67 to be unlikely, but the pairing exists as an allegory, albeit a Romantically framed one, of female liberation and male enlightenment. Far from any fascist imagery, the shot of the couple walking into the mountains is, more than anything else, reminiscent of Socialist Realist sculpture, which places the two sexes side-by-side, equally important and powerful. It is an image quite different from the singular male figure, the male-centered family grouping (with the female figure physically dominated by the male), or the woman-as-mother image in National Socialist visual iconography.68 More importantly, this equalizing, peaceful image of the couple walking up into the mountains offers a kind of reversal of the prologue to Olympia, in which ancient statuary come to life on a mountain (Olympus) and proceed downward. The male and female figures are not only separate, but the male (warrior) nudes visually supplant the female dancers and lead the progression to the male torchbearer who takes the viewer down and into the authoritarian lowlands of Nazi Germany-which Riefenstahl hopes to transcend both symbolically and emotionally in Tiefland.

A number of elements in the film enforce Riefenstahl's use of the relationship between Martha and the Marquez to represent her Nazi experience. As she accepts her position in the castle and gives herself to the Marquez, Martha's gypsy dresses, the costume of (other) ethnicity and her art are replaced by the those of a noblewoman. These elitist outfits are uniforms which connect her to the ruling order and label her a possession of the Marquez. In her most masculine dress of the film, which in military-like regimentation mimics the Marquez's suit, Martha implores the Marquez to communicate with the draughtstricken peasants. His preceding ride through the town with Martha, who witnesses his reception as Riefenstahl witnessed Hitler's for the camera, and his arrogant consideration of the peasant's requests (complete with Hitler-like poses and gestures) quote Hitler's tour of Nuremberg in the early segments of Triumph des Willens. Unlike those moments, however, the poor crowds of Tiefland do not welcome or cheer their "Führer" but curse him in anger and misery. Martha, like Riefenstahl who has admitted as much, is possessed by the leader she has agreed to serve and perform for, and is shocked by a sudden cruelty which contradicts his generous behavior to her.69 One must also consider that Bernhard Minetti's Marquez bears a strong physical resemblance to Goebbels. Like the Propaganda Minister, the Marquez is known for his sexual dalliances,70 and his abuse of Martha mimics Goebbels's alleged verbal assaults on Riefenstahl.71 The director may have at least partially patterned her villain on Goebbels because of her open anger against him and because she could not or would not attack Hitler directly. Given these traits, the Marquez-Martha relationship might also suggest an early personal involvement with Goebbels that the director does not acknowledge.

Martha attempts to aid the peasants by giving them a necklace presented to her by the Marquez. The possibility of breaking abusive control is, however, hindered by unquestioned values of class and honor: after punishing his wife for accepting the gift, a miller returns the necklace to the castle. The Marquez's physical and psychological abuse of Martha causes her to run away from him into the mountains, where she collapses and is nursed by Pedro, who falls in love with her. Having been brought back to the castle, Martha receives an ominous warning from the old servant woman, Josefa (Frieda Richard): “Wohin du auch läufst, du kannst ihm nicht entkommen. Er holt dich wieder zurück” (Wherever you may run, you cannot escape him. He will take you back). Considering Riefenstahl's post-Konsky attempt to escape the war, official film projects, and Hitler's increasingly hostile inner circle, this quote is the most concrete cinematic statement by the filmmaker on the Faustian relationship she accepted in supporting Hitler through her work, of her fear and of her desire to distance herself from the regime after 1940. It has also proven to be a premonition of Riefenstahl's inability to free herself from Hitler's shadow since 1945.

Berg-Pan finds Martha to be continually attracted by the Marquez's sadistic possessiveness,72 although she makes no attempt at explaining Martha's masochism. If one recalls that Martha had been beaten by her former companion, her acceptance of such an abusive dynamic may come from her ignorance. Considering Martha's flight into the mountains, her endurance of the Marquez's violence is not due to sexual attraction-Susan Sontag's sadomasochistic rape metaphor of Hitler and the ecstatic crowds in Triumph73 notwithstanding-but is due to fear, especially since she is told there is no escape. Does then Martha's wide-eyed silence at the Marquez's ranting convey Riefenstahl's growing fear of, or enlightenment about, the Nazi regime? Or does she suggest that her artistic opportunism replicates the attitude of the Germans under Nazism: a numb tolerance of disaster following the fading victories?

An important force in the intrigues involving Martha and the Mayor's daughter is the Marquez's administrator, Camillo (Aribert Wascher). As Linda Schulte-Sasse suggests in her charting of Tiefland's German Enlightenment drama types, he is a stock figure from eighteenth-century bourgeois tragedy. As conspiring aide-de-camp to the leader, Camillo's traits recall Hitler's seconds-in-command, those Riefenstahl considered to be a “bunch of criminals”74: he has the girth and voluptuary nature of Hermann Goering as well as the manipulative, spiteful behavior of Joseph Goebbels. Camillo persuades Donna Amelia to pay off the Marquez's debts, openly disregards Martha's presence, undermines her credibility with the Marquez, and ultimately convinces him to marry Martha off to an unknowing shepherd, Pedro, so that she may remain an accessible mistress after the Marquez weds Donna Amelia.

The final third of the film delivers Riefenstahl's Romantic regression into nature and her projected transcendence of evil and corruption. Riefenstahl laments her political taint through Martha's guilt for having allowed herself to be sexually exploited by the evil leader. Martha confesses her impure status to Pedro, who expects his new bride to be an innocent like himself. The equation of Martha's sexual involvement with the Marquez and Riefenstahl's artistic support of Hitler is qualified by the fact that Martha, a gypsy dancer who specializes in erotic movements, collects money at taverns, and travels with a man who beats her, would hardly be a sexually inexperienced woman. Yet it is her relationship with the Marquez that is pointedly presented as the loss of her virginity.

Berg-Pan calls attention to what she sees as a less-than-credible dichotomy in Martha, who is erotic and powerful as well as innocent and victimized, and considers this to be Riefenstahl's fantasy self.75 But Martha is not Junta of Das blaue Licht, the mythic creature who represents spiritual values destroyed by greed. Martha is the Riefenstahl who finds herself desiring escape from her own pact with evil. Thus the emphasis on the sophisticated gypsy's relationship with the Marquez as her actual “defilement” is necessarily unrealistic because it is a political metaphor. It is also unrealistic because Riefenstahl's Martha is patterned on her own dualistic self-image of a sexually experienced and independent woman who nevertheless managed to present herself in the patriarchal image of a graceful and subservient lady in Nazi propaganda photos. The simplistic plot of the original libretto cannot sustain these added character dimensions. Riefenstahl also removed the opera's climactic moment in which Martha begs Pedro to kill her because she has been another man's lover first.76 Instead, she emphasizes Martha's (and her own) continued goodness despite her association with evil.

The night storm which interrupts the Marquez and Donna Amelia's wedding feast in a typical Romantic reflection of an agitated emotional state, suggests the Marquez's sexual desire for Martha—whom he intends to bed on his wedding night—and foreshadows the havoc to come. The Marquez's attempt to (re)possess Martha is met with physical defense from Pedro. Having lost the duel with knives, the Marquez is blocked from escape by the peasants and Pedro strangles him as he did the wolf. Leaving the dead leader and the now free peasants behind, Martha and Pedro walk into the mountains and a new life together.

The film is alternately banal and enthralling because Riefenstahl has taken a simplistic tale of black and white, of good and evil, and created disturbing shades of grey at its center, in the character of Martha. This certainly creates a more realistic female character, but one that is at odds with the style of the tale. Martha is a three-dimensional figure carrying Riefenstahl's autobiographical knowledge in a film populated by types. Yet the tale of the types, the simplistic romance, dominates the ending of the film. Riefenstahl's Martha rises blissfully into the happy end because the director/writer/actress who previously assembled visions of Hitler's Germany to serve as a script for the regime's self-image, has with Tiefland, scripted her own escape from a pact with evil and a prominence gone sour. Through Martha, she does not relinquish her equality with men but leaves behind a leader and a society she previously celebrated. Riefenstahl/Martha transcends into a natural world without politics, war, or even human beings, aside from the man of her fantasy: attractive, gentle, and good, he is a non-warrior who does not seek to control her and appears to defer to her knowledge and experience.

Susan Sontag has denied Riefenstahl the ability to change either her mind or her cinematic style. Similarly, when discussing Riefenstahl's Nuba books, Sontag would have us believe that because Riefenstahl comments on the role of Nuba women as “breeders and helpers”77 she accepts this role for all women and has therefore not altered her fascist beliefs since Triumph.78 Equally absurd is Wilhelm Bittorfs suggestion that a lingering desire for black SS uniforms can be found in Riefenstahl's photo-studies of Nuba males.79 Even without footnotes on Goebbels, Jesse Owens, the individual versus the collective, and the Konsky incident, the use of her cinema codes in Olympia and Tiefland demonstrates that Riefenstahl had changed both her mind and much of her ideology.

Examining Tiefland against Sontag's definition of fascist aesthetics in film offers the most direct illustration of Riefenstahl's development. While Riefenstahl's earlier films, from Das blaue Licht to certain aspects of Olympia, manage to “endorse two seemingly opposite states, egomania and servitude,”80 glorifying surrender and glamorizing death, Tiefland explodes these fascist ideals. Gone is the self-sacrificing, fascist-friendly mysticism of Das blaue Licht and the grandiose celebration of the documentary films. What surfaces is parody and criticism of such previous notions. Servitude imprisons Martha and the peasantry, who come to hate their “Führer.” Egomania and grandiosity offer these people nothing and ultimately destroy the elite. The very center of the story, the heroine, is a non-Aryan, a gypsy. What remains, even in the naive Romantic finale, reaches beyond most postwar dominant film: a strong, independent female at odds with patriarchal roles and images; a male devoid of machismo beyond his desire to defend and, perhaps because Riefenstahl's Martha seems somewhat older than Pedro,81 one who appears to be very conscious of the dominant quality of the woman he walks with into the new dawn. Tiefland is the subversion of what has been understood to be Riefenstahl's fascist aesthetics, or more precisely, her mystical idealism that fed into Nazi ideology. The operatic structure and fairy-tale transcendence of the film continue to give us Riefenstahl the idealist, but this is a healthier Romanticism, one encouraging hope and enlightenment in desperation and remorse, rather than mystical longings for utopia.

Leni Riefenstahl in 1940 during the filming of Tiefland,
which would not have its premiere until February 1954.

"Nobody making films today alludes to Riefenstahl"82 wrote Sontag in 1974. Naturally, the stigma surrounding the filmmaker has made reference as difficult as dispassionate analysis. Yet significant recognition has been given by important French and Italian filmmakers who praised and encouraged Riefenstahl in the 1950s,83 by American cineastes who noted her contribution to the art and technology of film at the Telluride Film Festival in 1974, and by Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, mainstream directors who often pay critical homage to her work in their popular art.84 Beyond cinema, Thomas Elsaesser finds Riefenstahl's documentary style to be central to television.85 Nevertheless, the general perpetuation of Riefenstahl's unique isolation is something feminist critics cannot ignore. Sontag labels Riefenstahl as the beautiful outsider in her films and in her life; Rich sees her as the token amazon; Schulte-Sasse as a self-fetishist. In fascism she could be nothing else and in the seemingly liberal-democratic world, such status has less to do with her role as former fascist creative artist-there were many, largely rehabilitated without qualm-but with the continued patriarchal nature of our world. The fascist “longings” that Sontag and others see in appreciating Riefenstahl are to be found in a socioculture that would prefer to label Riefenstahl as anything but an artist, and not in the cinematic documents of a talented woman who made an artistic pact with Hitler and then attempted to escape it. Sanders-Brahms refreshingly dares to speculate that Riefenstahl “das Ende der Nazis wünschte, es mit ihrer Arbeit möglicherweise herbeiführen helfen wollte” (wished the end of the Nazis and possibly wanted to help bring this about with her work).86

Although Riefenstahl has always stipulated exactly what she knew or did not know of Nazi genocide, Tiefland suggests she knew enough, and that she also suspected the ultimate fate of her own opportunism. Her break with Hitler and National Socialism occurred because as a woman, she came to comprehend the oppression and destruction of fascism from a pre-feminist viewpoint. Yet in her memoirs Riefenstahl still wonders why she insisted on completing the film amid personal tragedy, illness, and the collapse of Germany.87 Sensitive to analyses of her work undertaken for the sake of accusation, she trivializes her own visions and impulses, whether it is the enthusiastic lens capturing a messianic Hitler floating above the crowds or the need to resolve her disillusionment with fascism. Tiefland is Riefenstahl's most personal cinematic statement, the result of a film oeuvre tied to the rise and fall of the Third Reich. It implies a perception that Riefenstahl's critics have failed to elicit from the filmmaker herself, namely that the warrior order she celebrated at Nuremberg would ultimately condemn her and those who would consider Riefenstahl and her post-Triumph films as a model.

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