LENI (LENI RIEFENSTAHL) by STEVEN BACH : CHRISTINE TRYZNA BOOK REVIEW

Christine Trzyna quick review... and a quote LENI is C 2007 by Steven Bach and published by Borzoi - Alfred Knopf This book asks the question "Was film-maker Leni a Nazi?" and attempts to answer it fairly. Leni Rifenstahl is known for her films that "glorified" the reign of Adolph Hiter and the Nazi's which today provide us historical footage. But Leni, who lived to be 101 and who, after being out of work for a long time after WWII, got back to work in old age, was an person who self invented all along. And so, are we to believe her protests that she was unaware of the atrocities? Leni went filming in Africa when she was in her 80's. She would have it that she was a rare person - a WOMAN FILM MAKER - at a time when few women made films. She would say that when she got the assignment she was sure to give it her best efforts, to fulfill the job description and advance her career. Who hasn't had a boss they didn't like but they kissed ass on? Leni used her careerism as her reason or excuse for fraternizing with Nazi's. She may have even submitted a faked genealogy to cover her own Jewish bloodline. The feminist me is interested in the issue of a woman having a career in the 1940's, especially a woman who was not of the class to be formally educated, but who had insane energy (to put it in modern terms) and was driven and ambitious, as well as willing to make her love interests useful to her career. Leni's work is controversial but she has her advocates who admire what she has pulled off at a time when film making didn't benefit from the technologies now assumed. There is another reason I took to this book. I have come to believe that the Nazi's came to power in a Germany in which there was great poverty - a horrible economy - and so the people wanted to believe the newest political messiah, even as his message turned ugly. Are we in danger of this in the United States today? The Berlin that Leni grew to adulthood in is described as so poor that entire families commit suicide rather than endure the cold and hunger while homeless... And this is what the author, Steven Bach, had to write on page 18 of the hardback. "The ripples grew larger with the daily struggle for survival. Postwar (WWI) food shortages and influenza hastened a breakdown in prewar morality. The pervasive mood was one of perpetual emergency in which opportunism of every kind flourished until, as one observer put it, "a kind of insanity took hold." In this volatile atmosphere, Alfred Riefenstahls (her father) - still unaware of his daughter's new obsession with dance - decided to sequester her.... no scheme could have been better calculated to provoke resistance in Leni, who thought of domesticity as drudgery is she thought of it at all..." Hilter accession to the office of chancellor in 1933 was thought of as "a seizure of power" though it was "not violent, illegal, or inevitable (page 98)... On February 27th the home of the German Parliament was set ablaze - arson (page 99) and what was called terrorism... It set the stage for what is called a "blueprint for dictatorship"... Page 100... "The decree read, in part, "Curbs on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press, of association, and of assembly, surveillance over letters, telegrams and telephone communications, searches of homes and confiscations of as well as restrictions of property, are hereby permissible beyond the limits hitherto established by law." Such measure have found echoes in more recent times as responses to acts of terrorism, though Hitler's dramatic expansion of executive power, restrictions of civil liberties, and surveillance of citizens were openly detailed in the Nazi press." C Christine Trzyna