Leni Riefenstahl : America’s Sweetheart and the Nazi’s Greatest Filmmaker
George Cukor has credited Mary Pickford as being the first method actress of screen acting . Mary herself once said, “I didn’t act- I was the characters I played on the screen. During a picture, I didn’t leave the character at the studio, I took it home with me. I lived my parts,” describing her acting style. Mary herself said that she could not disconnect with her characters when she started playing, which may have carried over into her public life. The reason why she is considered the first American sweetheart was due to her portrayal of children, noble, good-hearted, and spirited young women.
The first film of Mary’s that cemented her as a star was Tess of the Storm Country released March 30, 1914 where she played a “poor, uneducated girl, dirty and dressed in ragsâÂ?¦[who] proves her inherent goodness.” One of Mary’s other successful films was titled Poor Little Rich Girl released in 1917 where she again played a little girl, this time named Gwendolyn. As a result of the huge success of PLRG and Mary’s earlier roles the audience at that time wanted more of the same little girl persona.
Pickford was not just an embodiment of hopes and dreams for the audience, she was incredibly talented as an actress and had a charisma that reached audience members. Charisma is not talent; it is an unidentifiable spark which audience members saw in Pickford during the Silent Years of Hollywood. Mary played many roles that showcased her range and talent, however, to this day many remember her as the iconic sweetheart.
Mary was not only a talented actress, but she was part of one of the most important developments for actors gaining control of their careers; starting her own production company. In 1919, Mary, Douglas Fairbanks, Charles Chaplin, and D.W. Griffith created United Artists. By doing so, Mary was the first female star to ever start her own corporation and was an independent star and producer. United Artists gave Pickford and her fellow creators, control, distribution rights and ownership of their own work.
Despite the control and level of success Mary Pickford had, she did not live out the rest of her life or career on top. In 1928 Mary tried her hand at sound film, playing a vampish, Southern girl with bobbed hair and a mature attitude in the film Coquette. The film was a melodramatic break in the types of roles Mary had been playing and she sensed that audiences wanted a sexier flapper character in the late 1920s compared with her traditional wholesome roles of the past. It was agreed upon by critics that in Coquette Mary “lost her uniqueness and became just another leading lady in her thirties.”
Unfortunately, Mary lost her uniqueness by trying to change her image and grow up. It can be concluded that Mary’s failure in the late 1920s was a combination of a variety of changes. First the change over to sound in the late 1920s ushered in a new type of films that Mary was not familiar with. Secondly, Mary was growing up and could not play little girl roles forever. As a true artist Pickford was trying to push her own limits and boundaries, which, was not appreciated by her public.
The continuation of Mary’s decline was the much-anticipated release of Taming of the Shrew, Mary’s second sound film that she appeared in with her husband Douglas Fairbanks. For most of her career, Pickford was a figure in the Hollywood rumor mill due to her marriage to an equally successful screen actor. The 1929 release of Shrew saw the first pairing of Mary and Douglas on the screen, the first time the “King and Queen” of Hollywood starred together. Unfortunately, the film was not successful and the most interesting thing about the film was the pairing of the couple.
On set Mary and her husband did not work well together and Mary readily admitted to her disappointment of her performance deeming the acting “âÂ?¦Katherine was one of my worst performances.” Mary lacked her charisma in the role. After its release, neither Fairbanks nor Pickford fans were pleased with the film. Despite what today’s critic feel about the film (most have praised it) Mary’s confidence was shaken and Shrew marked the beginning of the end of Pickford’s film career.
Leni Riefenstahl
Leni Riefenstahl is one of the most controversial people in film history. Unlike many of the women in film history, her gender is not an issue in her controversy. Riefenstahl, a German born woman who was initially a dancer, is remembered most for her association with Hitler and the Nazi party. Leni Riefenstahl is a director who was only as popular and successful as long as her political party was at its height, despite her obvious talent at film-making.
Riefenstahl’s first foray into film as an actress was highly successful in the German Mountain films. In those films, Leni was able to display her dance ability juxtaposed onto amazing nature scenes. The shooting of these films required the actress to film outside in snowy conditions wearing little clothing and climbing mountains in bare feet. During her time in the genre, Leni was able to direct her first film, The Blue Light (1934). This directorial debut was the first film in line of amazingly made films, Triumph of the Will and Olympia, that cemented her ability to make grand film.
Leni Riefenstahl’s career height was under the reign of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party in Germany. Riefenstahl supported Hitler and believed that the Nazis could lead Germany out its economic problems. Leni was intoxicated with Hitler when she heard him speak at a rally in 1932 and volunteered her services as a filmmaker for him. Leni’s most successful film, Triumph of the Will was made for a Hitler rally in 1934, glorifying Hitler; a piece of film-making that is widely considered to be one of the greatest propaganda ever made. Leni’s secondly widely successful film as a director was a film titled Olymia. Olymia was highly regarded for its aesthetic and technical achievements glorifying the body, the athlete and physicality.
The decline of Leni’s career coincided with the decline with the Nazi party. It is true that on many occasions and in her memoirs, Leni Riefenstahl: A Memoir, the director claimed that she disagreed with Hitler’s politics but liked her charismatic personality. Leni states of Hitler “I welcomed his socialist plansâÂ?¦in any case, his racism, many people thought, was only a theory and nothing but campaign rhetoric,” defending herself against the Nazi ideology. In her memoirs, Leni continues to highlight the fact that she was more focused on her films and art than politics.
For the rest of her life, Riefenstahl defended herself as an artist, not a Nazi. Roger Ebert has weighed on the debate over art vs. politics. Ebert says of Will, “But it has been pointed out that the very absence of anti-Semitism in “Triumph of the Will: looks like a calculation; excluding the central motif of almost all of Hitler’s public speeches must have been a deliberate decision to make the film more efficient as propaganda” debunking Riefenstahl’s claim of ignorance.
Bertolt Brecht was a playwright whose plays deal with the issues of Nazism and how they affected people lives. One of the most pressing themes of his work is that the intellectuals and educated were the ones to blame for the rise of Nazism. This idea is very true because the people “in the know” are the ones who are closest to the action. The fact is that Leni was at the center of a political movement and did nothing to stop it. One can forgive a person for being intoxicated with a bad idea the way many people champion Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost and a person can be forgiven for being friends with less than stellar friends, however, Riefenstahl was in a position to make a choice.
To make the claims that she was simply ignorant of what was really happening is disturbing. We as the audience can dismiss her character as disgusting and wrong but does that discredit her talent? I believe we can take a page out of Riefenstahl’s book and pretend to be ignorant and watch to learn style and technique, as long as we forget the messages of the film, the director who made them, and what they really stand for. In the end, Riefenstahl is not going to be remembered as a filmmaker because she willingly made propaganda ( after her stint as an actress), not films.
