Greetings loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is very pleased with himself. It is not everyday that he gets to use Tom Lehrer lyrics in his blog. In case you missed the reference here is the song to which your Maximum Leader refers.
Why the lyrics? Well, your Maximum Leader finds nothing wrong with honouring Leni Riefenstahl at the Oscars last night. While “Triumph of the Will”, as the Minister of Agriculture points out, did glorify the Nuremburg Party rallies of 1934; your Maximum Leader hardly thinks that the film “helped usher the Nazis into power and provided an emotional underpinning for the Third Reich.” Check out her filmography here. Not a very long list. And really it includes two noteworthy films. “Triumph of the Will” and “Olympia.” Your Maximum Leader has seen both. And he will say that “Olympia” is the best sports documentary he has seen. Really. Is it propaganda? Surely. Does it also capture the esprit of the 1936 Berlin Olympics (which themselves were one big propaganda event)? Sure does. (Think back to the Atlanta Olympics. Wasn’t there an undercurrent of pro-American propaganda going on there? Sure. Do you think that the impending Athens Olympics will not be filled with subtle - and not so subtle - pro-Greek propaganda?)
“Triumph of the Will” is the greatest propaganda film ever made. (If only all propaganda films were so well done.) Did it help usher the Nazi’s into power? No. It wasn’t made until after the Nazi’s came to power in 1933. Honesty, the Nazi’s had many other directors cranking out many more films than Riefenstahl did. Sure Htler liked her. But she played him. She wanted control to do her films her way. Without interference from anyone. Only one man could give her that control. And it didn’t hurt that the man with the money could be charmed… And she charmed him. She was a trailblazer in cinema. It is really too bad that her patron was an evil, EVIL, man. (Many of the great Renaissance artists had patron who were not particularly nice people…)
Her post-war work was tinged with the shadows of “Triumph” and “Olympia.” Your Maximum Leader has seen only parts of “Tiefland.” So perhaps he shouldn’t comment too broadly on it. But he has seen much of her photography with the Nuba people of Africa. Detractors can say that she is glorifying the Nuba the way she glorified the Nazi’s. Your Maximum Leader tends to believe that she just liked the beauty of the human body, and thought to do what she could to accentuate it.
Should Leni Riefenstahl have been honoured at the Oscars? Yes. Your Maximum Leader can’t think of a female director who predates Riefenstahl. Were her cinematic techniques groundbreaking for their day? Yes. Has her style been copied by others? Surely. Is your Maximum Leader shocked at her inclusion in the Oscars? No. (But he was shocked at the poor treatment of Elia Kazan when he received his lifetime achievment Oscar.)
Your Maximum Leader will close the circle of this post and pose a question to the Minister of Agriculture. Are the fruits of an evil regime themselves evil? Should Werner Von Braun not have been honored for his contributions to the American Space program? (For the Ballistic Missile program?) His association with Hitler, and Hitler’s evil, is surely more close than was Riefenstahl’s.
Carry on.
