Leni Riefenstahl, a definitive documentary

Who remembers that Claude Torracinta, in 1982, invited Leni Riefenstahl as part of his documentary program “Destins”? That he had planned to include a subject on the deportation of Jews during the Holocaust? And that the German filmmaker, close to the Nazi power during the Second World War, had demanded the removal of the subject, which Torracinta had opposed? And in the end, the guest simply didn’t come on set? We had indeed forgotten it, or even never knew it, but the broadcast, now visible on the RTS website, had nevertheless taken place, opening with Torracinta presenting Leni Riefenstahl’s empty chair.

Image of an absence but not absence of images. This television shot of an empty armchair is absolutely striking. And it appears well in Andres Veiel’s documentary dedicated to the lady, this “Leni Riefenstahl – the light and the shadows”, which is akin to an exercise in deconstruction as we rarely see.

What interests the documentarian is clearly not the hagiography – we end up knowing the character well – but this ability to control the image that she may have had throughout her career. The Torracinta show is just one example. There are many more in this film. Long extracts from a German talk show where we find her confronted with a simple worker from Germany in the 1940s who will send her back to the ropes, while the live cameras capture her discomfort with accusatory acuity.

Unedited rushes from another documentary from 1993, “Leni Riefenstahl – the power of images” by Ray Müller, in which we see her rebelling very vehemently against the filmmaker who leaves his camera rolling while the sequence d The interview is supposedly over. Not to mention the countless personal and unpublished documents (700 never-opened archive boxes) that the film highlights.

Thirst for control, desire to guide the images, to filter them, to say nothing about the obvious, not even to admit her connections with Hitler, not to express regrets, to just repeat with weariness that she was there but couldn’t do anything, knew nothing, didn’t realize, that’s all that remained of Riefenstahl, in addition to the work and his talent as a filmmaker which no longer needs to be called into question. For the first time, here is a fully accurate portrait. One of the documentaries of the year.

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