Berlin, Symphony of a Great City
September 26th, 2007
Walther Ruttmann’s non-narrative rhythmic portrait of Berlin, usually connected to the “kino-eye” of Dziga Vertov, also had a clear influence on Godfrey Reggio. Much more upbeat than Koyaanisqatsi, Symphony covers a “regular day” in the metropolis circa 1927, celebrating modern life before the speed and exploitation turned sour. No dire Hopi prophecies here, even though a dire future was right around the corner. There’s a new score by Seattle psych rock band Kinski which I’d love to hear. Ruttmann went on to make Nazi propaganda: Blut und Boden, Metall des Himmels, Deutsche Waffenschmieden, Deutsche Panzer, and so forth. According to Steven Bach, Ruttmann worked on Triumph of the Will as Leni Riefenstahl’s co-director but was later excised from the credits.
Berlin: Die Symphonie der Großstadt. Walter Ruttmann, 1927. ****
- Cinecine: “holds up as one of the most striking non-fiction films ever made.”
- Channel 4
- Dave Kehr
- No love from TimeOut
- Allan James Thomas in Senses of Cinema
- Klaus Kreimer for Filmzentrale (in German)
- Speaking of Vertov: The Man With the Movie Camera on Google Video
- Watch Ruttman’s short Opus I on YouTube
- And now… Berlin, Symphony of a Great City in its entirety:
Leni
July 17th, 2007
The last word on Leni Riefenstahl seems always just out of reach. After her Memoirs, Steve Bach’s new biography provides a desperately needed corrective to Leni’s own lies, evasions, and half-truths. Anybody who has seen The Wonderful, Horrible Life knows what an extraordinarily maddening, talented, obsessive, domineering, and flirtatious creature Leni was even in her nineties–and she lived to 101. For artists anywhere–but especially Germans–Leni remains endlessly perplexing. The questions raised by her life go straight to the core of history, morality, ambition, power, and cinema. The dry statement issued after her death by the German government barely scratches the surface:
Leni Riefenstahl symbolizes a German artist’s fate in the 20th Century both in her revolutionary artistic vision and in her political blindness and infatuation. No one would deny that with her talent she developed cinematic methods that have since become part of an aesthetic canon. Her career also shows that one cannot lead an honest life in service of the false, and that art is never apolitical. (297)
Steven Bach. Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl. 2006. ****
- Reviews: New York Review of Books, Guardian, Washington Post, New York Times, New Yorker
- Susan Sontag’s 1975 essay “Fascinating Fascism.”
- At GreenCine: Leni, Obits.
- Jodie Foster’s Riefenstahl project
- Previously on Muckworld
