Fatal Attractions: Leni Riefenstahl's "The Blue Light"

Abstract

The effective history of Nazi film begins before 1933 and continues well after 1945. Perhaps no other example illustrates this insight as strikingly as Leni Riefenstahl's The Blue Light (Das blaue Licht), film premiered in 1932, reprised in 1938, re-released in 1952, work spanning three epochs in German film history. The National Verleih press booklet for the latter version heralds it as a standard work in German film history, a film of lasting quality . . . that must be numbered among the most unforgettable titles.' This formulation offers paradoxical orientation: the film stands, at once, firmly inside of history as a standard work, and yet beyond the passage of time as well, a film of lasting