We, who are about to die, salute Leni Riefenstahl!

I’ve long been a fan of the 1938 The Dawn Patrol, with Errol Flynn, David Niven and Basil Rathbone as flight commanders on the WWI front, struggling not to crack up as they lead increasingly inexperienced pilots on suicidal missions (Marked for Death will give you the real history behind all that). As part of watching Howard Hawks’ films I finally caught the original 1930 THE DAWN PATROL and I must say it’s a poor substitute.It’s easy to see this as a prototype for the tough flyers in Hawks’ later Only Angels Have Wings or for that matter in The Thing From Another World. War is hell but they’ll drink in the canteen, salute the ones who passed and never say die, at least not aloud. There are some great flying scenes and this has more of the nuts and bolts of the air war than the remake (without rewatching that, however, I can’t be sure I’m not imagining it). However the core cast of Neil Hamilton (Rathbone role), Richard Barthelemess (Flynn) and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. (Niven) simply can’t put over the drama and neither can anyone else in the cast. The later film did it better. “Here’s a toast to the men dead already/Hurrah for the next man to die!”

THE WONDERFUL, HORRIBLE LIFE OF LENI RIEFENSTAHL (1993) is an impressive documentary on the filmmaker who gave us the memorable Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will, though Riefenstahl insists onscreen that it was never propaganda, how could it be? Pure art and aesthetics, baby! (she does not phrase it that way).

The movie chronicles the 90-year-old’s life (and dear god, I hope I’m as spry and active at 90 as she is) from her early years as a dancer to an actor in “mountain films” (a German 1920 genre) to directing which led to her making a documentary about Hitler’s Nuremberg rally, then Olympia about the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Her defenses are very much standard Good German stuff: she had no idea Hitler was serious about genocide, she didn’t hang out with the Nazi high command as much as everyone says, and of course her films weren’t propaganda: if Hitler had made a speech about farming or popular music she’d have filmed it exactly the same way. While the film shows her claims of utter innocence are dubious, they don’t try to nail down whether Riefenstahl is lying or rationalizing. In the end it’s a fascinating film about a memorable, horrible woman. “Have you ever thought how one would define a fascist aesthetic?”

#SFWApro. All rights to images remain with current holders.