Leni Riefenstahl moved from B-list actress to director with The Blue Light (1932), a fairytale of temptation and tragedy. Like all of Riefenstahl films it's strikingly shot, an engrossing visual spectacle transcending narrative considerations.The Alpine village of Santa Maria fears Junta (Leni Riefenstahl), a beautiful hermit-woman believed to be a witch. She lives atop a mountain whose glow during the full moon, luring villagers to their death. Everyone hates Junta, except Vigo (Mathias Wieman), a visiting painter from the City who saves her from a mob. Vigo and Junta form an idyllic relationship, until Vigo follows Junta up the mountain and discovers its crystal horde. Naturally he can't keep the secret to himself, resulting in tragedy.
Riefenstahl achieved stardom through Harold Fanck's Alpine epics, but eschews her mentor's real-world grounding. Instead, The Blue Light opts for elemental fantasy. Cowritten with Bela Balazas (stricken from the credits in the Nazi era), The Blue Light's story is familiar: an ethereal woman, pure but misunderstood, who talks with goats and dogs but can't relate to people. She's a passive, persecuted figure who can't control her fate: men are drawn into her orbit through lust, greed or misunderstanding. It isn't the greedy villagers who destroy her but Vigo, the well-meaning lover who unwisely gives into temptation.
This simple story is matched by the stiff acting. Riefenstahl is achingly beautiful in peasant blouse and heavenly lighting, but her "performance" is limited to baleful reactions and a few sentences of piping Italian. She's a pure Teutonic goddess: ethereal, chaste and unobtainable. (The mind boggles at Riefenstahl's claim that Josef Von Sternberg offered her The Blue Angel!) Mathias Wieman is even stiffer, handsome but boring, and the supporting cast makes no impression. In fairness, both stars engage in some daring mountain-climbing stunts.
All this matters little, for The Blue Light is visual poetry. Shot in Germany, Switzerland and Spain, the film's beautiful on its setting alone: Riefenstahl and photographer Hans Schneeberger conjure gorgeous pastoral vistas of mountain tops and shepherd's fields. But The Blue Light adds mysticism to spectacle with its incredible night-and-day transitions, Riefenstahl casting entire mountains in shadow as trees sway and clouds swirl, Junta obscured in fog and mist. The film's essentially silent, with sparse dialogue, allowing photography and atmosphere to tell our story.
After The Blue Light, Riefenstahl made her extraordinary propaganda epics for Adolf Hitler, harnessing her talents to an evil cause. Her later fiction effort, Tiefland, seems a belated effort at recapturing lost innocence - something the director of Triumph of the Will could scarcely claim. Until her death, Riefenstahl kept a portrait of herself as Junta, a reminder of the ambitious, naïve young actress-filmmaker lost to the tides of history.
