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The opera is jettisoned, what's left is Lothar's libretto as the jumping-off point for Leni Riefenstahl's fairy-tale version of her travails. The overture teems with silent-film picturalism: The shepherding naïf (Franz Eichberger) is roused from his cabin as a wolf attacks his sheep, the hero thwarts the beast with his bare hands (filmed à la Die Nibelungen or Fantasia) and is rewarded with a pastoral symphony (sunrise, mountain mist, waterfall in splendiferous montage). Down in the city, the tyrannical, ruined Marquis (Bernhard Minetti) is set to marry the burgermeister's daughter (Maria Koppenhöfer) but is more interested in the "beggar dancer" (Riefenstahl). She's brought to the nobleman's castle, his lusty gaze is intercut with poker-faced servants boring each other with card tricks, outside the campesinos ache for water. "I would sooner kill you than let you go." Riefenstahl's penchant for lushness makes an Oktoberfest out of embroidered veils, fans and pearly chandeliers and sequined brocades, dark figures in the white desert, the tilt of a sombrero, the flamenco twirler's undulations. Shot in the Forties, edited and released more than a decade later, ornate kitsch deformed by barbaric history. ("Ein Hoch der Liebe," amid the cheering gypsy extras are prisoners headed for Auschwitz.) ¡Que Viva México!, La Belle et la Bête, Yolanda and the Thief, Sirk's amusement (cp. La Habanera) at Teutonic pronunciations of "caramba!" Revelers around the gushing fountain, uprising during the thunderstorm. Above all, the filmmaker's bizarre fantasy of herself as an exotic nomad whose gifts are indulged and exploited by bewitching monsters. The ending anticipates a life of wandering. With Aribert Wäscher, Karl Skraup, Luis Rainer, and Frida Richard. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |