Dietrich & Riefenstahl: Hollywood, Berlin, and a Century in Two Lives
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- £8.49
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- £8.49
Publisher Description
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award (Biography)
Named of the Best Books of the Year by the Washington Post and the Boston Globe
Magisterial in scope, this dual biography examines two complex lives that began alike but ended on opposite sides of the century’s greatest conflict.
Marlene Dietrich and Leni Riefenstahl, born less than a year apart, lived so close to each other that Riefenstahl could see into Dietrich’s Berlin apartment. Coming of age at the dawn of the Weimar Republic, both sought fame in Germany’s burgeoning motion picture industry. While Dietrich’s depiction of Lola-Lola in The Blue Angel catapulted her to Hollywood stardom, Riefenstahl—who missed out on the part—insinuated herself into Hitler’s inner circle to direct groundbreaking if infamous Nazi propaganda films, like Triumph of the Will. Dietrich, who toured tirelessly with the USO, could never truly go home again; Riefenstahl could never shake her Nazi past. Acclaimed German historian Karin Wieland examines these lives within the vicious crosscurrents of a turbulent century, evoking piercing insights into "the modern era’s most difficult questions, about illusion and mass intoxication, art and truth, courage and capitulation" (New Yorker).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The ways that two German screen luminaries embodied the growing status and ambitions of 20th-century women are chronicled in this absorbing dual biography by historian Weiland. Born a year apart, movie star Marlene Dietrich and director Leni Riefenstahl both got their start in Weimar Germany's film industry Riefenstahl tried out for the iconic show-girl part in The Blue, which eventually went to Dietrich and became exemplars of the on-the-make new woman of the Jazz Age. Moving to Hollywood, the glamorous Dietrich specialized in playing jaded man-eaters with secret hearts of gold a heart she displayed in real life by selling American war bonds and touring with the USO. Riefenstahl, upholder of wholesome Aryan virtue in Triumph of the Will and other Nazi propaganda movies, proved far more corrupt, furthering her own career by employing her skills to celebrate Hitler's regime. (She blithely used concentration camp inmates as extras.) Weiland highlights the entertaining soap opera in their stories, especially the parade of Dietrich's affairs with men and women often abetted by her complaisant husband which involved endless psychodrama and scenes. But she pairs the humor with incisive cultural analysis of the women's impact as proto-feminists who used sex appeal, savvy, and considerable talent to pioneer new roles for women. Photos.
