myth as empowerment

After reading Ruby Rich's pieces on Triumph of the Will and Divine Horseman in Chick Flicks, I noticed a contradiction in the two essays. Given the fact that Rich is a really good writer and that Chick Flicks is autobiographical, I can't help but think that she placed those essays right next to each other intentionally to spotlight the contradiction, maybe to show examples of early mistakes she made as a writer, although she doesn't say so.
The difference that the essays assign to the filmmakers, are of Riefenstahl as the token powerful woman amongst male power and whose entire career should be regarded as a feminist cautionary fable and Deren as the under-appreciated master of her craft and early example of a true avant garde filmmaker.(in the 60's sense of the term) The contradiction, more of and exclusion really, of Deren from the canon of the cinema of Romantic "Hypnotic manipulation" that she uses to condemn Riefenstahl is of course totally fine given the often denied or ignored historical importance she appropriately assigns to both filmmakers.
I feel like Rich discredits Riefenstahl while lauding Deren for work that uses very similar methods to convey the message of their films. Both use mysticism as well as a formalistic and technical bag of tricks to convey the cinema hypnosis that pulls you into the world of their movies. The difference of course being that Riefenstahl's work aided in mythologizing nazi idealogy and Deren's Voundoun. After watching "The Blue Light" again the other night and comparing it to Deren's "Meshes of the Afternoon" as I read Rich's essay, I thought of how similar rather than dissimilar Riefenstahl and Deren are as filmmakers and "The Blue Light" and "Meshes..." are as movies...
Although the moralizing is more blatant in "Blue Light" as the frame for the mystical sequences of the movie in which we are shown the singular desire of main character, Junta. Her obsession perils all that follow her to the mountain top until her source of magical joy is literally stolen from her and used as a natural resource for the betterment of her town...although the story reads like parable for the economic benefits of the age of reason, the substantial scenes in the movie are the dream-like sequences during the full moon mountain climbing expeditions to the crystal grotto...scenes that rival the most surreal and ritualistic of Maya Deren's films.
In "Meshes of the Afternoon" Deren, as the main character is out of the moralizing context of "The Blue Light" and free to go on her journey down the rabbit hole of her individual mysticism. On that journey, as she walks, crawls and climbs through a reality that transforms as she goes. Similar to the scenes of Junta's mountain climbs. With Deren, Doors, keys and windows no longer act as barriers or limitations but have a different kind of function in "Meshes..." and contain their own kind of dream logic. The logic with which she has escaped reality for the realm of art and mysticism.
The other major films that Rich discusses by these directors are "Triumph of the Will" and "Divine Horsemen", are also very similar in that they are documentaries that employ the Romantic, formalistic and technical prowess of the filmmakers to mythologize thier subjects, the third Riech and Voudoun. Though Deren is considered a modernist (Tobi says) in the context of art and film history she employs much of the individual mystical journey of Romanticism that Rich places Riefenstal in the context of.
I think if Rich has different feeling about one director or the other it has more to do with her preference for a personal style of Romanticism...she says that she consults a voudoun priestess, sees a psychic and throws the I-ching or something...so we don't have to guess where her loyalties lie.
The fact remains that both Riefenstahl and Deren are powerful directors that transcend the status second class citizenship of being female filmmakers by employing their power to boldly mythologize their subjects and themselves. But if the aim of feminist film making is to find an alternative to as Rich Says "the hypnotic manipulation of the audience, encouraging identification with the distorted characters within the world of the film and manipulate that identification for ideologically potent ends...the cinema of latent fascism...that dominates our screens today" and to find "a new radical cinema of deconstruction, dedicated to demythologizing the film process and reintegrating intellectual respones, so the the audiences active participation and full-aware distanciation become requisite to the viewing/understanding of a film." (think "postmodernism") then we have to keep looking past both Deren and Riefenstahl to find it. maybe next chapter!

Das Blaue Licht

here's what i thought of the film initially:

-it reminded me of Lassie but i really didn't think that this is a useful analysis and to try to figure out why is probably not worth my time. (I reconsidered and now think this is interesting)

-it also reminded me of Maya Deren, but i thought perhaps this was superficial based on a fleeting emotion or impression rather than anything concrete (joaquin said it isn't superficial, so maybe i'll explore this more)

-it reminded me of lectures i had on 18th & 19th century ideas of Beauty: the mountains and the Sublime--Nature replacing God... German philosophy about "the Spirit" (in particular Hegel, who I've never understood but also Heidigger, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, who I don't want to like but kind of do)...also the emotionalism of German literature and Opera. Wagner. Goethe. The Sorrow's of Young Werther. I even thought of Narcissus and Goldman at one point. (I don't like any of this writing) All these associations run in my head in a swirl of "German Romanticism" and just sort of leave an impression, it's not very analytical...more of just a reference of a culture I don't know much about, but am a product of...Germany.

-I also thought about the scene in Frankenstein (Mary Shelley) when the monster lives in the forest alone and learns to talk by watching the girl interact with her family through the window. The father is blind and not afraid...etc.

-I absolutely hated the soundtrack and found it distracting (terrible music! reminded me of German club and family reunions: ja wohl!)

-I have no idea what was happening in the story of the movie, at all, but i kind of didn't care as it was nice to feel like it was a dream (similar to Maya Deren, but whose films I like better) I could follow the conflict/device of Junta and the guy not being able to speak to each other but still communicate pretty easily. That was the center of the film for me I guess, as I couldn't fully grasp what was happening beyond, villagers vs. mountain lady and crystals/the moon.

-The shots were cool looking and it seems like an amazingly shot, edited and well put together film, with a lot to grapple with technically and artistically (if I was a film maker or more interested in visual art than storytelling via film I imagine I'd actually care about this quite a bit)

-the Nazi/Aryan aesthetic was in full effect, i could see why hitler liked this movie (seriously, it was messed up and frightening. it scared me and i am almost half German)

-it was a lot different than Triumph of the Will, which i saw in class and kind of blew my mind not only as a document, but as a propaganda film (has anyone seen it? it was controversial that we saw it in school)

-the whole time i was thinking about Leni Riefenstahl's relationship with the Third Reich, particularly in her film Tiefland, where she supposedly hand picked Roma concentration camp victims to use as extras who were then sent to Auschwitz when the movie was over (I have not seen it and don't want to after reading this)

I was left with these questions:

What is the role of the artist under fascism?

What is the role of politics in art making?

Are there any ideas in the film and if not, is it fascist to make a work of art purely aesthetic and mythic?

How do the aesthetic/formalist elements of Riefenstahl's film relate to the Weimar republic?

Is it significant that Junta the "wild" one spoke Italian rather than German?

Clearly it is a Romantic work, but she also seems to be a Modernist. Or is she a Romantic artist using Modernist tools? Is this style particular to Germany (high Romantic art/culture) at this time period (Modernism) or was this just particular to her work?

I have a lot of problems with Romanticism, but am also drawn to it. I think that it is still the dominant "art" paradigm in a lot of ways, despite what people say they are doing, and that there's a lot of ideological manipulation that comes with the territory.

I quickly skimmed Chick Flicks on Riefenstahl but didn't take notes and I don't have my own copy. I know the author addresses this somewhat, but I found her dismissive remarks on Susan Sontag's analysis of Riefenstahl to be catty and glaringly reductionist, so she was kind of getting on my nerves.

As far as feminism goes: I don't think Riefenstahl is a feminist filmmaker, I don't think this is a particularly feminist film, nor do I think that feminists need to claim all female filmmakers as their own. I admittedly don't know a huge amount of biographical material and am not familiar with the rest of her work, but my impression is that she was a filmmaker who happened to be a woman who was a greatly skilled artist and crafts-person with access to resources and power. I also think she was a Nazi, and not someone who happened to hang out with Hitler or whatever it is that people claim. So that impacts my reading of her work. I think all of her work should be viewed in this context.

I think it's valid for feminists to investigate Riefenstahl as an early innovator of film as an art form and to explore her work looking for a record of what a truly capable filmmaker (who happened to be female) expressed via film. But I think it is mistake to confuse "filmmaker who happened to be a woman" with "feminist filmmaker". Maybe B. Ruby Rich disagrees with me, I haven't really read her that closely. Anyhow, I'd be interested in what other people think on this last point, as it begs the question:

What is feminist film?