The White Hell of Pitz Palu and Leni Riefenstahl.

The White Hell of Pitz Palu is apparently a single example in a genre of German films that dealt with the perils of mountain climbing. Arnold Fanck was the director of the exterior scenes and had directed a handful of mountain films prior. G.W. Pabst directed the interior scenes. The exterior mountain scenes take up the majority of the film. Leni Riefenstahl's career began by acting in these types of films and she had worked with Fanck previously in this vein. Riefenstahl would direct one mountain film herself three years later in 1932, The Blue Light, reportedly because she could find no other director, and this would be her directorial debut.

A young engaged couple prepare for a leisure-type trek of a mountain when a doctor enters their cabin. The doctor's misery involves an ice casket and a lover's unrecoverable corpse. The White Hell has fantastic body-in-ice-casket scenes. The young couple is convinced by the doctor into convincing themselves by sentiment and pity to join the doctor on his journey for discovery of his lover's lost corpse. The body is buried on the north side of the mountain, the most dangerous side of the mountain, and it's apparently the last chance to climb this area because summer approaches and temperatures rise, causing avalanches and proportional risk increase. Other people are climbing this side of the mountain too, on the same day.

They all die. The entire other group of people climbing the north face of the mountain. Their bodies are recovered though, unfortunately, and none of them receive the reward of a badass ice-casket. But anyway if I have to tell you I will: the young couple and the doctor endure all sorts of avalanches and personal injury and become lost on the mountain. The two men are gravely injured. There's a sensational and beautiful sequence of attempted rescue, by the local people, involving midnight blackness and torches through snowy tunnels. The emergency crew only finds the other group of dead people. C'est la White Hell of Pitz Palu.

Later a friend in an airplane spots them. He's flying around the mountain face looking for them: he loops and flips his plane and throws parachutes with informational material. It's a critical moment for the stranded group: the engaged man has gone mental owing to head injuries and the reality and implied doom of their plight pressing upon his mind, he's tied to a rock, and the group has been in the gelid environment without food for a number of days. I won't tell you what happens but you know someone gets a badass ice-casket.

That's the movie. When I watch it I think mainly of Leni Riefenstahl. What was on her mind? She's three years away from seeing Hitler for the first time. What are her passions now, and is The White Hell one step toward artistic obsession culminating in Triumph of the Will and a contentious legacy? She smiles a lot. There are close-ups of a snow covered Riefenstahl throwing back hair from her face and she's intensely movie beautiful in these moments.

On the Kino dvd there's an extended interview with a 100 year-old Riefenstahl from 2002 (that means she was born in 1902 - no prob). The interviewer is kind of vicious I think. She probes Riefenstahl not only on her connections with Hitler and Nazism, something you can sense she's had to explain 1,000,000 times, but she also challenges her on details of her sexual history and the merits of an old lady re-entering filmmaking. Riefenstahl was promoting her 2002 film Underwater Impressions, a film that's only 45 minutes long and was filmed by Riefenstahl herself while scuba diving. It's a grandma film, don't you think, is what the interviewer seems to be saying. Sometimes I want to choke the interviewer because I feel so bad.

I feel so bad in a lot of ways. It's very difficult for me to separate and identify the sins of Leni Riefenstahl, a woman who held hands with Hitler on the beach. A woman who sent him a letter that said, "With indescribable joy, deeply moved and filled with burning gratitude, we share with you, my Führer, your and Germany's greatest victory, the entry of German troops into Paris. You exceed anything human imagination has the power to conceive, achieving deeds without parallel in the history of mankind. How can we ever thank you?"

The accusation is that Leni Riefenstahl glorified Hitler in her Triumph of the Will and created a strong, effective, and lasting propaganda tool for his hate machine. The counter-accusation is that Triumph of the Will is a beautiful and amazing cinematic revelation. Both are true. There's an opinion that they can't both be true. My personal sympathy goes to Riefenstahl, whose greatest work can never be discussed without a series of caveats. And I wish Olympia wasn't public domain or someone would pay for a great transfer so I could really see the film the way it was intended to be seen.