Made on the eve of the Weimar Republic's final agony, her film The Blue Light — she was producer, director, writer, editor and star — drew less than universal acclaim. She blamed the Jewish critics. After the Nazis came to power, her co-writer on the movie, Bela Balazs, was too insistent about getting paid. Balazs was a Jew. She had his name removed from the credits to render the film judenfrei, and eventually found a sure-fire way to keep him out of the picture permanently. She turned his name over to Julius Streicher. To defuse the significance of an act like that, it wouldn't be enough to call her ignorant. You would have to call her an idiot. Everybody knew what Streicher stood for. Gauleiter of Franconia, editor of the lethally scurrilous Der Stürmer, he was the most famous Jew-baiter in Germany.
Read the rest of Clive James on Leni Riefenstahl.
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