Das Blaue Licht
Encyclopedia
Das Blaue Licht is a black-and-white
1932 film
written and directed by Leni Riefenstahl
and Béla Balázs
, with uncredited scripting by Carl Mayer
. In Riefenstahl's film version, the witch, Junta, played by Riefenstahl, is intended to be a sympathetic character
. Filming took place in the Brenta Dolomites, in Ticino
, Switzerland
, and Sarntal
, Italy
.
Junta lives largely in solitude (except for the company of a young shepherd boy) in the tranquility of the mountains surrounding the village. She plays in the hills and woodlands, as a naive free spirit. She is simple and innocent, but also seems something of a mystic
. She loves to climb and clamber over the steep, difficult faces of local mountains.
On full moon nights, a crack in a prominent local mountain admits the moon's light and illuminates a grotto
filled with beautiful crystals. This place of indescribable beauty, glowing with magical blue light, is a sacred space for Junta. The glowing blue light, shining from afar, to the village below, is also what has attracted the village's young men, none of whom were ever able to reach it before falling off the mountain's treacherous slope.
A man from the city, a painter, traveling through the village, falls in love with Junta. He follows her to the cabin she shares with the shepherd boy, and decides to stay for a while. The man speaks only German
, and Junta only Italian
, so their communication is fragmentary. All is pleasant and good, and very chaste
, until the next full moon night, when the man sees Junta climbing up the mountain. He follows her, actually reaching the beautiful grotto, and finds Junta in a state of ecstasy among the crystals.
Perceiving these thousands of crystals to be a source of immense wealth for Junta and the villagers, the man immediately runs down to inform the townsfolk, and tells them of the correct route to reach the grotto. Junta does not realize that he is doing this, until the next day, when she finds some of her crystals on the path to the village, as well as some dropped tools. Rushing up to the grotto, she finds it completely barren of crystals - all have been taken by the greedy villagers. Meanwhile, the villagers and the painter are living it up and celebrating. Junta is totally devastated at this violation of the sacred grotto, and of her trust in the outsider, and falls to her death.
(1993), Riefenstahl relates that the Agfa Film Corporation gave her a new film stock called R-Stock. When filming was done through a red filter the sky would appear absolutely black. The film was among the first sound film
s to be filmed entirely on location.
Arnold Fanck
, who had directed several mountain film
s featuring Riefenstahl, did a first edit of the film, which Riefenstahl found unacceptable, and she completely re-edited the film.
and the UK, although some critics were divided, particularly in Germany. Several left wing news publications derided the effort, while it was applauded by the right wing press. The film enjoyed considerable commercial and critical success in London
and Paris
, where Alpine cinema was a novelty. Notably, it won the Silver Medal of the Venice Film Festival
.
The New York Sun described the film as "one of the most pictorially beautiful films of the year. Leni Riefenstahl - author, director and star - is an expert climber as well as handsome woman."
The New York Herald Tribune
praised the "sheer pictorial beauty", the publication also praised Riefenstahl remarking "how flawlessly this girl, who plays the lead and also wrote and directed, accomplished her task."
The New York Times
remarked that "a summary of the story gives no adequate idea of the beauty of the action and the remarkable camera work, especially in connection with the light effects."
An edited version of the film was released in 1951, funded by Italian corporations. Riefenstahl edited the film from 86 to 73 minutes, removing the arrival scene of modern urbanites in Santa Maria. The film was marketed with the credit "A Mountain Legend by Leni Riefenstahl". In November 1951, It premiered with a new edit, score and soundtrack in Rome at a gala screening that Riefenstahl described as "dazzling". The film was distributed in German cinemas and had a limited release in Austria under the title The Witch of Santa Maria (Die Hexe von Santa Maria).
A similarly named legend in Germany (Das Blaue Licht) may have lent some inspiration to Riefenstahl's screenplay. In a period of time when a pan-Germanic ethos
was sweeping the country, audiences were highly likely to have been familiar with the old legend, and accordingly expected the film to follow it closely. However, the film shares very little with the legend, and even departs from it in an unexpected way, casting Leni Riefenstahl as the beautiful loner, not at all a witch, but wrongly accused of being one.
The original legend, compiled by the Brothers Grimm
in 1810, and later popularized by the pre-Hitler nationalists of the 1920s, tells the story of a crippled soldier who is terminated from the service of his king. Released from service, he travels into the woods to seek a cure, and comes upon a witch's house. It is there that he asks her if she is willing to help him. She agrees to cure him but he must first do three things for her. (The third task being nothing less than to descend into a very deep and dry well, and bring back from its depths a magic lamp.)
In that legend, however, the soldier finds a dwarflike creature at the bottom of the well. Apart from the strange lamp he comes upon, which glows in a mysteriously blue light (and which ultimately leads to the witch's ruin), there is very little else to connect Riefenstahl's concept to the German myth that came before her.
Gustav Renker's novel Bergkristall (1930) has many similarities to the plot of Das Blaue Licht and may have been used by Balázs and Riefenstahl without attribution.
Black-and-white
Black-and-white, often abbreviated B/W or B&W, is a term referring to a number of monochrome forms in visual arts.Black-and-white as a description is also something of a misnomer, for in addition to black and white, most of these media included varying shades of gray...
1932 film
1932 in film
-Events:*Cary Grant's film career begins*Katharine Hepburn's film career begins*Shirley Temple's film career begins*Disney released Flowers and Trees, the first cartoon in three-strip Technicolor film.*Santa, first sound film made in Mexico released....
written and directed by Leni Riefenstahl
Leni Riefenstahl
Helene Bertha Amalie "Leni" Riefenstahl was a German film director, actress and dancer widely noted for her aesthetics and innovations as a filmmaker. Her most famous film was Triumph des Willens , a propaganda film made at the 1934 Nuremberg congress of the Nazi Party...
and Béla Balázs
Béla Balázs
----Béla Balázs , born Herbert Bauer, was a Hungarian-Jewish film critic, aesthete, writer and poet....
, with uncredited scripting by Carl Mayer
Carl Mayer
Carl Mayer was an Austrian screenplay writer who wrote or co-wrote the screenplays to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari , The Haunted Castle , Der Letzte Mann , Tartuffe , Sunrise and 4 Devils , the last five being films directed by F. W...
. In Riefenstahl's film version, the witch, Junta, played by Riefenstahl, is intended to be a sympathetic character
Sympathetic character
A sympathetic character is a fictional character in a story with whom the writer expects the reader to identify with and care about, if not necessarily admire. Protagonists, almost by definition, fit into the category of sympathetic character; so, however, do many supporting characters and even...
. Filming took place in the Brenta Dolomites, in Ticino
Ticino
Canton Ticino or Ticino is the southernmost canton of Switzerland. Named after the Ticino river, it is the only canton in which Italian is the sole official language...
, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
, and Sarntal
Sarntal
Sarntal is a valley and a comune in South Tyrol in the Italian region Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol, located about 70 km northeast of the city of Trento and about 15 km north of the city of Bolzano....
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
.
Plot summary
A young woman, Junta (Riefenstahl), lives apart from her village, and for her solitude and strangeness, is considered to be a witch; when she comes to the village for one reason or another, the townsfolk chase her away. They feel that she may in some way be responsible for the deaths of several young men of the village, who have felt compelled, one by one, to climb the local mountain (and fall to their deaths) on nights when the moon is full.Junta lives largely in solitude (except for the company of a young shepherd boy) in the tranquility of the mountains surrounding the village. She plays in the hills and woodlands, as a naive free spirit. She is simple and innocent, but also seems something of a mystic
Mysticism
Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...
. She loves to climb and clamber over the steep, difficult faces of local mountains.
On full moon nights, a crack in a prominent local mountain admits the moon's light and illuminates a grotto
Grotto
A grotto is any type of natural or artificial cave that is associated with modern, historic or prehistoric use by humans. When it is not an artificial garden feature, a grotto is often a small cave near water and often flooded or liable to flood at high tide...
filled with beautiful crystals. This place of indescribable beauty, glowing with magical blue light, is a sacred space for Junta. The glowing blue light, shining from afar, to the village below, is also what has attracted the village's young men, none of whom were ever able to reach it before falling off the mountain's treacherous slope.
A man from the city, a painter, traveling through the village, falls in love with Junta. He follows her to the cabin she shares with the shepherd boy, and decides to stay for a while. The man speaks only German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, and Junta only Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, so their communication is fragmentary. All is pleasant and good, and very chaste
Chastity
Chastity refers to the sexual behavior of a man or woman acceptable to the moral standards and guidelines of a culture, civilization, or religion....
, until the next full moon night, when the man sees Junta climbing up the mountain. He follows her, actually reaching the beautiful grotto, and finds Junta in a state of ecstasy among the crystals.
Perceiving these thousands of crystals to be a source of immense wealth for Junta and the villagers, the man immediately runs down to inform the townsfolk, and tells them of the correct route to reach the grotto. Junta does not realize that he is doing this, until the next day, when she finds some of her crystals on the path to the village, as well as some dropped tools. Rushing up to the grotto, she finds it completely barren of crystals - all have been taken by the greedy villagers. Meanwhile, the villagers and the painter are living it up and celebrating. Junta is totally devastated at this violation of the sacred grotto, and of her trust in the outsider, and falls to her death.
Cast (in credits order)
- Leni RiefenstahlLeni RiefenstahlHelene Bertha Amalie "Leni" Riefenstahl was a German film director, actress and dancer widely noted for her aesthetics and innovations as a filmmaker. Her most famous film was Triumph des Willens , a propaganda film made at the 1934 Nuremberg congress of the Nazi Party...
as Junta - Mathias WiemanMathias WiemanMathias Wieman was a German stage-performer, silent-and-sound motion picture actor.-Early life:...
as Vigo - Beni Fuhrer as Tonio
- Max Holzboer as Innkeeper
- Martha Mair as Lucia
- Franz Maldacea as Guzzi
Production background
In the 1993 documentary The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni RiefenstahlThe Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl
The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl is a 1993 German documentary film about the life of German film director Leni Riefenstahl, directed by Ray Müller.-Production background:...
(1993), Riefenstahl relates that the Agfa Film Corporation gave her a new film stock called R-Stock. When filming was done through a red filter the sky would appear absolutely black. The film was among the first sound film
Sound film
A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades would pass before sound motion pictures were made commercially...
s to be filmed entirely on location.
Arnold Fanck
Arnold Fanck
Arnold Fanck was a pioneer of the German mountain film....
, who had directed several mountain film
Mountain film
A mountain film is a film genre that focuses on mountaineering and especially the battle of man against nature. In addition to mere adventure, the protagonists who return from the mountain come back changed, usually gaining wisdom and enlightenment....
s featuring Riefenstahl, did a first edit of the film, which Riefenstahl found unacceptable, and she completely re-edited the film.
Reception
The film was a moderate commercial and critical success. It performed well in much of EuropeEurope
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and the UK, although some critics were divided, particularly in Germany. Several left wing news publications derided the effort, while it was applauded by the right wing press. The film enjoyed considerable commercial and critical success in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, where Alpine cinema was a novelty. Notably, it won the Silver Medal of the Venice Film Festival
Venice Film Festival
The Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...
.
The New York Sun described the film as "one of the most pictorially beautiful films of the year. Leni Riefenstahl - author, director and star - is an expert climber as well as handsome woman."
The New York Herald Tribune
New York Herald Tribune
The New York Herald Tribune was a daily newspaper created in 1924 when the New York Tribune acquired the New York Herald.Other predecessors, which had earlier merged into the New York Tribune, included the original The New Yorker newsweekly , and the Whig Party's Log Cabin.The paper was home to...
praised the "sheer pictorial beauty", the publication also praised Riefenstahl remarking "how flawlessly this girl, who plays the lead and also wrote and directed, accomplished her task."
The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
remarked that "a summary of the story gives no adequate idea of the beauty of the action and the remarkable camera work, especially in connection with the light effects."
Re-release
In 1937, a re-release of the film removed the names of Mayer, Balázs, and Sokal, since they were Jews.An edited version of the film was released in 1951, funded by Italian corporations. Riefenstahl edited the film from 86 to 73 minutes, removing the arrival scene of modern urbanites in Santa Maria. The film was marketed with the credit "A Mountain Legend by Leni Riefenstahl". In November 1951, It premiered with a new edit, score and soundtrack in Rome at a gala screening that Riefenstahl described as "dazzling". The film was distributed in German cinemas and had a limited release in Austria under the title The Witch of Santa Maria (Die Hexe von Santa Maria).
Possible Inspirations
Ethos
Ethos is a Greek word meaning "character" that is used to describe the guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize a community, nation, or ideology. The Greeks also used this word to refer to the power of music to influence its hearer's emotions, behaviors, and even morals. Early Greek stories of...
was sweeping the country, audiences were highly likely to have been familiar with the old legend, and accordingly expected the film to follow it closely. However, the film shares very little with the legend, and even departs from it in an unexpected way, casting Leni Riefenstahl as the beautiful loner, not at all a witch, but wrongly accused of being one.
The original legend, compiled by the Brothers Grimm
Brothers Grimm
The Brothers Grimm , Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm , were German academics, linguists, cultural researchers, and authors who collected folklore and published several collections of it as Grimm's Fairy Tales, which became very popular...
in 1810, and later popularized by the pre-Hitler nationalists of the 1920s, tells the story of a crippled soldier who is terminated from the service of his king. Released from service, he travels into the woods to seek a cure, and comes upon a witch's house. It is there that he asks her if she is willing to help him. She agrees to cure him but he must first do three things for her. (The third task being nothing less than to descend into a very deep and dry well, and bring back from its depths a magic lamp.)
In that legend, however, the soldier finds a dwarflike creature at the bottom of the well. Apart from the strange lamp he comes upon, which glows in a mysteriously blue light (and which ultimately leads to the witch's ruin), there is very little else to connect Riefenstahl's concept to the German myth that came before her.
Gustav Renker's novel Bergkristall (1930) has many similarities to the plot of Das Blaue Licht and may have been used by Balázs and Riefenstahl without attribution.
External links
- The Blue Light at Allmovie
- Stillphotographs of The Blue Light
- http://users.skynet.be/deneulin/DBL.html article about Das blaue Licht