Leni [antikvár]

PROLOGUE BERLIN 1925 IF THERE WAS AN IDEAL PLACE for a pretty, emancipated, ferociously ambitious young woman to be in Berlin in 1925, it was on the gaudy, sprawling stages of Ufa film studio, and, at twenty-three, Leni Riefenstahl was there. She would later deny the fact (she would deny many), which was curious, for Ufa—^the great Berlin dream factory known by its acronym (for Universum-Film-Aktiengesellschaft)—was then as close to a mecca for actors, filmmakers, designers, and visionaries as anyplace in Europe; it was the world's only meaningful rival to Hollywood itself. By 1925 Ufa was releasing a major feamre film each week from a gilt-edged roster of directors that included not only the legendary Ernst Lubitsch (already snapped up by Hollywood) but also F. W. Murnau, E. A. Dupont, and Fritz Lang, men (they were all men then) responsible for the creative brilliance of such films as Nosferatu, Varieiy, and Metropolis. All of them—^when things got bad in Berlin—^would follow Lubitsch west. Europe's greatest stars worked on Ufa's stages—Emil Jannings, Henny Porten ("the Mary Pickford of Germany"), Lya de Putti, Asta Nielsen, Pola Negri, Yvette Guilbert, Conrad Veidt—and those who aspired to great stardom hoped to. Young Marlene Dietrich was there, frantic to be noticed in bit parts in silent cosmme dramas like Manon Lescaut, telegraphing her stage player's frustration at having—^before talkies—^no voice to deploy as part of her seductive arsenal. Her neighbor in Berlin and almost exact contemporary, sporty and vivacious Leni Riefenstahl, had a saucier kind of appeal, catching eyes in something called Ways to Strength and Beauty {Wege Kraft und