A Mountain Climbing Event [Bergsteigen als Film Event]

Abstract

Leni Riefenstahl’s Das blaue Licht is presented here not as a stable object of interpretation, but rather as an event: as an object that appears in multiple frames of reference that can be used to assess it as an evolving product of multiple forces, rather as a “work.” By tracking how the film was adapted from novels by Gustav Renker, how its plotlines reflected the history of mountaineering and national sport, and what contributions were made by technical teams, we can see how Riefenstahl was less interested in creating a “proto-Nazi” film than in creating her own career (even at the cost of the film’s coherence). The result provides a model for researching and understanding objects of culture in times of flux, and for using them as evidence for cultural microclimates instead of “eras” and similar generalizations.