Product Details

• Actors: Bernhard Minetti, Leni Riefenstahl, Aribert Wscher, Karl Skraup, Maria Koppenhfer
• Directors: Leni Riefenstahl
• Writers: Leni Riefenstahl, Rudolph Lothar, ngel Guimer
• Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
• Language: German (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono)
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: Unrated
• Studio: Pathfinder Home Ent.
• DVD Release Date: November 14, 2006
• Run Time: 99 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000ION53C
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #92,937 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Tiefland" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

TIEFLAND - DVD Movie

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful, yet not her best, September 28, 2007

By 

J. Michael (Now Born) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tiefland (DVD)

Based on the 1896 Catalan play and the 1903 German opera, Leni Reifenstahl brings the story of love, lust and class warfare in Spain (actually Catalonia) to the silver screen. Although the film bears all the lush and romantic trademarks of Riefenstahl's directorial style, and I could never tire of_seeing_a Leni Riefenstahl film, the story of "Tiefland" just didn't reach me on the deeper emotional level that "The Blue Light" or even "Triumph of the Will" did. Although beautifully filmed, and impressive in its individual parts, for me the story did not cohere into a satisfying whole. Still, it's well worth watching.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What Did You Do In the War, Mommy?, January 30, 2010

By 

Garman Lord - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Tiefland (DVD)

To many people's expectations, Leni Riefenstahl's honest answer to such a question would have to be "spent it as Hitler's bitch." According to Leni herself, however, nothing could be farther from the truth. Leni and Hitler admired each other, but strictly as intellectual friends and fellow artists, other than which the relationship was entirely platonic, by tacit mutual agreement. The reward of Hitler's admiration was that, whenever Leni challenged Hitler's views or said something he didn't like, especially toward the end, Hitler would merely pout, dismiss her from his circles and shun her for a time, rather than shipping her off to a concentration camp. Leni's haters, who are legion, dismiss all this, of course, and call her a liar. Her account, however, seems credible enough, at least to me. If Leni were a proper liar, after all, she would surely have said she secretly despised Hitler, kissed all the right ideological rings and tried to get herself on the side of the historical angels, right? Instead, it seems rather as if Leni's detractors don't really hate her for lying, they hate her for telling the truth.

For us, who live in a country whose last significant experience of home front warfare was in 1865, war tends to be a rather mythical, generally misunderstood business. In other countries, some relatively small percentage of the population marches off to war, another even smaller percentage stays home and runs the country and the war politically, and the great mass of the general population, at least until their national borders are broached, mainly just tries to get up every morning and go about their regular business as if war and all it portended wasn't really happening. What Leni did during the war, by all accounts, was go about her business, mainly spending it trying to make the movie she had always wanted to make in the middle of an avalanche of Allied bombs. That movie was "Tiefland" (Flatland.)

Viewing Tiefland today, we can easily imagine Leni's logistic difficulties. The parts of it she could control are, as usual, beautifully done; the scene selections, framing and camera work are consummate, occasionally breathtaking, works of art. As to what she couldn't completely control, well... such are the fortunes of war. Leni was lucky enough to find a German soldier, a handsome talented amateur, for the perfect male lead. For the female lead, an ingenue role, preferably calling for a gifted beautiful teenage dancer, no one could be found. Leni ended up forced to tackle the role herself... at age forty. No sooner was the footage wrapped, however, then Leni's country was invaded and overun, her worldly effects confiscated and herself bounced round endlessly from one prison camp to another, one collaboration/Denazification hearing and war trial to another, a process that took years before her name was finally cleared of all the accusations variously and inevitably leveled against a German of her international celebrity. It was 1950 before Leni ever got to see a viewing of the film she had spent so many years trying to shoot... and when she finally got to see it, she was horrified. Whatever the film's inevitable deficiencies, the thing about it that appalled Leni most painfully was her own performance. At forty years old, still beautiful despite war's and film work's hardships, and still a fine dancer, Leni was obviously anything but an ingenue, and totally miscast for the role.

Notwithstanding, it's still a great movie, and my friends and I who got together specially to view it enjoyed it enormously. One can only guess about all the great movies Leni Riefenstahl never got to make, and how things might have been, had a movie maker of her genius happened to be born in Hollywood, rather than WWII Germany.

2.0 out of 5 stars Like Watching Paint Dry, November 11, 2011

By 

Gary F. Taylor "GFT" (Biloxi, MS USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Tiefland (DVD)

Leni Riefenstahl (1902-2003) is generally regarded as one of greatest film directors of the 20th Century. She is also regarded as one of the most infamous: born in Berlin, she began her career as a dancer, progressed to popular film roles, began to direct, and unexpectedly emerged as a favorite of Adolph Hitler, who employed her to create a number of films that directly or indirectly extolled the Nazi creed. These films, especially TRIUMPH OF THE WILL and OLYMPIAD, won international acclaim for Riefenstahl's remarkable talent; ultimately, they were also condemned as the flowering of fascist art--and Riefenstahl was condemned along with them. Interestingly, Riefenstahl was not a member of the Nazi party; even so, she gave significantly contradictory statements about her association with Hitler and her views of Nazi Germany, condemning them with one breath and covertly praising them with the next. It seems likely that Riefenstahl, when she was confronted with the horrors of Nazi Germany, simply looked the other way and then spent the rest of her life in deep denial.

Riefenstahl began to direct in 1932 and was writing a script for TIEFLAND in 1934, when she was persuaded by Hitler to create TRIUMPH OF THE WILL, a project that led in turn to OLYMPIAD. Hitler's enthusiasm for both films allowed Riefenstahl to return to TIEFLAND with a virtually unlimited budget and operate outside the supervision of Joseph Goebbels, who was in charge of Nazi cultural and propaganda material. Goebbles complained bitterly about this and he was fond of pointing out that the project had endless difficulties and cost overruns. Shooting began in 1940 with the expectation that the film would be released in 1941. In actual fact, shooting was often delayed by the war, and photography did not end until 1944. As a result, TIEFLAND would become the single most expensive black and white film made in Germany, a dubious record it continues to hold to this day. TIEFLAND is also notorious for its use of extras drawn from concentration camp prisoners. According to reliable accounts, Riefenstahl actually went to a camp to select the extras, who included a number of children. When their scenes were completed, they were returned to the camp, and most died at Aushwitz. The accusations of indifference to their plight would haunt Riefenstahl for the rest of her life. She repeatedly stated that she did not know where the extras came from, that they were well treated, that she had even seen all of them after the war. Although she was forced to admit some of the facts, she never entirely abandoned her statements.

The film footage was confiscated by the French government after WWII, and Riefenstahl was not able to recover it until about 1953 or 1954. Several reels were missing and have never been found, but Riefenstahl was able to edit the film for a 1954 release--which also gives the film another dubious distinction: it has one of the longest production times in cinema history. Although many praised the photography and Riefenstahl's eye for composition, most critics found the film excessively simplistic--and tainted by its Nazi history.

TIEFLAND is belongs to a genre of film called "Mountain Movies"--films that contrasted the beauty and simplicity of mountainside life with the corrupt lives of those who lived in villages below. TIEFLAND is such a film, and the plot is somewhat overwrought, concerning a clean-living shepherd who falls in love with a gypsy dancer who is the lover of a cruel marquis, who has entered into a marriage of convenience but wishes to keep the dancer as his lover. Unable to find a suitable actress, Riefenstahl herself undertook the role of the gypsy dancer; she later regretted it, saying she was much too old. This is quite true, but she has an interesting screen presence that I found somewhat similar to Garbo. Whatever the case, the performances are excellent, the photography is stunning, and clearly Riefenstahl had a great gift for composition. On the other hand, the film is jumpy (most likely due to the missing footage), the story is saccharine, and while it is visually beautiful it is also about as entertaining as watching paint dry. Ultimately, TIEFLAND is of more interest as a historical artifact than it is as a motion picture, and it should be left to film historians.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer