IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0022694/
IMDB rating: 7,0
Director: Leni Riefenstahl
Main Cast: Leni Riefenstahl, Mathias Wieman, Beni Führer, Martha Mair
"The Blue Light (Das Blaue Licht) is widely regarded as the best of the German 'mountain' films of the early 1930s. Leni Riefenstahl both directed and starred in this film, playing a free-spirited gamine who dares to climb a precipitous mountain peak. Because she is the only member of her community to accomplish this, she is regarded as something of a witch. When she discovers a hidden crystal cave, the villagers change their tune and follow her up the mountain, stripping the cave of its riches. She responds to this symbolic rape by killing herself. It was The Blue Light which impressed Hitler and Goebbels enough to engage Leni Riefenstahl to direct the Nazi party's subsequent propaganda films.
Leni Riefenstahl's directorial debut (she had been a widely recognized and praised dancer in the 20's and gone on to be one of the most well known silent movie stars, working with Arnold Fanck and G. W. Pabst on a series of mountain films). Here she shows that magnificent eye exciting visuals probably attainted while shooting up in the mountains with Fanck, and which would go on to make Triumph of the Will the most stunning, famous propaganda film of all time, and Olympia, her film of the 1936 Berlin Olympics the single most famous (and incredible visually) sports documentary of all time.
In The Blue Light you will find some of the most stunning visuals in early sound cinema, a gorgeous score and the magnetic, sensual screen presence of Leni herself in the lead role of Junta, the outcast who lives among the crystals in a mountain high above a fairytale village. It is a delight to watch, and one of the great treasures of early sound cinema."
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