Lowlands

Lowlands (1954)

Tiefland

In early 20th Century Europe, a dancer becomes the romantic bone of contention between two men, a humble shepherd and an imperious marquis.

Date of release
1954-02-11
TMDB
6.2 / 10 (12)
Runtime
1h 38m
Genres
Drama
Director
Leni Riefenstahl

Casting

Interesting facts

Tiefland ("Lowlands") is a 1954 West German opera drama film directed, produced, co-written, edited by and starring Leni Riefenstahl, and based on the 1903 eponymous opera composed by Eugen d'Albert to a libretto by Rudolph Lothar based on the 1896 Catalan play Terra baixa by Àngel Guimerà. The film co-stars Bernhard Minetti, and is Riefenstahl's last feature film as both director and lead actress.

Production

Riefenstahl began working on the script in 1934, but shelved it when she became more involved with Nazi propaganda films. After the beginning of World War II, and disturbed by atrocities she witnessed, she had herself dispensed from shooting war documentaries.

Riefenstahl took the female lead role of Martha, a step that was not originally planned; however, she claimed, that she did not find an actress to her liking available at the time, and so she did it. Her last major role had been a decade before. She may have been attracted to play a dancer, as dancing was her original artistic calling. She later regretted the decision, as she looked much too old by her own account.

Bernhard Minetti played Sebastian. Arnold Fanck, Veit Harlan and Georg Wilhelm Pabst all gave directorial assistance at one time or the other. Harald Reinl, who co-wrote the script, choreographed her dancing scene. Herbert Windt and Giuseppe Becce worked on the musical score that was inspired by Eugen d'Albert's opera. The camera work delivered later well-received nature shots of the Karwendel and Dolomite mountains.

After the war, the film was confiscated and kept by French authorities for several years, but eventually returned to her. Four reels of film were missing when Riefenstahl received the film, notably the scenes shot in Spain. Despite efforts she failed to retrieve the missing footage. After its final editing, the movie was released in 1954.

Riefenstahl deposited a quantity of unused Tiefland material with the Bundesarchiv, the German national archives.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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