Steven Soderbergh Scrapped a Movie He Realized No One Would Want To See

The Big Picture

• Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns spent months developing a film about the life and work of Leni Riefenstahl.
• Riefenstahl directed 1935’s
  Triumph of the Will
  , a feature-length propaganda film about the Nazi Party that’s widely considered among the most infamous and effective of its kind.
• Fearing that financial backers and audiences likely wouldn’t want to see a film about such a controversial figure, Soderbergh and Burns pivoted to making
  Contagion
  .

From low-budget independent fare to star-studded studio blockbusters, Steven Soderbergh‘s filmmaking interests and instincts have made for one of modern cinema’s most varied bodies of work. Experimental, innovative, and proudly defiant of mainstream Hollywood conventions, Soderbergh’s creative sensibilities frequently take him in unexpected directions regarding genre and form, making it nearly impossible to pigeonhole him as an artist. Additionally, his penchant for assuming multiple on-set duties beyond directing, including shooting and editing, has further solidified his status as one of America’s premier maverick filmmakers.

When it comes to cinematic subjects, Soderbergh has also proven daring at pushing boundaries. At one point, one such subject on his radar was the life and career of German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. A Nazi “fellow traveler” who infamously worked alongside Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbles, Riefenstahl is widely known for directing Triumph of the Will, a 1935 documentary that’s largely considered the ultimate propaganda film on behalf of the Third Reich. Teaming up with screenwriter and frequent collaborator Scott Z. Burns, Soderbergh spent months developing a planned film about the controversial figure, but at the 11th hour, the duo abandoned the effort upon the dawning of a sober realization and pivoted to making the 2011 thriller, Contagion.

Who Was Leni Riefenstahl?

Born in Berlin, Germany in 1902, Leni Riefenstahl engaged with the arts as a young woman, studying ballet and painting and touring the European continent as a dancer from 1923 to 1926. After segueing to acting, she appeared in a handful of German films before establishing a production company and making her debut behind the camera with 1932’s The Blue Light. As the Nazi Party was on the rise, Riefenstahl became enamored with Adolf Hitler after hearing one of his speeches and wrote to him. As it turns out, the dictator was a fan of her work as a filmmaker. “Once we come to power, you must make my films,” he reportedly told her.

Upon Hitler taking power in 1933, Riefenstahl captured a Nazi rally in Nuremberg with the documentary Victory of the Faith. Unhappy with how the film turned out, she made another attempt at documenting Nazism with Triumph of the Will. With a sprawling crew of 170, she shot a whopping 250 miles worth of film, employing inventive technical elements including extensive camera movement, the use of telephoto lenses, innovative composition and editing, and live sound that was recorded at shooting locations and synchronized with the final film. After nearly two years of editing, Triumph of the Will screened for the German public and was heralded by members of the Third Reich as a masterpiece, with its striking images and messages of feverish, fascistic nationalism serving as a feature-length advertisement, endorsement, and glorification of the Nazi Party and its sinister ideology.

While Triumph of the Will boosted her profile and led to other films, including a two-part documentary chronicling Berlin’s 1936 Olympic Games, Leni Riefenstahl’s career and reputation were severely impacted by the Second World War. Upon Germany’s defeat in 1945, she was deemed a Nazi sympathizer and propagandist, ostracized by the filmmaking community, and lived in obscurity in Munich for decades. In the 1960s, however, she re-emerged in the public eye through a career in photography, amassing and publishing collections of images taken underwater and in Africa.

A controversial figure until her death in 2003 at the age of 101, Riefenstahl was met with a variety of reactions, with some praising her abilities as a filmmaker and others criticizing her as a purveyor of hateful propaganda. But she nonetheless remained in society’s collective consciousness, writing a 669-page memoir and featuring as the topic of a three-hour documentary by German filmmaker Ray Muller. Her films would also continue to be watched, studied, and lauded by historians and critics alike. Regarding her collaboration with the Nazi Party, she professed regret but maintained her innocence, saying, “I can regret that I made the party film, Triumph of the Will, in 1934. But I cannot regret that I lived in that time. No anti-Semitic word has ever crossed my lips. I was never anti-Semitic. I did not join the party. So where then is my guilt?”

Steven Soderbergh Wanted to Explore Leni Riefenstah’s Life Through Subjective Lenses

Having collaborated on 2009’s The Informant, Steven Soderbergh and Scott Z. Burns began developing a film about Leni Riefenstahl. According to Indiewire, their approach to telling the polarizing filmmaker’s story would be intensely subjective and refrain from taking a moral stance on her activities and close association with Nazis. “The job is not to judge your characters, your job is to present their point of view as they would want it presented,” said Soderbergh, “so I thought, ‘Wow, that would be interesting if you could somehow over 90 minutes convince somebody to root for someone who probably on some level was pretty horrible.'”

Furthermore, Soderbergh and Burns toyed with the notion of portraying Riefenstahl as “the aggrieved artist who is fighting for her vision”, while key players like Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels would serve as stand-ins for the studio system standing in the way. “The whole design of the movie is that you are rooting for her to win,” Soderbergh told NPR. “And the film ends with her onstage after the premiere of Triumph of the Will with people throwing roses at her, and she’s beaming.” Though they were presumably excited about taking such a bold and potentially risky approach to tackling one of cinema history’s most polarizing individuals, Soderbergh and Burns were confronted with a harsh reality as they inched closer to pitching their planned film to producers.

Steven Soderbergh Abandoned His Film About Leni Riefenstahl and Pivoted to ‘Contagion’

At the 11th hour, as Steven Soderbergh and Scott Z. Burns were prepared to outline their vision and secure financial backing, they had a sudden change of heart regarding the viability of a film about Leni Riefenstahl. “I’ve done this before, where I’ve, you know, had an unusual take on a piece, and we’ve all gone out and killed ourselves to do it and then people have just shrugged,” the filmmaker remembers. “And we were supposed to go in the next day to pitch this idea to our producers about how we were going to do it.”

Fortunately for Soderbergh and Burns, the latter quickly pivoted and suggested they go to work on another project. “I’ve always wanted to make an ultra-realistic film about a pandemic,” Burns confided. Excited by the idea, Soderbergh immediately agreed to direct Contagion as his next film. “We went in the next day and said we’re not doing Leni, we’re doing this,” he told NPR. Years after dramatically shifting gears from a historical drama about a controversial figure to a modern thriller that would ultimately, and accurately, predict future events, Soderbergh seemingly has no interest in revisiting the story of Leni Riefenstahl, claiming in 2013 that “the good news is that film is never going to happen.” With that said, however, one can’t help but wonder exactly what the renowned filmmaker had in store for audiences before realizing his planned project may have been met with crickets.

Contagion is available to rent or buy on Apple TV+ in the U.S.

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