by Adam Walter
 
 

"The Blue Light," a German film from 1932, tells the story of a small mining village lying in the shadow of an unusual mountain.  During every full moon a blue light issues from the peak, causing young men of the village to take leave of their senses and attempt to climb the mountain in the middle of the night.  This always ends in death for one of the village men.

Junta, a young woman who lives in the hills outside the village, is the only person who has mastered the cliffs, and because of this she is an outcast.  One day a stranger arrives in the village, and this man becomes entranced not with the blue light but with Junta.  Eventually, he follows her up the mountain and discovers a cave at the summit which is lined with dazzling crystal formations.  He insists that the treasure should be shared with the village, reasoning that this good fortune will put an end to Junta's status as an outcast.

The next day, while Junta is wandering the hills, the villagers outfit themselves and take to the mountain.  With appropriate climbing tools they manage to reach the cave.  When Junta returns much later, the cave is empty and only scattered fragments of the crystals remain.  This signals simultaneously the doom of Junta and of the modern imagination.  It seems uncomfortably ironic that the film was both directed by and stars--as Junta--Leni Riefenstahl, the woman who would later become known as "Hitler's filmmaker," responsible for some of the most notorious Nazi propaganda films.

"The Blue Light" remains a remarkable achievement for its operatic tone and imagery and for the brilliant mountain climbing sequences.  Junta's final scene is especially striking, ending in a sequence which blends compelling symbolism with poetic cinematography--a moment worthy of Jean Cocteau.

In his autobiography, "The Attempted Rescue," Robert Aickman noted "The Blue Light" as his favorite film.  He called it a "fable of the post-machine world and of the nature of love."  Elsewhere Aickman wrote: "Dr. Freud established that only a small part, perhaps one-tenth, of the human mental and emotional organisation is conscious.  Our main response to this discovery has been to reject the nine-tenths unconscious more completely and more systematically than before."  Junta is one of those rare figures who is in tune with the enigmatic blue light of the unconscious self and open, as well, to that vital emotional reaction to natural beauty.  It is this that makes Junta worth more than a hundred villages filled with greedy mountain-tamers.  Perhaps it is no great mystery that a German film like "The Blue Light" should be made as Hitler gained power; insightful expressions of the human soul have always erupted in the most unlikely of times and with the dream thieves following close behind.

*

Aickman gives the title "A Distant Star" to the short chapter of his autobiography in which he both summarizes the plot of "The Blue Light" and relates the trouble Riefenstahl faced in Europe after World War II.  At a time when she visited post-war England and was denounced by the press, Aickman felt such sympathy for Riefenstahl that he wrote her a letter of encouragement.  She responded and sent with her letter a dozen photographs of herself.  It is quite clear that the life of this ill-fated celebrity influenced Aickman's story "The Visiting Star," which was first published as part of his collection "Powers of Darkness" in 1966, the same year as the autobiography.

The protagonist of "The Visiting Star," is an author named Colvin who is spending the winter in a bleak English town while researching a book on the mining industry.  One day Colvin learns that the actress Arabella Rokeby, a once famous name on the London stage, will be appearing in "As You Like It" at the local theatre.  Her arrival in the town is preceded by that of the peculiar and secretive Mr. Superbus who will only say that he follows Arabella's career.  Mr. Superbus arrives with two massive suitcases and lodges in the same hotel as Colvin, ending up in the room next to his.  On their first meeting, Mr. Superbus asks Colvin if he is in love with Arabella.  When Colvin protests that he has not even met her yet, Mr. Superbus replies, "Young people nowadays have no imagination."  During Mr. Superbus' stay, Colvin begins to hear strange mutterings and movements coming from the other man's room.

When Arabella arrives, looking astonishingly young, she brings her frail companion Myrrha with her.  They too stay in the hotel with Colvin and Mr. Superbus.  As rehearsal for the play begins, strange things occur at the theatre.  The theatre manager finds two enormous parcels full of Arabella's stage photos on the steps with no note of any kind.  He proceeds to line the theatre's lobby walls with them.  Colvin visits the theatre and finds himself strangely overwhelmed by the impromptu gallery.  Some time later one of the company's veteran actors, a man who knew Arabella in the old days, is found hung from the grid above the theatre's stage.

One day Colvin encounters Arabella while he is out on a walk, and she convinces him to show her a local mining tunnel.  While inside, they lose Colvin's flashlight and must make their way back in the dark.  It is then that Arabella tells Colvin her secrets.  Mr. Superbus, she says, is a "helper" who goes ahead of her and "clears" her path.  Colvin asks if it is he who killed the actor, but Arabella does not know.  Furthermore, she says that Mr. Superbus "separated" her from her personality, and her companion Myrrha is that dislocated part of herself.

The story ends abruptly in typical Aickman style.  The first, stunning performance of "As You Like It" is given on Christmas Eve, during which Myrrha--not in attendance, but back at the hotel--encounters the same fate as Junta in "The Blue Light."  Aickman's story and the film share other basic elements--the stranger-protagonist, the mining, the cave.  However, the inspiration for "The Visiting Star" can be seen even more clearly when comparing Arabella with Aickman's image of Leni Riefenstahl.  It is also important to incorporate with this the mystifying duality of Arabella and Myrrha.  Nor can one overlook the detail of the celebrity photos which arrive unexpected and in quantity.  Finally, the ending of "The Visiting Star" is as ambiguous as any in Aickman's work, and it invites speculation.  Is Mr. Superbus Arabella's Hitler?  Could Mr. Superbus be a sinister Übermensch force which finally separates Arabella from her personality, that one last piece of her private self?

*

In 1952, as part of an attempt to salvage a career for herself in European cinema, Riefenstahl recut "The Blue Light" for a new release.  This is the edition which is most readily available today.  However, an editing effort made 20 years after the film's first release cannot entirely account for the numerous errors Aickman makes when summarizing the film's plot in his autobiography.  While he states that he viewed "The Blue Light" multiple times when it was new, one can only conclude that Aickman's imagination affected his memory of the film.  In fact, some of his erroneous recollections seem to have eventually carried over as elements of "The Visiting Star."  For example, Aickman makes a point of the young stranger in the film being "disturbed by noises in the night," something that leads him to uncover the mystery of the blue light.  If Aickman had been correct, this scenario would have been very similar to Colvin's nights in the hotel, troubled by the eerie and inexplicable noises made by Mr. Superbus.  In actuality, however, the stranger is told by a villager about the blue light before the first time he experiences it, so the night noises are half-expected and already have a meaning attached to them.  Aickman also leaves the young stranger guiltless and sympathetically tragic, simply "roaming and running through the mountain valleys" as he searches for the vanished Junta.  The film, though, clearly implicates the stranger in Junta's fate--something Aickman seems to have forgotten.  From all indications, then, Aickman performed his own subconscious editing job on the film, making it into a story slightly closer to something he himself would write.  As a result, the Aickman reader now has an exceptional example of the complex interplay that can occur between aesthetic appreciation and memory and of the impact this all finally had on a new work of art.
 
 

Adam Walter
(27 March 2001)