The “Nazi Film” also serves as a parallel story line through the film to help us understand the characters of Molina and Valentin. In the film the heroine Leni Lanison is a French singer passionately in love with a German general. Each of these characters is mirrored by the “real” characters. Molina imagines himself to be the heroine and Valentin the dashing German general. In the film Leni is part of the resistance underground until she falls for the general. It is at this point that she becomes a reluctant warrior in the cause and turns sides to help the German. Leni’s betrayal of her own country for the man she loves foreshadows the plight of Molina and Valentin.
In our reality, Molina is a reluctant pawn of the prison warden and a police agent to gather information about Valentin and his cause. Once Molina decides he is in love with Valentin, his allegiances change as well and he ends up putting his life at risk and sacrificing it for the cause, just as Leni had done on screen.
Like Leni in the film, Molina was not a “revolutionary” he simply was in love. He admits that politics are not important to him, but he contacts Valentin’s radical friends not to aide the revolution, but to aide his lover. In both cases, the “females” die a heroic death for the man that they adore.
Valentin is well represented by the “Nazi Film” as well. The character of the German general is superimposed over that of Valentin. During their discussions, Valentin finds Molina’s obsessing over the romantic and the dismissal of the political infuriating. Valentin believes such fantasies are trivial and self indulgent compared to his realism and activism, mirrored by the conviction of the German general.
In both cases, the end result is the same. It can be argues that the death of the hero(ine) is directly caused by their blinding love and faith in the hero. Leni dies in the arms of the German general, he realizing what he has caused, and Molina’s relationship with Valentin dies in the embrace at the end of Molina’s imprisonment which has been shortened through contact with Valentin.
The “Nazi Film” in Kiss of the Spider Woman is multi-purposeful for the audience. A delightful divergence from the dreary minimalism of the prison cell, and a deeper telling of the theme of romanticism and escapism through fantasy while paralleling the lives and loves of the two men thrust together.
