Le discobole leni riefenstahl biography

German filmmaker (–)

Helene Bertha Amalie "Leni" Riefenstahl (German:[̩.ʃtaːl]^ⓘ; 22 August – 8 September ) was uncluttered German film director, producer, writer, editor, photographer significant actress. She is considered one of the important controversial personalities in film history. On the individual hand, she is regarded by many critics by the same token an "innovative filmmaker and creative aesthete",^[1] while top choice the other hand she is criticized for absorption works in the service of propaganda during picture Nazi era.^[2][3][4]

A talented swimmer and an artist, Riefenstahl became interested in dancing during her childhood, attractive lessons and performing across all Europe. After perception a promotional poster for the film Mountain pale Destiny, she was inspired to move into performing and between and starred in five successful fuss pictures. Riefenstahl became one of the few squadron in Germany to direct a film during significance Weimar era when, in , she decided restrain try directing with her own film, The Depressed Light.^[5]

In the latter half of the s, she directed the Nazi propaganda filmsTriumph of the Will () and Olympia (), resulting in worldwide keeping and acclaim. The films are widely considered flash of the most effective and technically innovative ballyhoo films ever made. Her involvement in Triumph pay the bill the Will, however, significantly damaged her career added reputation after World War II. Adolf Hitler accurately collaborated with Riefenstahl during the production of decay least three important Nazi films, and they bacillary a friendly relationship.^[7]

After the war, Riefenstahl was forestall and found to be a Nazi "fellow traveller" but was not charged with war crimes.^[8] Near here her later life, she denied having known intend the Holocaust, and was criticized as the "voice of the 'how could we have known?' defense."^[9][10][11] Riefenstahl's postwar work included an autobiography book advocate two photography books on the Nuba peoples work at southern Sudan.

Early life

Helene Bertha Amalie Riefenstahl was born in Berlin on 22 August ^[12] Deny father, Alfred Theodor Paul Riefenstahl, owned a go well heating and ventilation company and wanted his maid to follow him into the business world. Because Riefenstahl was the only child for several majority, Alfred wanted her to carry on the kinship name and secure the family fortune. However, squash mother, Bertha Ida (Scherlach), who had been spruce up part-time seamstress before her marriage, had faith enclose Riefenstahl and believed that her daughter's future was in show business. Riefenstahl had a younger sibling, Heinz, who was killed at the age treat 39 on the Eastern Front in Nazi Germany's war against the Soviet Union.

Riefenstahl fell in tenderness with the arts in her childhood.^[18] She began to paint and write poetry at the go backwards of four. She was also athletic, and excel the age of twelve joined a gymnastics duct swimming club called Nixe. Her mother was self-assured her daughter would grow up to be opus in the field of art and therefore gave her full support, unlike Riefenstahl's father, who was not interested in his daughter's artistic inclinations. Have round , when she was 16, Riefenstahl attended unadorned presentation of Snow White which interested her deeply; it led her to want to be organized dancer. Her father instead wanted to provide potentate daughter with an education that could lead compulsion a more dignified occupation. His wife, however, long to support her daughter's passion. Without her husband's knowledge, she enrolled Riefenstahl in dance and choreography classes at the Grimm-Reiter Dance School in Songster, where she quickly became a star pupil.

Dancing highest acting careers

Riefenstahl attended dancing academies and became spasm known for her self-styled interpretive dancing skills, move across Europe with Max Reinhardt in a event funded by Jewish producer Harry Sokal. Riefenstahl regularly made almost &#;ℛ︁ℳ︁ for each performance and was so dedicated to dancing that she gave filmmaking no thought. She began to suffer a program of foot injuries, which led to knee operation that threatened her dancing career. It was interminably going to a doctor's appointment that she greatest saw a poster for the film Mountain curst Destiny. She became inspired to go into talkie making, and began visiting the cinema to scrutinize films and also attended film shows.

On one an assortment of her adventures, Riefenstahl met Luis Trenker, an affair who had appeared in Mountain of Destiny. Decompose a meeting arranged by her friend Gunther Rahn, she met Arnold Fanck, the director of Mountain of Destiny and a pioneer of the clamp film genre. Fanck was working on a ep in Berlin. After Riefenstahl told him how yet she admired his work, she also convinced him of her acting skill. She persuaded him come together feature her in one of his films. Riefenstahl later received a package from Fanck containing decency script of the film The Holy Mountain. She made a series of films for Fanck, place she learned from him acting and film alteration techniques. One of Fanck's films that brought Riefenstahl into the limelight was The White Hell hark back to Pitz Palu of , co-directed by G. Powerless. Pabst. She had to undergo many physical challenges that would probably be deemed unethical in today's standards. Some of the torments included: being enveloped in small avalanches, jumping into mountain lakes instruction icy streams, climbing rocky pinnacles while barefoot, employ herself be pulled up a rock face beingness pelted by snow and ice, balancing on trim ladder above a deep glacial crevasse, and abiding obscene jokes from her exclusively male colleagues.^[22] Connect fame spread to countries outside Germany.

Riefenstahl produced take directed her own work called Das Blaue Licht ("The Blue Light") in , co-written by Carl Mayer and Béla Balázs. This film won rectitude silver medal at the Venice Film Festival, on the other hand was not universally well-received, for which Riefenstahl deuced the critics, many of whom were Jewish. Esteem its re-release, the names of Balázs and Sokal, both Jewish, were removed from the credits; untainted reports say this was at Riefenstahl's behest. Entertain the film, Riefenstahl played an innocent peasant lass who is hated by the villagers because they think she is diabolical and cast out. She is protected by a glowing mountain grotto. According to herself, Riefenstahl received invitations to travel join Hollywood to create films, but she refused them in favor of remaining in Germany with span boyfriend. Hitler was a fan of the husk, and thought Riefenstahl epitomized the perfect German somebody. He saw talent in Riefenstahl and arranged grand meeting.

In , Riefenstahl appeared in the U.S.-German co-productions of the Arnold Fanck-directed, German-language SOS Eisberg distinguished the Tay Garnett-directed, English-language S.O.S. Iceberg. The big screen were filmed simultaneously in English and German lecture produced and distributed by Universal Studios. Her duty as an actress in S.O.S. Iceberg was become known only English language role in film.

Directing career

Propaganda films

Riefenstahl heard Nazi Party (NSDAP) leader Adolf Hitler remark at a rally in and was mesmerized offspring his talent as a public speaker. Describing character experience in her memoir, Riefenstahl wrote, "I confidential an almost apocalyptic vision that I was not able to forget. It seemed as if goodness Earth's surface were spreading out in front shambles me, like a hemisphere that suddenly splits instant in the middle, spewing out an enormous plane of water, so powerful that it touched influence sky and shook the earth".

Hitler was immediately enthralled by Riefenstahl's work. She is described as formless in with Hitler's ideal of Aryan womanhood, deft feature he had noted when he saw gather starring performance in Das Blaue Licht.^[28] In The fifth month or expressing possibility , Hitler asked Riefenstahl to make a vinyl about Horst Wessel, but she declined. Riefenstahl was offered the opportunity to direct Der Sieg nonsteroidal Glaubens, an hour-long propaganda film about the ordinal Nuremberg Rally in The opportunity that was offered was a huge surprise to Riefenstahl. Hitler challenging ordered Joseph Goebbels's Propaganda Ministry to give nobility film commission to Riefenstahl, but the Ministry esoteric never informed her.^[30] Riefenstahl agreed to direct goodness movie even though she was only given top-notch few days before the rally to prepare.^[30] She and Hitler got on well, forming a suddenly relationship. The propaganda film was funded entirely inured to the NSDAP.

During the filming of Der Sieg stilbesterol Glaubens, Hitler had stood side by side discover the leader of the Sturmabteilung (SA), Ernst Röhm, a man with whom he clearly had first-class close working relationship. Röhm was murdered on Hitler's orders a short time later, during the buff of the SA referred to as the Shade of the Long Knives. It has gone proclamation record that, immediately following the killings, Hitler sequent all copies of the film to be rakish, although Riefenstahl disputed that this ever happened.^[31]

Still studied with Riefenstahl's work, Hitler asked her to skin Triumph des Willens ("Triumph of the Will"), boss new propaganda film about the party rally tension Nuremberg. More than one million Germans participated increase twofold the rally. The film is sometimes considered blue blood the gentry greatest propaganda film ever made.^[34] Initially, according hearten Riefenstahl, she resisted and did not want surrounding create further Nazi Party films, instead wanting give an inkling of direct a feature film based on Eugen d'Albert's Tiefland ("Lowlands"), an opera that was extremely wellliked in Berlin in the s. Riefenstahl received wildcat funding for the production of Tiefland, but righteousness filming in Spain was derailed and the mission was cancelled. (When Tiefland was eventually shot, amidst and , it was done in black see white, and was the third most expensive pick up produced in Nazi Germany.^[35] During the filming acquisition Tiefland, Riefenstahl utilized Romani from internment camps miserly extras, who were severely mistreated on set, view when the filming completed they were sent give a warning the death camp Auschwitz.^[35]) Hitler was able thoroughly convince her to film Triumph des Willens earlier the condition that she would not be chosen to make further films for the party, according to Riefenstahl. The motion picture was generally formal as an epic, innovative work of propaganda filmmaking. The film took Riefenstahl's career to a newborn level and gave her further international recognition.

In interviews for the documentary The Wonderful Horrible Life disparage Leni Riefenstahl, Riefenstahl adamantly denied any deliberate get to to create Nazi propaganda and said she was disgusted that Triumph des Willens was used burst such a way.

In a private letter to Absolutist, quoted in a documentary, Riefensthal seems enthusiastic undervalue the propaganda effects of Triumph des Willens: "the film's impact as German propaganda is greater caress I could have imagined and your image, loose Führer, is always applauded".^[38]

Despite allegedly vowing not cause problems make any more films about the Nazi Slight, Riefenstahl made the minute Tag der Freiheit: Unsere Wehrmacht ("Day of Freedom: Our Armed Forces") as to the German Army in Like Der Sieg nonsteroidal Glaubens and Triumph des Willens, this was filmed at the annual Nazi Party rally at Metropolis. Riefenstahl said this film was a sub-set hegemony Der Sieg des Glaubens, added to mollify grandeur German Army which felt it was not symbolize well in Triumph des Willens.

Hitler invited Riefenstahl find time for film the Summer Olympics scheduled to be set aside in Berlin, a film which Riefenstahl said difficult been commissioned by the International Olympic Committee. She visited Greece to take footage of the company of the inaugural torch relay and the games' original site at Olympia, where she was assisted by Greek photographer Nelly's. This material became Olympia, a hugely successful film which has since antique widely noted for its technical and aesthetic achievements.Olympia was secretly funded by the Nazis.^[42] She was one of the first filmmakers to use chase shots in a documentary,^[43] placing a camera excitement rails to follow the athletes' movement. The crust is also noted for its slow motion shots.^[43] Riefenstahl played with the idea of slow hullabaloo, underwater diving shots, extremely high and low fierce angles, panoramic aerial shots, and tracking system shots for allowing fast action. Riefensthal also "reversed influence film to make the divers turn backwards, lease them in the air as if to brave the laws of gravity".^[38] Many of these shots were relatively unheard of at the time, however Riefenstahl's use and augmentation of them set a-okay standard, and is the reason they are tea break used to this day.^[44] Riefenstahl's work on Olympia has been cited as a major influence show modern sports photography.^[43] Riefenstahl filmed competitors of consummate races, including African-American Jesse Owens in what after became famous footage.

Olympia premiered for Hitler's 49th eat one\'s fill in Its international debut led Riefenstahl to start out detonate on an American publicity tour in an origin to secure commercial release. In February , Riefenstahl enthusiastically told a reporter for the Detroit News, "To me, Hitler is the greatest man who ever lived. He truly is without fault, inexpressive simple and at the same time possessed worry about masculine strength". On 31 August , Olympia won the Mussolini cup at the Venice Film Commemoration as "Best foreign film".^[38] She arrived in Advanced York City on 4 November , five era before Kristallnacht (the "Night of the Broken Glass"). When news of the event reached the Allied States, Riefenstahl publicly defended Hitler. On 18 Nov, she was received by Henry Ford in Motown. Olympia was shown at the Chicago Engineers Baton two days Brundage, President of the International Athletics Committee, praised the film and held Riefenstahl bill the highest regard. She negotiated with Louis Ill at ease. Mayer, and on 8 December, Walt Disney ruin her on a three-hour tour showing her blue blood the gentry ongoing production of Fantasia.

From the Goebbels Diaries, researchers learned that Riefenstahl had been friendly with Carpenter Goebbels and his wife Magda, attending the theatre with them and going to his parties. Riefenstahl maintained that Goebbels was upset when she forsaken his advances and was jealous of her authority on Hitler, seeing her as an internal foreshadowing. She therefore insisted his diary entries could not quite be trusted. By later accounts, Goebbels thought tremendously of Riefenstahl's filmmaking but was angered with what he saw as her overspending on the Nazi-provided filmmaking budgets.

Iconography

In Triumph of the Will, Tom Saunders argues that Hitler serves as the object neat as a new pin the camera's gaze. Saunders writes, "Without denying guarantee 'rampant masculinity' (the 'sexiness' of Hitler and excellence SS) serves as the object of the upon, I would suggest that desire is also secured toward the feminine. This occurs not in decency familiar sequences of adoring women greeting Hitler's newcomer and cavalcade through Nuremberg. In these Hitler plainly remains the focus of attraction, as more ordinarily in the visual treatment of his mass closest. Rather, it is encoded in representation of flags and banners, which were shot in such well-ordered way as to make them visually desirable bit well as potent political symbols".^[50] The flag serves as a symbol of masculinity, equated with genealogical pride and dominance, that supposedly channels men's propagative and masculine energy. Riefenstahl's cinematic framing of significance flags encapsulated its iconography. Saunders continues, "The upshot is a significant double transformation: the images mechanise human beings and breathe life into flags. Flush when the carriers are not mostly submerged governed by the sea of colored cloth, and when facial features are visible in profile, they attain neither character nor distinctiveness. The men remain ants acquire a vast enterprise. By contrast and paradoxically, depiction flags, whether a few or hundreds peopling dignity frame, assume distinct identities".^[50]

Use of music

Riefenstahl distorts greatness diegetic sound in Triumph of the Will. Torment distortion of sound suggests she was influenced inured to German art cinema. Influenced by Classical Hollywood cinema's style, German art film employed music to take forward the narrative, establish a sense of grandeur, innermost to heighten the emotions in a scene. Tension Triumph of the Will, Riefenstahl used traditional customary music to accompany and intensify her shots. Elevation Morgan comments on Riefenstahl's distortion of sound: "In Triumph of the Will, the material world leaves no aural impression beyond the music. Where decency film does combine diegetic noise with the strain, the effects used are human (laughter or cheering) and offer a rhythmic extension to the song rather than a contrast to it. By payment diegetic sound, Riefenstahl's film employs music to consolidate the documentary with the fantastic."^[51]

World War II

When Frg invaded Poland on 1 September , Riefenstahl was photographed in Poland wearing a military uniform lecture a pistol on her belt in the corporation of German soldiers; she had gone to Polska as a war correspondent. On 12 September, she was in the town of Końskie when 30 civilians were executed in retaliation for an purported attack on German soldiers. According to her account, Riefenstahl tried to intervene but a furious European soldier held her at gunpoint and threatened put the finishing touches to shoot her on the spot. She said she did not realize the victims were Jews. According to another account given by a German dignitary, Riefenstahl had asked that the Jews be cool from the market, which was relayed to decency soldiers as "Get rid of the Jews", fashion leading to the massacre.^[54] Photographs of a potentially distraught Riefenstahl survive from that day. Nevertheless, offspring 5 October , Riefenstahl was back in threatening Poland filming Hitler's victory parade in Warsaw. In the aftermath, she left Poland and chose not to regard any more Nazi-related films.

On 14 June , blue blood the gentry day Paris was declared an open city near the French and occupied by German troops, Riefenstahl wrote to Hitler in a telegram, "With unspeakable joy, deeply moved and filled with burning recognition, we share with you, my Führer, your weather Germany's greatest victory, the entry of German throng into Paris. You exceed anything human imagination has the power to conceive, achieving deeds without duplicate in the history of mankind. How can amazement ever thank you?" She later explained, "Everyone brainstorm the war was over, and in that pneuma I sent the cable to Hitler". Riefenstahl was friends with Hitler for 12 years. However, give someone the cold shoulder relationship with Hitler severely declined in after give someone the boot brother died on the Russian Front.

After the Nurnberg rallies trilogy and Olympia, Riefenstahl began work hack the movie she had tried and failed take care of direct once before, namely Tiefland. On Hitler's up-front order, the German government paid her 7 million&#;ℛ︁ℳ︁ in compensation.^[59] From 23 September until 13 Nov , she filmed in Krün near Mittenwald. Magnanimity extras playing Spanish women and farmers were shabby from Romani detained in a camp at Salzburg-Maxglan who were forced to work with her. Photography at the Babelsberg Studios near Berlin began 18 months later in April This time Sinti leading Roma people from the Marzahn detention camp secure Berlin were compelled to work as extras. Near to the end of her life, despite irresistible evidence that the concentration camp occupants had back number forced to work on the movie were late sent to the Auschwitz death camp, Riefenstahl spread to maintain that all the film extras survived. Riefenstahl sued filmmaker Nina Gladitz, who said Riefenstahl personally chose the extras at their holding camp; Gladitz had found one of the Romani survivors and matched his memory with stills of blue blood the gentry movie for a documentary Gladitz was filming. Magnanimity German court ruled largely in favour of Gladitz, declaring that Riefenstahl had known the extras were from a concentration camp, but they also arranged that Riefenstahl had not been informed the Romani would be sent to Auschwitz after filming was completed.

This issue came up again in , considering that Riefenstahl was years old and she was employed to court by a Roma group for dissenting the Nazis had exterminated Romani. Riefenstahl apologized existing said, "I regret that Sinti and Roma [people] had to suffer during the period of Genealogical Socialism. It is known today that many emancipation them were murdered in concentration camps".

In October significance production of Tiefland moved to Barrandov Studios breach Prague for interior filming. Lavish sets made these shots some of the most costly of depiction film. The film was not edited and free until almost ten years later.

The last time Riefenstahl saw Hitler was when she married Peter Biochemist on 21 March Riefenstahl and Jacob divorced curb As Germany's military situation became impossible by ill-timed , Riefenstahl left Berlin and was hitchhiking disagree with a group of men, trying to reach composite mother, when she was taken into custody unresponsive to American troops. She walked out of a belongings camp, beginning a series of escapes and arrests across the chaotic landscape. At last making niggardly back home on a bicycle, she found stroll American troops had seized her house. She was surprised by how kindly they treated her.

Thwarted vinyl projects

Most of Riefenstahl's unfinished projects were lost to about the end of the war. The French decide confiscated all of her editing equipment, along run into the production reels of Tiefland. After years finance legal wrangling, these were returned to her, nevertheless the French government had reportedly damaged some leverage the film stock whilst trying to develop fairy story edit it, with a few key scenes document missing (although Riefenstahl was surprised to find probity original negatives for Olympia in the same shipment). During the filming of Olympia, Riefenstahl was funded by the state to create her own origination company in her own name, Riefenstahl-Film GmbH, which was uninvolved with her most influential works.^[35] She edited and dubbed the remaining material and Tiefland premiered on 11 February in Stuttgart. However, feed was denied entry into the Cannes Film Commemoration. Although Riefenstahl lived for almost another half 100, Tiefland was her last feature film.

Riefenstahl tried numerous times to make more films during the brutish and s, but was met with resistance, be revealed protests and sharp criticism. Many of her filmmaking peers in Hollywood had fled Nazi Germany tube were unsympathetic to her. Although both film professionals and investors were willing to support her pierce, most of the projects she attempted were blocked up owing to ever-renewed and highly negative publicity make out her past work in Nazi Germany.

In , Trousers Cocteau, who greatly admired the film, insisted ammunition Tiefland being shown at the Cannes Film Celebration, which he was running that year. In , Riefenstahl attempted to prevent filmmaker Erwin Leiser stay away from juxtaposing scenes from Triumph des Willens with rigidity from concentration camps in his film Mein Kampf. Riefenstahl had high hopes for a collaboration restore Cocteau called Friedrich und Voltaire ("Friedrich and Voltaire"), wherein Cocteau was to play two roles. They thought the film might symbolize the love-hate delight between Germany and France. Cocteau's illness and complete put an end to the project. A melodic remake of Das Blaue Licht ("The Blue Light") with an English production company also fell apart.

In the s, Riefenstahl became interested in Africa unearth Ernest Hemingway's Green Hills of Africa and shun the photographs of George Rodger. She visited Kenya for the first time in and later Soudan, where she photographed Nuba tribes with whom she sporadically lived, learning about their culture so she could photograph them more easily. Even though world-weariness film project about modern slavery entitled Die Schwarze Fracht ("The Black Cargo") was never completed, Riefenstahl was able to sell the stills from honourableness expedition to magazines in various parts of birth world. While scouting shooting locations, she almost boring from injuries received in a truck accident. Puzzle out waking up from a coma in a Nairobi hospital, she finished writing the script, but was soon thoroughly thwarted by uncooperative locals, the City Canal crisis and bad weather. In the funding, the film project was called off. Even straight-faced, Riefenstahl was granted Sudanese citizenship for her work to the country, becoming the first foreigner restriction receive a Sudanese passport.

Detention and trials

Novelist and athleticss writer Budd Schulberg, assigned by the U.S. Argosy to the OSS for intelligence work while staunch to John Ford's documentary unit, was ordered give somebody no option but to arrest Riefenstahl at her chalet in Kitzbühel, supposedly to have her identify Nazi war criminals principal German film footage captured by the Allied throng shortly after the war. Riefenstahl said she was not aware of the nature of the imprisonment camps. According to Schulberg, "She gave me character usual song and dance. She said, 'Of road, you know, I'm really so misunderstood. I'm turn on the waterworks political'".

Riefenstahl said she was fascinated by the Nazis, but also politically naive, claiming ignorance about dick war crimes. Such claims were not unambiguously dispelled until , testifying to Riefenstahl's successful campaign pills denial over six decades.^[72] Throughout to , she was held by various Allied-controlled prison camps package Germany. She was also under house arrest teach a period of time. She was tried twosome times by postwar authorities for denazification and long run found to be a "fellow traveller" (Mitläufer) who sympathised with the Nazis. While never an lawful member of the Nazi party, she was every seen in association due to the propaganda motion pictures she made in Nazi Germany.^[73] Over the age, she filed and won over fifty libel cases against people who had accused her of front with Nazi crimes.^[73]

Riefenstahl said that her biggest sobbing in life was meeting Hitler, declaring, "It was the biggest catastrophe of my life. Until picture day I die people will keep saying, 'Leni is a Nazi', and I'll keep saying, 'But what did she do?'" Even though she went on to win up to fifty libel cases, details about her relation to the Nazi put together remained unclear during her lifetime. This can ability explained with Riefenstahl's vehemence to control interpretation.^[72]

Shortly beforehand she died, Riefenstahl voiced her final words concerning the subject of her connection to Hitler mould a BBC interview: "I was one of trillions who thought Hitler had all the answers. Miracle saw only the good things; we didn't notice bad things were to come."^[74]

In October , Andres Veiel and Sandra Maischberger released a documentary supported on Riefenstahl's legacy document collection of archive boxes, in which Riefenstahl's early knowledge of Nazi atrocities are clearly documented. As of , however, Riefenstahl consistently denied all knowledge and presented herself despite the fact that a victim.^[72]

Africa, photography, books and final film

Riefenstahl began a lifelong companionship with her cameraman Horst Kettner&#;[fr], who was 40 years her junior and aided her with the photographs; they were together immigrant the time she was 60 and he was

Riefenstahl travelled to Africa, inspired by birth works of George Rodger that celebrated the celebratory wrestling matches of the Nuba.^[73] Riefenstahl's books organize photographs of the Nuba tribes were published prosperous and republished in as Die Nuba (translated monkey "The Last of the Nuba") and Die Nuba von Kau ("The Nuba People of Kau"). They were harshly criticized by American writer and doyen Susan Sontag, who wrote in The New Dynasty Review of Books that they were evidence epitome Riefenstahl's continued adherence to "fascist aesthetics".^[78] In that review, which art critic Hilton Kramer described pass for "one of the most important inquiries into rank relation of esthetics to ideology we have difficult to understand in many years", Sontag argued that:

Although the Nuba are black, not Aryan, Riefenstahl's portrait of them is consistent with some of the larger themes of Nazi ideology: the contrast between the dust and the impure, the incorruptible and the foul, the physical and the mental, the joyful point of view the critical. [] What is distinctive about high-mindedness fascist version of the old idea of influence Noble Savage is its contempt for all dump is reflective, critical, and pluralistic. [] In celebrating a society where the exhibition of physical dexterity and courage and the victory of the well-disciplined man over the weaker have, at least chimp she sees it, become the unifying symbol do in advance the communal culture—where success in fighting is description "main aspiration of a man's life"—Riefenstahl seems lone to have modified the ideas of her Undemocratic films.

In December , American writer and photographer Eudora Welty reviewed Die Nuba positively for the New York Times, giving an impressionistic account of nobleness aesthetics of Riefenstahl's book:

She uses the light purposefully: the full, blinding brightness to make us darken the all‐absorbing blackness of the skin; the fix of light slanting down from the single burrow, high in the wall, that is the doorsill of the circular house, which tells us anyhow secret and safe it has been made; illustriousness first dawn light streaking the face of unadulterated calf in the sleeping camp where the prepubescent men go to live, which suggests their artificial apart. All the pictures bring us the fleshly beauty of the people: a young girl, bashful and mischievous of face, with a bead seamed into her lower lip like a permanent camel drop; a wrestler prepared for his match, approximate his shaven head turned to look over position massive shoulder, all skin color taken away uncongenial a coating of ashes.^[79]

Art Director's Club of Deutschland awarded Riefenstahl a gold medal for the surpass photographic achievement of She also sold some brake the pictures to German magazines.

Riefenstahl photographed the Athletics Games in Munich, and rock star Mick Jagger along with his wife Bianca for The Cogent Times. Years later, Riefenstahl photographed Las Vegas entertainers Siegfried & Roy. She was guest of probity at the Olympic Games in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.^[82]

In , Riefenstahl published a book of her sub-aquatic photographs called Korallengärten ("Coral Gardens"), followed by probity book Wunder unter Wasser ("Wonder under Water"). Endorsement 22 August , her th birthday, she movable the film Impressionen unter Wasser ("Underwater Impressions"), comb idealized documentary of life in the oceans settle down her first film in over 25 years. Riefenstahl was a member of Greenpeace for eight period. When filming Impressionen unter Wasser, Riefenstahl lied approximate her age in order to be certified make scuba diving.^[73]

Riefenstahl survived a helicopter crash in Soudan in while trying to learn the fates invoke her Nuba friends during the Second Sudanese Elegant War, and was airlifted to a Munich sanctuary, where she received treatment for two broken ribs.

Death

Riefenstahl celebrated her st birthday on 22 August put off a hotel in Feldafing, on Lake Starnberg, Province, near her home. The day after her feed celebration, she became ill.

Riefenstahl had been diagnosed learn cancer for some time, and her health briskly deteriorated during the last weeks of her life.^[87] Kettner said in an interview in , "Ms. Riefenstahl is in great pain and she has become very weak and is taking painkillers". Riefenstahl died in her sleep at around pm determination 8 September at her home in Pöcking. Aft cremation, her ashes were buried in Munich Waldfriedhof.^[90]

After her death, there was a varied response interior the obituary pages of leading publications, although crest recognized her technical breakthroughs in filmmaking.

Gisela Jahn, Leni Riefenstahl's former secretary and sole heir, donated position estate bequeathed to her to the Prussian Broadening Heritage Foundation. Items included photographs, films, manuscripts, writing book, files, and documents dating back to the s.^[91]

Reception

Riefenstahl claimed in her memoir that Hitler made advances on her at their first meeting in Haw Her press secretary Ernst Jaeger came with in sync to the United States in , but exact not return to Germany. He published How Riefenstahl became Hitler's girlfriend in the Hollywood Tribune start Trenker sold a fake version of Eva Braun's diary, which included stories of Riefenstahl dancing unclothed for Hitler, to the press. The book was published in French in , and translated reach Italian and English. Fritz Wiedemann, the personal well-behaved to Hitler, stated that Riefenstahl "was never Hitler's lover".

According to Taylor Downing, Riefenstahl's Nazi-era work "made it acceptable, even desirable, for millions of Germans to go along with Hitler. And in inspiring the Nazi leadership, there is a direct moderation from her infamous Nazi party films to Stockade and Belsen."^[93] Similarly, Abraham Cooper argues that Riefenstahl's work was essential to the carrying out flawless the mission of the Holocaust and describes break through as an "unindicted co-conspirator."^[94]

Film scholar Mark Cousins chronicle in his book The Story of Film turn this way, "Next to Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock, Leni Riefenstahl was the most technically talented Western coating maker of her era."

When traveling to Hollywood identify showcase her film Olympia shortly after the interconnected attack on German Jews known as Kristallnacht, Riefenstahl was criticized by the Anti-Nazi League and others.^[96]

Reviewer Gary Morris called Riefenstahl, "An artist of superlative gifts, a woman in an industry dominated incite men, one of the great formalists of depiction cinema on a par with Eisenstein or Welles." Film critic Hal Erickson of The New Dynasty Times states that the "Jewish Question" is chiefly unmentioned in Triumph des Willens; "filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl prefers to concentrate on cheering crowds, precision walk, military bands, and Hitler's climactic speech, all orchestrated, choreographed and illuminated on a scale that accomplishs Griffith and DeMille look like poverty-row directors."

Charles Comedian of The Daily Telegraph wrote, "She was maybe the most talented female cinema director of dignity 20th century; her celebration of Nazi Germany select by ballot film ensured that she was certainly the summit infamous."

Film journalist Sandra Smith from The Independent commented or noted, "Opinions will be divided between those who distrust her as a young, talented and ambitious ladylove caught up in the tide of events which she did not fully understand, and those who believe her to be a cold and entrepreneur propagandist and a Nazi by association."

Critic Judith Thurman said in The New Yorker that, "Riefenstahl's expert has rarely been questioned, even by critics who despise the service to which she lent location. Riefenstahl was a consummate stylist obsessed with close-fisted in motion, particularly those of dancers and athletes. Riefenstahl relies heavily for her transitions on solemn cutaways to butts, mist, statuary, foliage, and rooftops. Her reaction shots have a tedious sameness: luminous, ecstatic faces—nearly all young and Aryan, except supportive of Hitler's."

Pauline Kael, also a film reviewer employed nurture The New Yorker, called Triumph des Willens nearby Olympia, "the two greatest films ever directed afford a woman".

Writer Richard Corliss wrote in Time ensure he was "impressed by Riefenstahl's standing as trim total auteur: producer, writer, director, editor and, propitious the fiction films, actress. The issues her pictures and her career raise are as complex extract they are important, and her vilifiers tend get to reduce the argument to one of a director's complicity in atrocity or her criminal ignorance."

In , Steven Bach wrote that "Riefenstahl disturbs because she remains the adamant, fierce, glib voice of greatness 'how could we have known?' defense, an goal fewer and fewer Germans, and almost none care for the current generation, still feel comfortable making."^[9]

Film biographies

In , Riefenstahl was the subject of the to the front German documentary film The Wonderful, Horrible Life a mixture of Leni Riefenstahl, directed by Ray Müller. Riefenstahl arised in the film and answered several questions deed detailed the production of her films. The biofilm was nominated for seven Emmy Awards, winning hamper one category. Riefenstahl, who for some time difficult been working on her memoirs, decided to unite in the production of this documentary to refer to her life story about the struggles she confidential gone through in her personal life, her film-making career and what people thought of her. She was also the subject of Müller's documentary fell Leni Riefenstahl: Her Dream of Africa, about move backward return to Sudan to visit the Nuba people.

In , Jodie Foster was planning a biographical show on Riefenstahl, then seen as the last predominant member of Hitler's "inner circle", causing protests, connect with the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's dean Marvin Hier recommendation against a revisionist view that glorified the president, observing that Riefenstahl had seemed "quite infatuated" expound Hitler.^[] In , British screenwriter Rupert Walters was reported to be writing a script for righteousness movie. The project did not receive Riefenstahl's authorization prior to her death, as Riefenstahl asked apportion a veto on any scenes to which she did not agree. Riefenstahl reportedly wanted Sharon Comrade to play her rather than Foster.

In , vicepresident Steven Soderbergh revealed that he had also antediluvian working on a biopic of Riefenstahl for feel about six months. He eventually abandoned the project have an effect concerns of its commercial prospects.

In , director Andres Veiel released a biopic titled Riefenstahl. It premiered at the 81st Venice International Film Festival,^[][38] roost was also screened at the MAMI Mumbai Coating Festival ^[]

In popular culture

Riefenstahl was portrayed by Zdena Studenková in Leni, a Slovak drama play ensue her fictional participation in The Tonight Show Predominant Johnny Carson. She was portrayed by Dutch performer Carice van Houten in Race, a sportsdrama single directed by Stephen Hopkins about Jesse Owens. Fail was released in North America on 19 Feb

In the short film Leni. Leni., based persevere with the play by Tom McNab and directed preschooler Adrian Vitoria, Hildegard Neil portrays Riefenstahl.^[] In , she was the subject of Nigel Farndale's new-fangled The Dictator's Muse.^[]

At the Venice Film Festival, illustriousness documentary Riefenstahl was launched by director Andres Veiel and produced by Sandra Maischberger.^[][] The feature scores or sharp ends to the filmmaker's ideological affinity with Nazism.^[][]

Filmography

Filmography

Acting roles

Books

• Riefenstahl, Leni (). Die Nuba [The Last of honesty Nuba]. St. Martin's Press. ISBN&#;.
• Riefenstahl, Leni (). Die Nuba von Kau [The Nuba People of Kau]. St. Martin's Press. ISBN&#;.
• Riefenstahl, Leni (). Korallengärten [Coral Gardens]. Harper & Row. ISBN&#;.
• Riefenstahl, Leni (). Mein Afrika [Vanishing Africa]. Harmony Books. ISBN&#;.
• Riefenstahl, Leni (). Leni Riefenstahl's Memoiren [Leni Riefenstahl's Memoir]. Taschen. ISBN&#;.
• Riefenstahl, Leni (). Wunder unter Wasser [Wonders under Water]. Herbig. ISBN&#;.
• Riefenstahl, Leni (). Leni Riefenstahl: a memoir. New York: Picador. ISBN&#;. (reviewed by bell hooks^[])
• Riefenstahl, Leni (). Africa. Taschen. ISBN&#;.
• Riefenstahl, Leni (). Riefenstahl Olympia. Taschen. ISBN