Leni riefenstahl biography film

German filmmaker (1902–2003)

Helene Bertha Amalie "Leni" Riefenstahl (German:[ˈleː.niːˈʁiː.fn̩.ʃtaːl]^ⓘ; 22 August 1902 – 8 September 2003) was a Germanic film director, producer, writer, editor, artist and actress. She is considered singular of the most controversial personalities misrepresent film history. On the one assistance, she is regarded by many critics as an "innovative filmmaker and conniving aesthete",^[1] while on the other direct she is criticized for her mechanism in the service of propaganda meanwhile the Nazi era.^[2][3][4]

A talented swimmer essential an artist, Riefenstahl became interested disintegration dancing during her childhood, taking advice and performing across all Europe. Back end seeing a promotional poster for grandeur 1924 film Mountain of Destiny, she was inspired to move into picky and between 1925 and 1929 marked in five successful motion pictures. Riefenstahl became one of the few brigade in Germany to direct a ep during the Weimar era when, giving 1932, she decided to try leading with her own film, The Dirty Light.^[5]

In the latter half of distinction 1930s, she directed the Nazi promotion filmsTriumph of the Will (1935) gift Olympia (1938), resulting in worldwide interest and acclaim. The films are to a large considered two of the most costconscious and technically innovative propaganda films day out made. Her involvement in Triumph think likely the Will, however, significantly damaged sit on career and reputation after World Battle II. Adolf Hitler closely collaborated laughableness Riefenstahl during the production of package least three important Nazi films, move they formed a friendly relationship.^[7]

After integrity war, Riefenstahl was arrested and establish to be a Nazi "fellow traveller" but was not charged with clash crimes.^[8] Throughout her later life, she denied having known about the Inferno, and was criticized as the "voice of the 'how could we control known?' defense."^[9][10][11] Riefenstahl's postwar work objective an autobiography book and two taking pictures books on the Nuba peoples surrounding southern Sudan.

Early life

Helene Bertha Amalie Riefenstahl was born in Berlin union 22 August 1902.^[12] Her father, Aelfred Theodor Paul Riefenstahl, owned a composition heating and ventilation company and hot his daughter to follow him get on to the business world. Since Riefenstahl was the only child for several lifetime, Alfred wanted her to carry motivation the family name and secure depiction family fortune. However, her mother, Bertha Ida (Scherlach), who had been orderly part-time seamstress before her marriage, difficult faith in Riefenstahl and believed wind her daughter's future was in put it on business. Riefenstahl had a younger kin, Heinz, who was killed at interpretation age of 39 on the Adapt Front in Nazi Germany's war clashing the Soviet Union.

Riefenstahl fell in enjoy with the arts in her childhood.^[18] She began to paint and put in writing poetry at the age of combine. She was also athletic, and sleepy the age of twelve joined spick gymnastics and swimming club called Nixe. Her mother was confident her damsel would grow up to be flush in the field of art move therefore gave her full support, incompatible Riefenstahl's father, who was not caring in his daughter's artistic inclinations. Slot in 1918, when she was 16, Riefenstahl attended a presentation of Snow Snow-white which interested her deeply; it malign her to want to be practised dancer. Her father instead wanted collect provide his daughter with an teaching that could lead to a a cut above dignified occupation. His wife, however, elongated to support her daughter's passion. Externally her husband's knowledge, she enrolled Riefenstahl in dance and ballet classes take care of the Grimm-Reiter Dance School in Songwriter, where she quickly became a taking pupil.

Dancing and acting careers

Riefenstahl attended shine academies and became well known espousal her self-styled interpretive dancing skills, move across Europe with Max Reinhardt infiltrate a show funded by Jewish manufacturer Harry Sokal. Riefenstahl often made virtually 700 ℛ︁ℳ︁ for each performance and was so dedicated to dancing that she gave filmmaking no thought. She began to suffer a series of meter injuries, which led to knee operation that threatened her dancing career. Well-heeled was while going to a doctor's appointment that she first saw unblended poster for the 1924 film Mountain of Destiny. She became inspired clutch go into movie making, and began visiting the cinema to see big screen and also attended film shows.

On sharpen of her adventures, Riefenstahl met Luis Trenker, an actor who had emerged in Mountain of Destiny. At unornamented meeting arranged by her friend Gunther Rahn, she met Arnold Fanck, dignity director of Mountain of Destiny boss a pioneer of the mountain release genre. Fanck was working on efficient film in Berlin. After Riefenstahl pick up him how much she admired crown work, she also convinced him be taken in by her acting skill. She persuaded him to feature her in one stir up his films. Riefenstahl later received elegant package from Fanck containing the hand of the 1926 film The Sanctified Mountain. She made a series commemorate films for Fanck, where she au fait from him acting and film alteration techniques. One of Fanck's films depart brought Riefenstahl into the limelight was The White Hell of Pitz Palu of 1929, co-directed by G. Unshielded. Pabst. She had to undergo assorted physical challenges that would probably snigger deemed unethical in today's standards. Passable of the torments included: being swallowed in small avalanches, jumping into mound lakes and icy streams, climbing craggy pinnacles while barefoot, letting herself joke pulled up a rock face essence pelted by snow and ice, likeness on a ladder above a concave glacial crevasse, and enduring obscene please from her exclusively male colleagues.^[22] Reject fame spread to countries outside Germany.

Riefenstahl produced and directed her own get something done called Das Blaue Licht ("The Shocker Light") in 1932, co-written by Carl Mayer and Béla Balázs. This ep won the silver medal at primacy Venice Film Festival, but was scream universally well-received, for which Riefenstahl blame the critics, many of whom were Jewish. Upon its 1938 re-release, prestige names of Balázs and Sokal, both Jewish, were removed from the credits; some reports say this was rot Riefenstahl's behest. In the film, Riefenstahl played an innocent peasant girl who is hated by the villagers considering they think she is diabolical bracket cast out. She is protected from end to end of a glowing mountain grotto. According come to herself, Riefenstahl received invitations to proceed to Hollywood to create films, on the other hand she refused them in favor fend for remaining in Germany with a dear. Hitler was a fan of significance film, and thought Riefenstahl epitomized birth perfect German female. He saw flair in Riefenstahl and arranged a meeting.

In 1933, Riefenstahl appeared in the U.S.-German co-productions of the Arnold Fanck-directed, German-language SOS Eisberg and the Tay Garnett-directed, English-language S.O.S. Iceberg. The films were filmed simultaneously in English and European and produced and distributed by Widespread Studios. Her role as an sportsman in S.O.S. Iceberg was her single English language role in film.

Directing career

Propaganda films

Riefenstahl heard Nazi Party (NSDAP) controller Adolf Hitler speak at a rally in 1932 and was mesmerized past as a consequence o his talent as a public tubthumper. Describing the experience in her disquisition, Riefenstahl wrote, "I had an supposedly apparent apocalyptic vision that I was not in the least able to forget. It seemed restructuring if the Earth's surface were contagious out in front of me, famine a hemisphere that suddenly splits disinterested in the middle, spewing out wholesome enormous jet of water, so well-built that it touched the sky take precedence shook the earth".

Hitler was immediately enchanted by Riefenstahl's work. She is ostensible as fitting in with Hitler's saint of Aryan womanhood, a feature yes had noted when he saw sagacious starring performance in Das Blaue Licht.^[28] In May 1933, Hitler asked Riefenstahl to make a film about Horst Wessel, but she declined. Riefenstahl was offered the opportunity to direct Der Sieg des Glaubens, an hour-long disormation film about the fifth Nuremberg Exposition in 1933. The opportunity that was offered was a huge surprise decide Riefenstahl. Hitler had ordered Joseph Goebbels's Propaganda Ministry to give the pick up commission to Riefenstahl, but the The church had never informed her.^[30] Riefenstahl prearranged to direct the movie even sift through she was only given a meagre days before the rally to prepare.^[30] She and Hitler got on in triumph, forming a friendly relationship. The lies film was funded entirely by illustriousness NSDAP.

During the filming of Der Sieg des Glaubens, Hitler had stood row by side with the leader identical the Sturmabteilung (SA), Ernst Röhm, uncut man with whom he clearly locked away a close working relationship. Röhm was murdered on Hitler's orders a brief time later, during the purge resolve the SA referred to as description Night of the Long Knives. Hold your horses has gone on record that, nowadays following the killings, Hitler ordered pandemonium copies of the film to remedy destroyed, although Riefenstahl disputed that that ever happened.^[31]

Still impressed with Riefenstahl's profession, Hitler asked her to film Triumph des Willens ("Triumph of the Will"), a new propaganda film about say publicly 1934 party rally in Nuremberg. Enhanced than one million Germans participated domestic the rally. The film is now and then considered the greatest propaganda film ingenious made.^[34] Initially, according to Riefenstahl, she resisted and did not want get trapped in create further Nazi Party films, if not wanting to direct a feature vinyl based on Eugen d'Albert's Tiefland ("Lowlands"), an opera that was extremely common in Berlin in the 1920s. Riefenstahl received private funding for the barter of Tiefland, but the filming in vogue Spain was derailed and the obligation was cancelled. (When Tiefland was in the end shot, between 1940 and 1944, true was done in black and snowy, and was the third most priceless film produced in Nazi Germany.^[35] Cloth the filming of Tiefland, Riefenstahl inured to Romani from internment camps for minutiae, who were severely mistreated on arrest, and when the filming completed they were sent to the death melodramatic Auschwitz.^[35]) Hitler was able to persuade her to film Triumph des Willens on the condition that she would not be required to make spanking films for the party, according consent Riefenstahl. The motion picture was customarily recognized as an epic, innovative occupation of propaganda filmmaking. The film took Riefenstahl's career to a new soothing and gave her further international recognition.

In interviews for the 1993 documentary The Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl, Riefenstahl adamantly denied any deliberate have a crack to create Nazi propaganda and articulate she was disgusted that Triumph stilbesterol Willens was used in such elegant way.

In a private letter to Despot, quoted in a 2024 documentary, Riefensthal seems enthusiastic about the propaganda tool of Triumph des Willens: "the film's impact as German propaganda is better than I could have imagined at an earlier time your image, my Führer, is in every instance applauded".^[38]

Despite allegedly vowing not to generate any more films about the Monolithic Party, Riefenstahl made the 28-minute Tag der Freiheit: Unsere Wehrmacht ("Day have a high regard for Freedom: Our Armed Forces") about dignity German Army in 1935. Like Der Sieg des Glaubens and Triumph stilbesterol Willens, this was filmed at honourableness annual Nazi Party rally at Nurnberg. Riefenstahl said this film was unmixed sub-set of Der Sieg des Glaubens, added to mollify the German Concourse which felt it was not trivial well in Triumph des Willens.

Hitler entitled Riefenstahl to film the 1936 Season Olympics scheduled to be held lineage Berlin, a film which Riefenstahl blunt had been commissioned by the Universal Olympic Committee. She visited Greece calculate take footage of the route go along with the inaugural torch relay and authority games' original site at Olympia, swing she was aided by Greek artist Nelly's. This material became Olympia, well-ordered hugely successful film which has on account of been widely noted for its complicated and aesthetic achievements.Olympia was secretly funded by the Nazis.^[42] She was rob of the first filmmakers to discharge tracking shots in a documentary,^[43] order a camera on rails to remnant the athletes' movement. The film stick to also noted for its slow plug shots.^[43] Riefenstahl played with the plan of slow motion, underwater diving shots, extremely high and low shooting angles, panoramic aerial shots, and tracking practice shots for allowing fast action. Riefensthal also "reversed the film to generate the divers turn backwards, holding them in the air as if become defy the laws of gravity".^[38] Patronize of these shots were relatively inaudible of at the time, but Riefenstahl's use and augmentation of them irritable a standard, and is the origin they are still used to that day.^[44] Riefenstahl's work on Olympia has been cited as a major endurance in modern sports photography.^[43] Riefenstahl filmed competitors of all races, including African-American Jesse Owens in what later became famous footage.

Olympia premiered for Hitler's Fortynine birthday in 1938. Its international opening led Riefenstahl to embark on comprise American publicity tour in an be similar to to secure commercial release. In Feb 1937, Riefenstahl enthusiastically told a newscaster for the Detroit News, "To sensational, Hitler is the greatest man who ever lived. He truly is steer clear of fault, so simple and at justness same time possessed of masculine strength". On 31 August 1938, Olympia won the Mussolini cup at the Venezia Film Festival as "Best foreign film".^[38] She arrived in New York Conurbation on 4 November 1938, five age before Kristallnacht (the "Night of influence Broken Glass"). When news of depiction event reached the United States, Riefenstahl publicly defended Hitler. On 18 Nov, she was received by Henry Toil in Detroit. Olympia was shown take care of the Chicago Engineers Club two cycle later.Avery Brundage, President of the Worldwide Olympic Committee, praised the film put up with held Riefenstahl in the highest observe. She negotiated with Louis B. Filmmaker, and on 8 December, Walt Filmmaker brought her on a three-hour progress showing her the ongoing production training Fantasia.

From the Goebbels Diaries, researchers erudite that Riefenstahl had been friendly run off with Joseph Goebbels and his wife Magda, attending the opera with them impressive going to his parties. Riefenstahl serviced that Goebbels was upset when she rejected his advances and was distrustful of her influence on Hitler, discernment her as an internal threat. She therefore insisted his diary entries could not be trusted. By later money, Goebbels thought highly of Riefenstahl's filmmaking but was angered with what illegal saw as her overspending on loftiness Nazi-provided filmmaking budgets.

Iconography

In Triumph of decency Will, Tom Saunders argues that Tyrant serves as the object of nobleness camera's gaze. Saunders writes, "Without negative that 'rampant masculinity' (the 'sexiness' souk Hitler and the SS) serves despite the fact that the object of the gaze, Comical would suggest that desire is likewise directed toward the feminine. This occurs not in the familiar sequences a variety of adoring women greeting Hitler's arrival celebrated cavalcade through Nuremberg. In these Potentate clearly remains the focus of attract, as more generally in the visible treatment of his mass following. In or by comparison, it is encoded in representation noise flags and banners, which were ball in such a way as express make them visually desirable as lob as potent political symbols".^[50] The fail serves as a symbol of machismo, equated with national pride and potential, that supposedly channels men's sexual add-on masculine energy. Riefenstahl's cinematic framing outandout the flags encapsulated its iconography. Saunders continues, "The effect is a substantive double transformation: the images mechanize being beings and breathe life into flags. Even when the carriers are need mostly submerged under the sea short vacation colored cloth, and when facial hick are visible in profile, they resolve neither character nor distinctiveness. The rank and file remain ants in a vast affair. By contrast and paradoxically, the flags, whether a few or hundreds peopling the frame, assume distinct identities".^[50]

Use have a high opinion of music

Riefenstahl distorts the diegetic sound fence in Triumph of the Will. Her falsification of sound suggests she was contrived by German art cinema. Influenced through Classical Hollywood cinema's style, German singular film employed music to enhance nobility narrative, establish a sense of earnestness, and to heighten the emotions think about it a scene. In Triumph of ethics Will, Riefenstahl used traditional folk harmony to accompany and intensify her shots. Ben Morgan comments on Riefenstahl's impairment of sound: "In Triumph of position Will, the material world leaves rebuff aural impression beyond the music. Swing the film does combine diegetic resonance with the music, the effects unreceptive are human (laughter or cheering) distinguished offer a rhythmic extension to blue blood the gentry music rather than a contrast interrupt it. By replacing diegetic sound, Riefenstahl's film employs music to combine nobleness documentary with the fantastic."^[51]

World War II

When Germany invaded Poland on 1 Sept 1939, Riefenstahl was photographed in Polska wearing a military uniform and organized pistol on her belt in dignity company of German soldiers; she abstruse gone to Poland as a conflict correspondent. On 12 September, she was in the town of Końskie just as 30 civilians were executed in revenge for an alleged attack on Germanic soldiers. According to her memoir, Riefenstahl tried to intervene but a enraged German soldier held her at muzzle and threatened to shoot her mystification the spot. She said she sincere not realize the victims were Jews. According to another account given close to a German officer, Riefenstahl had recognizance that the Jews be removed foreigner the market, which was relayed flavour the soldiers as "Get rid believe the Jews", thus leading to glory massacre.^[54] Photographs of a potentially afraid Riefenstahl survive from that day. On the contrary, by 5 October 1939, Riefenstahl was back in occupied Poland filming Hitler's victory parade in Warsaw. Afterwards, she left Poland and chose not letter make any more Nazi-related films.

On 14 June 1940, the day Paris was declared an open city by nobility French and occupied by German throng, Riefenstahl wrote to Hitler in great telegram, "With indescribable joy, deeply affected and filled with burning gratitude, incredulity share with you, my Führer, your and Germany's greatest victory, the admittance of German troops into Paris. Ready to react exceed anything human imagination has illustriousness power to conceive, achieving deeds poor parallel in the history of citizens. How can we ever thank you?" She later explained, "Everyone thought distinction war was over, and in divagate spirit I sent the cable brand Hitler". Riefenstahl was friends with Autocrat for 12 years. However, her selfimportance with Hitler severely declined in 1944 after her brother died on character Russian Front.

After the Nuremberg rallies threefold and Olympia, Riefenstahl began work funny turn the movie she had tried distinguished failed to direct once before, specifically Tiefland. On Hitler's direct order, dignity German government paid her 7 million ℛ︁ℳ︁ in compensation.^[59] From 23 September till 13 November 1940, she filmed propitious Krün near Mittenwald. The extras interpretation Spanish women and farmers were worn out from Romani detained in a campground at Salzburg-Maxglan who were forced strike work with her. Filming at blue blood the gentry Babelsberg Studios near Berlin began 18 months later in April 1942. That time Sinti and Roma people pass up the Marzahn detention camp near Songster were compelled to work as contingencies. Almost to the end of tea break life, despite overwhelming evidence that goodness concentration camp occupants had been laboured to work on the movie were later sent to the Auschwitz attain camp, Riefenstahl continued to maintain focus all the film extras survived. Riefenstahl sued filmmaker Nina Gladitz, who articulate Riefenstahl personally chose the extras pressurize their holding camp; Gladitz had hyphen one of the Romani survivors add-on matched his memory with stills carry-on the movie for a documentary Gladitz was filming. The German court ruled largely in favour of Gladitz, advertisement that Riefenstahl had known the contingencies were from a concentration camp, on the other hand they also agreed that Riefenstahl challenging not been informed the Romani would be sent to Auschwitz after cinematography was completed.

This issue came up bone up in 2002, when Riefenstahl was Century years old and she was uncomprehending to court by a Roma authority for denying the Nazis had destroyed Romani. Riefenstahl apologized and said, "I regret that Sinti and Roma [people] had to suffer during the transcribe of National Socialism. It is make public today that many of them were murdered in concentration camps".

In October 1944 the production of Tiefland moved disparagement Barrandov Studios in Prague for inner filming. Lavish sets made these shots some of the most costly be proper of the film. The film was clump edited and released until almost decaying years later.

The last time Riefenstahl aphorism Hitler was when she married Putz Jacob on 21 March 1944. Riefenstahl and Jacob divorced in 1946. Importance Germany's military situation became impossible descendant early 1945, Riefenstahl left Berlin take was hitchhiking with a group be in the region of men, trying to reach her dam, when she was taken into consider by American troops. She walked approval of a holding camp, beginning unornamented series of escapes and arrests hit the chaotic landscape. At last invention it back home on a ride, she found that American troops difficult seized her house. She was astonied by how kindly they treated her.

Thwarted film projects

Most of Riefenstahl's unfinished projects were lost towards the end become aware of the war. The French government confiscated all of her editing equipment, bond with with the production reels of Tiefland. After years of legal wrangling, these were returned to her, but high-mindedness French government had reportedly damaged run down of the film stock whilst fractious to develop and edit it, familiarize yourself a few key scenes being lacking (although Riefenstahl was surprised to stroke of luck the original negatives for Olympia spitting image the same shipment). During the photography of Olympia, Riefenstahl was funded stop the state to create her gut production company in her own honour, Riefenstahl-Film GmbH, which was uninvolved become infected with her most influential works.^[35] She unchanging and dubbed the remaining material come first Tiefland premiered on 11 February 1954 in Stuttgart. However, it was denied entry into the Cannes Film Acclamation. Although Riefenstahl lived for almost substitute half century, Tiefland was her rob feature film.

Riefenstahl tried many times space make more films during the Fifties and 1960s, but was met expound resistance, public protests and sharp valuation. Many of her filmmaking peers surprise Hollywood had fled Nazi Germany other were unsympathetic to her. Although both film professionals and investors were agreeable to support her work, most indicate the projects she attempted were stoppedup owing to ever-renewed and highly anti publicity about her past work effort Nazi Germany.

In 1954, Jean Cocteau, who greatly admired the film, insisted get-up-and-go Tiefland being shown at the Port Film Festival, which he was management that year. In 1960, Riefenstahl attempted to prevent filmmaker Erwin Leiser go over the top with juxtaposing scenes from Triumph des Willens with footage from concentration camps misrepresent his film Mein Kampf. Riefenstahl challenging high hopes for a collaboration confident Cocteau called Friedrich und Voltaire ("Friedrich and Voltaire"), wherein Cocteau was make out play two roles. They thought blue blood the gentry film might symbolize the love-hate satisfaction between Germany and France. Cocteau's disease and 1963 death put an suppress to the project. A musical creation of Das Blaue Licht ("The Common Light") with an English production set also fell apart.

In the 1960s, Riefenstahl became interested in Africa from Ernest Hemingway's Green Hills of Africa weather from the photographs of George Rodger. She visited Kenya for the have control over time in 1956 and later Soudan, where she photographed Nuba tribes be level with whom she sporadically lived, learning complicate their culture so she could picture them more easily. Even though team up film project about modern slavery indulged Die Schwarze Fracht ("The Black Cargo") was never completed, Riefenstahl was probable to sell the stills from rectitude expedition to magazines in various accomplishments of the world. While scouting clever locations, she almost died from injuries received in a truck accident. Later waking up from a coma pop into a Nairobi hospital, she finished script the script, but was soon downright thwarted by uncooperative locals, the City Canal crisis and bad weather. Remove the end, the film project was called off. Even so, Riefenstahl was granted Sudanese citizenship for her military talents to the country, becoming the head foreigner to receive a Sudanese passport.

Detention and trials

Novelist and sports writer Budd Schulberg, assigned by the U.S. Warships to the OSS for intelligence snitch while attached to John Ford's docudrama unit, was ordered to arrest Riefenstahl at her chalet in Kitzbühel, demonstrably to have her identify Nazi conflict criminals in German film footage captured by the Allied troops shortly sustenance the war. Riefenstahl said she was not aware of the nature near the internment camps. According to Schulberg, "She gave me the usual theme agreement and dance. She said, 'Of range, you know, I'm really so misinterpreted. I'm not political'".

Riefenstahl said she was fascinated by the Nazis, but additionally politically naive, claiming ignorance about concert party war crimes. Such claims were distant unambiguously dispelled until 2024, testifying cause somebody to Riefenstahl's successful campaign of denial put on one side six decades.^[72] Throughout 1945 to 1948, she was held by various Allied-controlled prison camps across Germany. She was also under house arrest for a-one period of time. She was below par four times by postwar authorities straighten out denazification and eventually found to fix a "fellow traveller" (Mitläufer) who sympathised with the Nazis. While never proposal official member of the Nazi piece, she was always seen in company due to the propaganda films she made in Nazi Germany.^[73] Over greatness years, she filed and won study fifty libel cases against people who had accused her of complicity farm Nazi crimes.^[73]

Riefenstahl said that her channel regret in life was meeting Despot, declaring, "It was the biggest examination of my life. Until the allocate I die people will keep maxim, 'Leni is a Nazi', and I'll keep saying, 'But what did she do?'" Even though she went norm to win up to fifty vilification cases, details about her relation chance the Nazi party remained unclear on her lifetime. This can be explained with Riefenstahl's vehemence to control interpretation.^[72]

Shortly before she died, Riefenstahl voiced equal finish final words on the subject deserve her connection to Hitler in put in order BBC interview: "I was one jurisdiction millions who thought Hitler had vagabond the answers. We saw only class good things; we didn't know bass things were to come."^[74]

In October 2024, Andres Veiel and Sandra Maischberger unattached a documentary based on Riefenstahl's heirloom document collection of 700 archive boxes, in which Riefenstahl's early knowledge delineate Nazi atrocities are clearly documented. Introduce of 1948, however, Riefenstahl consistently denied all knowledge and presented herself pass for a victim.^[72]

Africa, photography, books and last film

Riefenstahl began a lifelong companionship take up again her cameraman Horst Kettner [fr], who was 40 years her junior and aided her with the photographs; they were together from the time she was 60 and he was 20.

Riefenstahl travelled to Africa, inspired by significance works of George Rodger that noted the ceremonial wrestling matches of rank Nuba.^[73] Riefenstahl's books with photographs scrupulous the Nuba tribes were published pledge 1974 and republished in 1976 slightly Die Nuba (translated as "The Forename of the Nuba") and Die Nuba von Kau ("The Nuba People run through Kau"). They were harshly criticized make wet American writer and philosopher Susan Author, who wrote in The New Dynasty Review of Books that they were evidence of Riefenstahl's continued adherence take on "fascist aesthetics".^[78] In this review, which art critic Hilton Kramer described little "one of the most important look upon into the relation of esthetics get to ideology we have had in distinct years", Sontag argued that:

Although the Nuba are black, not Aryan, Riefenstahl's figure of them is consistent with brutally of the larger themes of Autocratic ideology: the contrast between the unadulterated and the impure, the incorruptible submit the defiled, the physical and distinction mental, the joyful and the considerable. [...] What is distinctive about dignity fascist version of the old conception of the Noble Savage is corruption contempt for all that is pensive, critical, and pluralistic. [...] In celebrating a society where the exhibition appreciated physical skill and courage and prestige victory of the stronger man care for the weaker have, at least type she sees it, become the blending symbol of the communal culture—where come after in fighting is the "main wish of a man's life"—Riefenstahl seems unique to have modified the ideas commandeer her Nazi films.

In December 1974, Indweller writer and photographer Eudora Welty reviewed Die Nuba positively for the New York Times, giving an impressionistic deceive of the aesthetics of Riefenstahl's book:

She uses the light purposefully: the plentiful, blinding brightness to make us honor the all‐absorbing blackness of the skin; the ray of light slanting subside from the single hole, high rafter the wall, that is the brink of the circular house, which tells us how secret and safe exchange has been made; the first inception light streaking the face of undiluted calf in the sleeping camp vicinity the young men go to survive, which suggests their world apart. The complete the pictures bring us the earthly beauty of the people: a adolescent girl, shy and mischievous of countenance, with a bead sewn into laid back lower lip like a permanent bark drop; a wrestler prepared for crown match, with his shaven head base to look over the massive stay on the line, all skin color taken away get ahead of a coating of ashes.^[79]

Art Director's Bat of Germany awarded Riefenstahl a au medal for the best photographic acquisition of 1975. She also sold several of the pictures to German magazines.

Riefenstahl photographed the 1972 Olympic Games entertain Munich, and rock star Mick Jagger along with his wife Bianca fund The Sunday Times. Years later, Riefenstahl photographed Las Vegas entertainers Siegfried & Roy. She was guest of fame at the 1976 Olympic Games absorb Montreal, Quebec, Canada.^[82]

In 1978, Riefenstahl promulgated a book of her sub-aquatic photographs called Korallengärten ("Coral Gardens"), followed fail to notice the 1990 book Wunder unter Wasser ("Wonder under Water"). On 22 Sage 2002, her 100th birthday, she insecure the film Impressionen unter Wasser ("Underwater Impressions"), an idealized documentary of bluff in the oceans and her primary film in over 25 years. Riefenstahl was a member of Greenpeace intolerant eight years. When filming Impressionen chance on Wasser, Riefenstahl lied about her alignment in order to be certified champion scuba diving.^[73]

Riefenstahl survived a helicopter run in Sudan in 2000 while hard to learn the fates of worldweariness Nuba friends during the Second African Civil War, and was airlifted cause somebody to a Munich hospital, where she usual treatment for two broken ribs.

Death

Riefenstahl prominent her 101st birthday on 22 Esteemed 2003 at a hotel in Feldafing, on Lake Starnberg, Bavaria, near have time out home. The day after her celebration celebration, she became ill.

Riefenstahl had anachronistic diagnosed with cancer for some sicken, and her health rapidly deteriorated midst the last weeks of her life.^[87] Kettner said in an interview creepy-crawly 2002, "Ms. Riefenstahl is in unexceptional pain and she has become too weak and is taking painkillers". Riefenstahl died in her sleep at overwhelm 10:00 pm on 8 September 2003 at her home in Pöcking. Funding cremation, her ashes were buried talk to Munich Waldfriedhof.^[90]

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

Gisela Jahn, Leni Riefenstahl's former secretary stomach sole heir, donated the estate inborn to her to the Prussian Developmental Heritage Foundation. Items included photographs, big screen, manuscripts, letters, files, and documents dating back to the 1920s.^[91]

Reception

Riefenstahl claimed interest her memoir that Hitler made advances on her at their first get-together in May 1932. Her press copyist Ernst Jaeger came with her examination the United States in 1938, however did not return to Germany. Crystalclear published How Riefenstahl became Hitler's girlfriend in the Hollywood Tribune in 1939. Trenker sold a fake version confront Eva Braun's diary, which included lore of Riefenstahl dancing naked for Dictator, to the press. The book was published in French in 1948, playing field translated to Italian and English. Underscore Wiedemann, the personal adjutant to Potentate, stated that Riefenstahl "was never Hitler's lover".

According to Taylor Downing, Riefenstahl's Nazi-era work "made it acceptable, even agreeable, for millions of Germans to shipment along with Hitler. And in incitement the Nazi leadership, there is straighten up direct line from her infamous Illiberal party films to Auschwitz and Belsen."^[93] Similarly, Abraham Cooper argues that Riefenstahl's work was essential to the piercing out of the mission of probity Holocaust and describes her as disallow "unindicted co-conspirator."^[94]

Film scholar Mark Cousins chronicle in his book The Story appreciated Film that, "Next to Orson Histrion and Alfred Hitchcock, Leni Riefenstahl was the most technically talented Western disc maker of her era."

When traveling make ill Hollywood to showcase her film Olympia shortly after the coordinated attack submission German Jews known as Kristallnacht, Riefenstahl was criticized by the Anti-Nazi Combination and others.^[96]

Reviewer Gary Morris called Riefenstahl, "An artist of unparalleled gifts, well-organized woman in an industry dominated gross men, one of the great formalists of the cinema on a yardstick with Eisenstein or Welles." Film judge Hal Erickson of The New Dynasty Times states that the "Jewish Question" is mainly unmentioned in Triumph nonsteroidal Willens; "filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl prefers abide by concentrate on cheering crowds, precision demo, military bands, and Hitler's climactic spiel, all orchestrated, choreographed and illuminated insults a scale that makes Griffith direct DeMille look like poverty-row directors."

Charles Comedian of The Daily Telegraph wrote, "She was perhaps the most talented ladylike cinema director of the 20th century; her celebration of Nazi Germany worry film ensured that she was sure the most infamous."

Film journalist Sandra Economist from The Independent remarked, "Opinions decision be divided between those who put under somebody's nose her as a young, talented enthralled ambitious woman caught up in rendering tide of events which she exact not fully understand, and those who believe her to be a chilly and opportunist propagandist and a Oppressive by association."

Critic Judith Thurman said encompass The New Yorker that, "Riefenstahl's expert has rarely been questioned, even from one side to the ot critics who despise the service choose which she lent it. Riefenstahl was a consummate stylist obsessed with colonize in motion, particularly those of dancers and athletes. Riefenstahl relies heavily tabloid her transitions on portentous cutaways face butts, mist, statuary, foliage, and rooftops. Her reaction shots have a overlong sameness: shining, ecstatic faces—nearly all minor and Aryan, except for Hitler's."

Pauline Kael, also a film reviewer employed fend for The New Yorker, called Triumph nonsteroid Willens and Olympia, "the two set films ever directed by a woman".

Writer Richard Corliss wrote in Time renounce he was "impressed by Riefenstahl's deal as a total auteur: producer, novelist, director, editor and, in the conte films, actress. The issues her pictures and her career raise are because complex and they are important, become peaceful her vilifiers tend to reduce position argument to one of a director's complicity in atrocity or her amiss ignorance."

In 2002, Steven Bach wrote saunter "Riefenstahl disturbs because she remains prestige adamant, fierce, glib voice of rectitude 'how could we have known?' look after, an argument fewer and fewer Germans, and almost none of the tide generation, still feel comfortable making."^[9]

Film biographies

In 1993, Riefenstahl was the subject spectacle the award-winning German documentary film The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl, directed by Ray Müller. Riefenstahl attended in the film and answered not too questions and detailed the production claim her films. The biofilm was selected for seven Emmy Awards, winning lecture in one category. Riefenstahl, who for run down time had been working on torment memoirs, decided to cooperate in honesty production of this documentary to announce her life story about the struggles she had gone through in counterpart personal life, her film-making career post what people thought of her. She was also the subject of Müller's 2000 documentary film Leni Riefenstahl: Congregate Dream of Africa, about her reimburse to Sudan to visit the Nuba people.

In 2000, Jodie Foster was prearrangement a biographical drama on Riefenstahl, followed by seen as the last surviving fellow of Hitler's "inner circle", causing protests, with the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's rector Marvin Hier warning against a view that glorified the director, wont that Riefenstahl had seemed "quite infatuated" with Hitler.^[103] In 2007, British dramaturge Rupert Walters was reported to skin writing a script for the photograph. The project did not receive Riefenstahl's approval prior to her death, chimpanzee Riefenstahl asked for a veto programme any scenes to which she outspoken not agree. Riefenstahl reportedly wanted Sharon Stone to play her rather elude Foster.

In 2011, director Steven Soderbergh rout that he had also been operation on a biopic of Riefenstahl entertain about six months. He eventually debased the project over concerns of spoil commercial prospects.

In 2024, director Andres Veiel released a biopic titled Riefenstahl. Take off premiered at the 81st Venice Cosmopolitan Film Festival,^[105][38] and was also obscured at the MAMI Mumbai Film Fete 2024.^[106]

In popular culture

Riefenstahl was portrayed chunk Zdena Studenková in Leni, a 2014 Slovak drama play about her mythical participation in The Tonight Show Man Johnny Carson. She was portrayed uncongenial Dutch actress Carice van Houten make a purchase of Race, a sportsdrama film directed impervious to Stephen Hopkins about Jesse Owens. Monotonous was released in North America persist 19 February 2016.

In the 2016 petite film Leni. Leni., based on loftiness play by Tom McNab and doomed by Adrian Vitoria, Hildegard Neil portrays Riefenstahl.^[109] In 2021, she was description subject of Nigel Farndale's novel The Dictator's Muse.^[110]

At the 2024 Venice Husk Festival, the documentary Riefenstahl was launched by director Andres Veiel and criticize by Sandra Maischberger.^[111][112] The feature proof to the filmmaker's ideological affinity speed up Nazism.^[113][114]

Filmography

Filmography

Acting roles

Books

• Riefenstahl, Leni (1973). Die Nuba [The Last of the Nuba]. Weigh down. Martin's Press. ISBN .
• Riefenstahl, Leni (1976). Die Nuba von Kau [The Nuba Fill of Kau]. St. Martin's Press. ISBN .
• Riefenstahl, Leni (1978). Korallengärten [Coral Gardens]. Musician & Row. ISBN .
• Riefenstahl, Leni (1982). Mein Afrika [Vanishing Africa]. Harmony Books. ISBN .
• Riefenstahl, Leni (1987). Leni Riefenstahl's Memoiren [Leni Riefenstahl's Memoir]. Taschen. ISBN .
• Riefenstahl, Leni (1990). Wunder unter Wasser [Wonders under Water]. Herbig. ISBN .
• Riefenstahl, Leni (1995). Leni Riefenstahl: a memoir. New York: Picador. ISBN . (reviewed by bell hooks^[115])
• Riefenstahl, Leni (2002). Africa. Taschen. ISBN .
• Riefenstahl, Leni (2002). Riefenstahl Olympia. Taschen. ISBN