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Tue 9 Sep, 2003 11:19 am
Quote:Riefenstahl, 'Hitler's film-maker', dies at 101
Xan Brooks
Tuesday September 9, 2003
Leni Riefenstahl made the Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will
Leni Riefenstahl, arguably history's most controversial film-maker, has died at her home near Munich. The 101-year-old director had been seriously ill for several months.
According to a friend, German journalist Celia Tremper: "Frau Riefenstahl died without pain. She fell asleep in her bed on Monday night".
Riefenstahl's legacy will forever be the subject of fierce debate between admirers who praise her pioneering cinematic techniques and those who revile her as a Nazi progagandist. She remains best known for her notorious 1934 documentary The Triumph of the Will, a loving showcase for the rise of the Nazi Party at the Nuremberg rally.
Impressed, Adolf Hitler commissioned her to direct Olympia, Germany's official film of the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
Riefenstahl's involvement with Hitler would cast a shadow over her subsequent career. Although she had never been a member of the Nazi Party, she admitted that she had idolised the Furher and was proud of the films she made for him.
Inevitably, controversy dogged her throughout her life. Last year, a German gypsy organisation - Rom - attempted unsuccessfully to have her prosecuted on race hate charges.
The same year saw her making a belated return to making movies after nearly 50 years in exile. On this occasion she chose a less contentious topic. Underwater Impresssions was a 45-minute documentary about life on the ocean floor.
Guardian
Well, ages back, at school, Riefenstahl was showing us some of her films from Africa.
Afterwards, the discussion came to an uprupt end, because one of the students asked her impertinently about her attitude towards the Nazi regime. [Later, this student - let's leave him anonymous and just call him W.H. - had to defend, why he directly converted that, what was taught in the classes :wink: ]
Certainly, Riefenstahl was a "Nazi sympathizer" and "Hitler's girl".
But she was as well one of the greatest in pioneering film techniques.
She was also a beautiful young woman. I once caught a snippet of one of the films she appeared in, and I was captivated. Her life was amazing, wasn't it?
D'artagnan wrote:Her life was amazing, wasn't it?
It was - from any point of view.
Spoke with my mother (83 next Monday) about her today. Her first reaction, when she heard the news, was: "she made Hitler great".
And then she told me that she didn't like her films, because they HAD to be seen. But, she said, all girls and boys wanted to be like the boys/girls and women/men in her films.
D'artagnan wrote:She was also a beautiful young woman.
This photo shows her at the age of 100 (taken on July 19, 2002)
She was an extraordinary woman. Amazingly alive. "The Horrible, Wonderful Life of Leni Riefenstahl" was a very interesting documentary.
She was also beautiful, when she was young.
She was certainly brilliant and innovative, but I believe both of her masterpieces, "Triumph of Will" and "Olympia" have aged worsely than what critics say.
Sociologically and aesthetically, they are very interesting. Youth, the beauty of the body, order, hierarchy, solemnity, grandiousness, symmetry, health: a "perfect" world to be built. (and yet, the knowledge that the dreams of reason engender monsters).
Further proof that propaganda is an art form.
Sergei Bondarchuk wanted to be Lenin Riefenstalin, but lacked the talent.
Leni would have made terrific videos for MTV, don't you think?
This is Leni R as I like to remember her...
Leni and the weird justice of life.
Did life made justice to Leni Riefenstahl?
I think it did.
She enjoyed her work, her beauty and her power.
She was four years at a detention camp.
She could never film again.
Her cold art has been widely recognized.
She was very active at old age.
But mostly:
She lived to be over 101: the idolatrist of the image, the woman who praised perfect beautiful youthful bodies for the exaltation of the Reich that would last one thousand years, had to look, in her last decade, at the mirror every day, see a decaying body, a very old face, and muster: "What is my young soul doing inside this carcass?"
Well put, fbaezer. Judging from the photo of her in her dotage, she fought the aging process fiercely!
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