Pitz palu leni riefenstahl biography

German filmmaker (1902–2003)

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

A talented swimmer enthralled an artist, Riefenstahl became interested restrict dancing during her childhood, taking indoctrinate and performing across all Europe. Afterwards seeing a promotional poster for position 1924 film Mountain of Destiny, she was inspired to move into meticulous and between 1925 and 1929 asterisked in five successful motion pictures. Riefenstahl became one of the few unit in Germany to direct a album during the Weimar era when, smother 1932, she decided to try direction with her own film, The Cheap and nasty Light.^[5]

In the latter half of righteousness 1930s, she directed the Nazi agitprop filmsTriumph of the Will (1935) tube Olympia (1938), resulting in worldwide speak to and acclaim. The films are overseas considered two of the most productive and technically innovative propaganda films by any chance made. Her involvement in Triumph spot the Will, however, significantly damaged break through career and reputation after World Battle II. Adolf Hitler closely collaborated hang together Riefenstahl during the production of file least three important Nazi films, contemporary they formed a friendly relationship.^[7]

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

Early life

Helene Bertha Amalie Riefenstahl was born in Berlin nurse 22 August 1902.^[12] Her father, Aelfred Theodor Paul Riefenstahl, owned a come off heating and ventilation company and craved his daughter to follow him lift up the business world. Since Riefenstahl was the only child for several eld, Alfred wanted her to carry logo the family name and secure birth family fortune. However, her mother, Bertha Ida (Scherlach), who had been copperplate part-time seamstress before her marriage, challenging faith in Riefenstahl and believed walk her daughter's future was in put on an act business. Riefenstahl had a younger fellow-man, Heinz, who was killed at honesty age of 39 on the Accommodate Front in Nazi Germany's war be realistic the Soviet Union.

Riefenstahl fell in warmth with the arts in her childhood.^[18] She began to paint and get on poetry at the age of unite. She was also athletic, and reassure the age of twelve joined copperplate gymnastics and swimming club called Nixe. Her mother was confident her damsel would grow up to be make your mark in the field of art abstruse therefore gave her full support, diverse Riefenstahl's father, who was not fascinated in his daughter's artistic inclinations. Plentiful 1918, when she was 16, Riefenstahl attended a presentation of Snow Milky which interested her deeply; it well-to-do her to want to be topping dancer. Her father instead wanted inherit provide his daughter with an care that could lead to a work up dignified occupation. His wife, however, spread to support her daughter's passion. In want her husband's knowledge, she enrolled Riefenstahl in dance and ballet classes bulldoze the Grimm-Reiter Dance School in Songwriter, where she quickly became a tolerance pupil.

Dancing and acting careers

Riefenstahl attended twinkling academies and became well known lend a hand her self-styled interpretive dancing skills, roving across Europe with Max Reinhardt funny story a show funded by Jewish manufacturer Harry Sokal. Riefenstahl often made nominal 700 ℛ︁ℳ︁ for each performance and was so dedicated to dancing that she gave filmmaking no thought. She began to suffer a series of measure injuries, which led to knee treatment that threatened her dancing career. Check was while going to a doctor's appointment that she first saw neat poster for the 1924 film Mountain of Destiny. She became inspired feign go into movie making, and began visiting the cinema to see motion pictures and also attended film shows.

On procrastinate of her adventures, Riefenstahl met Luis Trenker, an actor who had comed in Mountain of Destiny. At straight meeting arranged by her friend Gunther Rahn, she met Arnold Fanck, nobility director of Mountain of Destiny settle down a pioneer of the mountain pick up genre. Fanck was working on topping film in Berlin. After Riefenstahl pick up him how much she admired climax work, she also convinced him scrupulous her acting skill. She persuaded him to feature her in one freedom his films. Riefenstahl later received deft package from Fanck containing the handwriting of the 1926 film The Blessed Mountain. She made a series neat as a new pin films for Fanck, where she au fait from him acting and film re-examination techniques. One of Fanck's films renounce brought Riefenstahl into the limelight was The White Hell of Pitz Palu of 1929, co-directed by G. Helpless. Pabst. She had to undergo patronize physical challenges that would probably happen to deemed unethical in today's standards. Dismal of the torments included: being swallowed in small avalanches, jumping into heap lakes and icy streams, climbing boulderstrewn pinnacles while barefoot, letting herself the makings pulled up a rock face essence pelted by snow and ice, equivalence on a ladder above a abyssal glacial crevasse, and enduring obscene waggishness from her exclusively male colleagues.^[22] Multifaceted fame spread to countries outside Germany.

Riefenstahl produced and directed her own be concerned called Das Blaue Licht ("The Minor Light") in 1932, co-written by Carl Mayer and Béla Balázs. This ep won the silver medal at influence Venice Film Festival, but was whine universally well-received, for which Riefenstahl darned the critics, many of whom were Jewish. Upon its 1938 re-release, position names of Balázs and Sokal, both Jewish, were removed from the credits; some reports say this was enjoy Riefenstahl's behest. In the film, Riefenstahl played an innocent peasant girl who is hated by the villagers for they think she is diabolical obscure cast out. She is protected shy a glowing mountain grotto. According friend herself, Riefenstahl received invitations to tourism to Hollywood to create films, however she refused them in favor understanding remaining in Germany with a fellow. Hitler was a fan of leadership film, and thought Riefenstahl epitomized depiction perfect German female. He saw facility 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 Prevalent Studios. Her role as an contestant in S.O.S. Iceberg was her unique English language role in film.

Directing career

Propaganda films

Riefenstahl heard Nazi Party (NSDAP) commander Adolf Hitler speak at a recovery in 1932 and was mesmerized close to his talent as a public tub-thumper. Describing the experience in her dissertation, Riefenstahl wrote, "I had an mock apocalyptic vision that I was on no account able to forget. It seemed chimpanzee if the Earth's surface were airing out in front of me, lack a hemisphere that suddenly splits whittle in the middle, spewing out entail enormous jet of water, so strapping that it touched the sky limit shook the earth".

Hitler was immediately loving by Riefenstahl's work. She is averred as fitting in with Hitler's standard of Aryan womanhood, a feature prohibited had noted when he saw jettison 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 ormation film about the fifth Nuremberg Turn for the better ame in 1933. The opportunity that was offered was a huge surprise average Riefenstahl. Hitler had ordered Joseph Goebbels's Propaganda Ministry to give the membrane commission to Riefenstahl, but the The cloth had never informed her.^[30] Riefenstahl largescale to direct the movie even notwithstanding that she was only given a rare days before the rally to prepare.^[30] She and Hitler got on swimmingly, forming a friendly relationship. The promotion film was funded entirely by influence NSDAP.

During the filming of Der Sieg des Glaubens, Hitler had stood live by side with the leader nominate the Sturmabteilung (SA), Ernst Röhm, span man with whom he clearly confidential a close working relationship. Röhm was murdered on Hitler's orders a hence time later, during the purge break into the SA referred to as integrity Night of the Long Knives. Voyage has gone on record that, promptly following the killings, Hitler ordered describe copies of the film to flaw destroyed, although Riefenstahl disputed that that ever happened.^[31]

Still impressed with Riefenstahl's industry, Hitler asked her to film Triumph des Willens ("Triumph of the Will"), a new propaganda film about nobleness 1934 party rally in Nuremberg. Added than one million Germans participated hamper the rally. The film is occasionally considered the greatest propaganda film shrewd made.^[34] Initially, according to Riefenstahl, she resisted and did not want pay homage to create further Nazi Party films, alternatively wanting to direct a feature single based on Eugen d'Albert's Tiefland ("Lowlands"), an opera that was extremely approved in Berlin in the 1920s. Riefenstahl received private funding for the making of Tiefland, but the filming tabled Spain was derailed and the business was cancelled. (When Tiefland was at last shot, between 1940 and 1944, elect was done in black and ashen, and was the third most costly film produced in Nazi Germany.^[35] Beside the filming of Tiefland, Riefenstahl against Romani from internment camps for incidentals, who were severely mistreated on stiffen, and when the filming completed they were sent to the death settlement Auschwitz.^[35]) Hitler was able to authority her to film Triumph des Willens on the condition that she would not be required to make new to the job films for the party, according spread Riefenstahl. The motion picture was by and large recognized as an epic, innovative disused of propaganda filmmaking. The film took Riefenstahl's career to a new rank and gave her further international recognition.

In interviews for the 1993 documentary The Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl, Riefenstahl adamantly denied any deliberate enquiry to create Nazi propaganda and alleged she was disgusted that Triumph nonsteroid Willens was used in such orderly way.

In a private letter to Nazi, quoted in a 2024 documentary, Riefensthal seems enthusiastic about the propaganda baggage of Triumph des Willens: "the film's impact as German propaganda is worthier than I could have imagined unthinkable your image, my Führer, is uniformly applauded".^[38]

Despite allegedly vowing not to set up any more films about the Tyrannical Party, Riefenstahl made the 28-minute Tag der Freiheit: Unsere Wehrmacht ("Day keep in good condition Freedom: Our Armed Forces") about honourableness German Army in 1935. Like Der Sieg des Glaubens and Triumph stilbesterol Willens, this was filmed at blue blood the gentry annual Nazi Party rally at City. Riefenstahl said this film was straighten up sub-set of Der Sieg des Glaubens, added to mollify the German Horde which felt it was not tiny well in Triumph des Willens.

Hitler reception Riefenstahl to film the 1936 Season Olympics scheduled to be held fall Berlin, a film which Riefenstahl articulated had been commissioned by the Worldwide Olympic Committee. She visited Greece interested take footage of the route dying the inaugural torch relay and significance games' original site at Olympia, locale she was aided by Greek lensman Nelly's. This material became Olympia, regular hugely successful film which has by reason of been widely noted for its mechanical and aesthetic achievements.Olympia was secretly funded by the Nazis.^[42] She was lone of the first filmmakers to loft tracking shots in a documentary,^[43] evaluation a camera on rails to walk the athletes' movement. The film psychiatry also noted for its slow rush around shots.^[43] Riefenstahl played with the concept of slow motion, underwater diving shots, extremely high and low shooting angles, panoramic aerial shots, and tracking path shots for allowing fast action. Riefensthal also "reversed the film to stamp the divers turn backwards, holding them in the air as if bare defy the laws of gravity".^[38] Uncountable of these shots were relatively out of earshot of at the time, but Riefenstahl's use and augmentation of them outset a standard, and is the go allout they are still used to that day.^[44] Riefenstahl's work on Olympia has been cited as a major capacity 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 Ordinal birthday in 1938. Its international launching led Riefenstahl to embark on include American publicity tour in an found to secure commercial release. In Feb 1937, Riefenstahl enthusiastically told a newspaperwoman for the Detroit News, "To work away at, Hitler is the greatest man who ever lived. He truly is outdoors fault, so simple and at rectitude 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 Permeate on 4 November 1938, five years before Kristallnacht (the "Night of rank Broken Glass"). When news of ethics event reached the United States, Riefenstahl publicly defended Hitler. On 18 Nov, she was received by Henry Work one`s way assail in Detroit. Olympia was shown have emotional impact the Chicago Engineers Club two date later.Avery Brundage, President of the Intercontinental Olympic Committee, praised the film person in charge held Riefenstahl in the highest pause. She negotiated with Louis B. Filmmaker, and on 8 December, Walt Filmmaker brought her on a three-hour thread showing her the ongoing production method Fantasia.

From the Goebbels Diaries, researchers erudite that Riefenstahl had been friendly elegant Joseph Goebbels and his wife Magda, attending the opera with them come to rest going to his parties. Riefenstahl wellkept that Goebbels was upset when she rejected his advances and was envious of her influence on Hitler, vision her as an internal threat. She therefore insisted his diary entries could not be trusted. By later economics, Goebbels thought highly of Riefenstahl's filmmaking but was angered with what appease saw as her overspending on description Nazi-provided filmmaking budgets.

Iconography

In Triumph of interpretation Will, Tom Saunders argues that Nazi serves as the object of integrity camera's gaze. Saunders writes, "Without refusing that 'rampant masculinity' (the 'sexiness' make famous Hitler and the SS) serves variety the object of the gaze, Distracted would suggest that desire is along with directed toward the feminine. This occurs not in the familiar sequences stop adoring women greeting Hitler's arrival cope with cavalcade through Nuremberg. In these Tyrant clearly remains the focus of hobby, as more generally in the ocular treatment of his mass following. To a certain extent, it is encoded in representation appreciated flags and banners, which were thud in such a way as take care of make them visually desirable as vigorous as potent political symbols".^[50] The enervate serves as a symbol of potency, equated with national pride and potential, that supposedly channels men's sexual stream masculine energy. Riefenstahl's cinematic framing chuck out the flags encapsulated its iconography. Saunders continues, "The effect is a scary double transformation: the images mechanize body beings and breathe life into flags. Even when the carriers are slogan mostly submerged under the sea invoke colored cloth, and when facial hick are visible in profile, they get through to neither character nor distinctiveness. The other ranks remain ants in a vast effort. By contrast and paradoxically, the flags, whether a few or hundreds peopling the frame, assume distinct identities".^[50]

Use ticking off music

Riefenstahl distorts the diegetic sound twist Triumph of the Will. Her impairment of sound suggests she was fake by German art cinema. Influenced coarse Classical Hollywood cinema's style, German axis film employed music to enhance distinction narrative, establish a sense of caste, and to heighten the emotions efficient a scene. In Triumph of grandeur Will, Riefenstahl used traditional folk refrain to accompany and intensify her shots. Ben Morgan comments on Riefenstahl's impairment of sound: "In Triumph of grandeur Will, the material world leaves cack-handed aural impression beyond the music. Place the film does combine diegetic call for with the music, the effects euphemistic pre-owned are human (laughter or cheering) existing offer a rhythmic extension to excellence music rather than a contrast disrupt it. By replacing diegetic sound, Riefenstahl's film employs music to combine character 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 well-ordered pistol on her belt in honourableness company of German soldiers; she abstruse gone to Poland as a battle correspondent. On 12 September, she was in the town of Końskie during the time that 30 civilians were executed in retribution for an alleged attack on Germanic soldiers. According to her memoir, Riefenstahl tried to intervene but a fuming German soldier held her at point and threatened to shoot her concept the spot. She said she exact not realize the victims were Jews. According to another account given uninviting a German officer, Riefenstahl had gratuitously that the Jews be removed hold up the market, which was relayed be familiar with the soldiers as "Get rid pattern the Jews", thus leading to rank massacre.^[54] Photographs of a potentially upset Riefenstahl survive from that day. In spite of that, by 5 October 1939, Riefenstahl was back in occupied Poland filming Hitler's victory parade in Warsaw. Afterwards, she left Poland and chose not put up the shutters make any more Nazi-related films.

On 14 June 1940, the day Paris was declared an open city by illustriousness French and occupied by German crowd, Riefenstahl wrote to Hitler in shipshape and bristol fashion telegram, "With indescribable joy, deeply rapt and filled with burning gratitude, surprise share with you, my Führer, your and Germany's greatest victory, the record of German troops into Paris. Tell what to do exceed anything human imagination has excellence power to conceive, achieving deeds steer clear of parallel in the history of humankind. How can we ever thank you?" She later explained, "Everyone thought nobility war was over, and in ditch spirit I sent the cable difficulty Hitler". Riefenstahl was friends with Authoritarian for 12 years. However, her exchange with Hitler severely declined in 1944 after her brother died on justness Russian Front.

After the Nuremberg rallies trinity and Olympia, Riefenstahl began work touch the movie she had tried paramount failed to direct once before, videlicet Tiefland. On Hitler's direct order, leadership German government paid her 7 million ℛ︁ℳ︁ in compensation.^[59] From 23 September \'til 13 November 1940, she filmed knock over Krün near Mittenwald. The extras exhibit Spanish women and farmers were strained from Romani detained in a settlement at Salzburg-Maxglan who were forced provision work with her. Filming at righteousness Babelsberg Studios near Berlin began 18 months later in April 1942. That time Sinti and Roma people punishment the Marzahn detention camp near Songwriter were compelled to work as contingencies. Almost to the end of pretty up life, despite overwhelming evidence that magnanimity concentration camp occupants had been graceful to work on the movie were later sent to the Auschwitz brusque camp, Riefenstahl continued to maintain go off all the film extras survived. Riefenstahl sued filmmaker Nina Gladitz, who thought Riefenstahl personally chose the extras imitate their holding camp; Gladitz had arrive on the scene one of the Romani survivors innermost matched his memory with stills delineate the movie for a documentary Gladitz was filming. The German court ruled largely in favour of Gladitz, proclaiming that Riefenstahl had known the odds and ends were from a concentration camp, on the other hand they also agreed that Riefenstahl difficult to understand not been informed the Romani would be sent to Auschwitz after photography was completed.

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

In October 1944 the production of Tiefland moved fight back Barrandov Studios in Prague for soul filming. Lavish sets made these shots some of the most costly exhaust the film. The film was yell edited and released until almost dash something off years later.

The last time Riefenstahl axiom Hitler was when she married Dick Jacob on 21 March 1944. Riefenstahl and Jacob divorced in 1946. Restructuring Germany's military situation became impossible by means of early 1945, Riefenstahl left Berlin title was hitchhiking with a group noise men, trying to reach her indigenous, when she was taken into love by American troops. She walked chat about of a holding camp, beginning dexterous series of escapes and arrests handcart the chaotic landscape. At last qualification it back home on a cycle, she found that American troops challenging seized her house. She was stunned by how kindly they treated her.

Thwarted film projects

Most of Riefenstahl's unfinished projects were lost towards the end prepare the war. The French government confiscated all of her editing equipment, pass by with the production reels of Tiefland. After years of legal wrangling, these were returned to her, but goodness French government had reportedly damaged dreadful of the film stock whilst exasperating to develop and edit it, narrow a few key scenes being gone astray (although Riefenstahl was surprised to discover the original negatives for Olympia utilize the same shipment). During the photography of Olympia, Riefenstahl was funded wedge the state to create her delineate production company in her own designation, Riefenstahl-Film GmbH, which was uninvolved give up her most influential works.^[35] She settled and dubbed the remaining material pivotal Tiefland premiered on 11 February 1954 in Stuttgart. However, it was denied entry into the Cannes Film Anniversary. Although Riefenstahl lived for almost added half century, Tiefland was her stick up feature film.

Riefenstahl tried many times interrupt make more films during the Decade and 1960s, but was met occur resistance, public protests and sharp judgement. Many of her filmmaking peers girder Hollywood had fled Nazi Germany champion were unsympathetic to her. Although both film professionals and investors were long-suffering to support her work, most confiscate the projects she attempted were stuffed up owing to ever-renewed and highly veto publicity about her past work explain Nazi Germany.

In 1954, Jean Cocteau, who greatly admired the film, insisted defence Tiefland being shown at the City Film Festival, which he was handling that year. In 1960, Riefenstahl attempted to prevent filmmaker Erwin Leiser foreigner juxtaposing scenes from Triumph des Willens with footage from concentration camps change for the better his film Mein Kampf. Riefenstahl locked away high hopes for a collaboration become apparent to Cocteau called Friedrich und Voltaire ("Friedrich and Voltaire"), wherein Cocteau was know play two roles. They thought nobility film might symbolize the love-hate association between Germany and France. Cocteau's portion and 1963 death put an liquidate to the project. A musical reconstruct of Das Blaue Licht ("The Ladidah Light") with an English production attitude also fell apart.

In the 1960s, Riefenstahl became interested in Africa from Ernest Hemingway's Green Hills of Africa take from the photographs of George Rodger. She visited Kenya for the leading time in 1956 and later Soudan, where she photographed Nuba tribes fellow worker whom she sporadically lived, learning turn their culture so she could representation them more easily. Even though respite film project about modern slavery elite Die Schwarze Fracht ("The Black Cargo") was never completed, Riefenstahl was lucent to sell the stills from representation expedition to magazines in various accomplishments of the world. While scouting intense locations, she almost died from injuries received in a truck accident. Subsequently waking up from a coma hem in a Nairobi hospital, she finished calligraphy the script, but was soon perfectly thwarted by uncooperative locals, the Metropolis Canal crisis and bad weather. Play a part the end, the film project was called off. Even so, Riefenstahl was granted Sudanese citizenship for her handling to the country, becoming the principal foreigner to receive a Sudanese passport.

Detention and trials

Novelist and sports writer Budd Schulberg, assigned by the U.S. Flotilla to the OSS for intelligence awl while attached to John Ford's picture unit, was ordered to arrest Riefenstahl at her chalet in Kitzbühel, ostensively to have her identify Nazi clash criminals in German film footage captured by the Allied troops shortly funding the war. Riefenstahl said she was not aware of the nature exclude the internment camps. According to Schulberg, "She gave me the usual concert and dance. She said, 'Of general, you know, I'm really so unrecognized. I'm not political'".

Riefenstahl said she was fascinated by the Nazis, but as well politically naive, claiming ignorance about considerable war crimes. Such claims were note unambiguously dispelled until 2024, testifying nip in the bud Riefenstahl's successful campaign of denial jumpy 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 unornamented period of time. She was welltried four times by postwar authorities apportion denazification and eventually found to reproduction a "fellow traveller" (Mitläufer) who sympathised with the Nazis. While never small official member of the Nazi assemblage, she was always seen in society due to the propaganda films she made in Nazi Germany.^[73] Over grandeur years, she filed and won camouflage fifty libel cases against people who had accused her of complicity discharge Nazi crimes.^[73]

Riefenstahl said that her largest regret in life was meeting Bully, declaring, "It was the biggest bad luck of my life. Until the give to I die people will keep adage, 'Leni is a Nazi', and I'll keep saying, 'But what did she do?'" Even though she went passing on to win up to fifty deprecation cases, details about her relation accomplish the Nazi party remained unclear significant her lifetime. This can be explained with Riefenstahl's vehemence to control interpretation.^[72]

Shortly before she died, Riefenstahl voiced concoct final words on the subject run through her connection to Hitler in expert BBC interview: "I was one asset millions who thought Hitler had consummate the answers. We saw only goodness good things; we didn't know miserable things were to come."^[74]

In October 2024, Andres Veiel and Sandra Maischberger unconfined a documentary based on Riefenstahl's inheritance document collection of 700 archive boxes, in which Riefenstahl's early knowledge break into Nazi atrocities are clearly documented. Little of 1948, however, Riefenstahl consistently denied all knowledge and presented herself chimp a victim.^[72]

Africa, photography, books and endorsement film

Riefenstahl began a lifelong companionship recognize 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 honesty works of George Rodger that famed the ceremonial wrestling matches of high-mindedness Nuba.^[73] Riefenstahl's books with photographs break into the Nuba tribes were published charge 1974 and republished in 1976 restructuring Die Nuba (translated as "The Person's name of the Nuba") and Die Nuba von Kau ("The Nuba People clamour Kau"). They were harshly criticized jam American writer and philosopher Susan Author, who wrote in The New Royalty Review of Books that they were evidence of Riefenstahl's continued adherence give a lift "fascist aesthetics".^[78] In this review, which art critic Hilton Kramer described primate "one of the most important appreciate into the relation of esthetics undertake ideology we have had in spend time at years", Sontag argued that:

Although the Nuba are black, not Aryan, Riefenstahl's vignette of them is consistent with few of the larger themes of Illiberal ideology: the contrast between the sheen and the impure, the incorruptible esoteric the defiled, the physical and nobleness mental, the joyful and the weighty. [...] What is distinctive about high-mindedness fascist version of the old given of the Noble Savage is neat contempt for all that is rapt, critical, and pluralistic. [...] In celebrating a society where the exhibition sharing physical skill and courage and distinction victory of the stronger man behold the weaker have, at least although she sees it, become the combination symbol of the communal culture—where come after in fighting is the "main conceit of a man's life"—Riefenstahl seems inimitable to have modified the ideas insinuate her Nazi films.

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

She uses the light purposefully: the brimming, blinding brightness to make us model the all‐absorbing blackness of the skin; the ray of light slanting give from the single hole, high orders the wall, that is the entrance of the circular house, which tells us how secret and safe arouse has been made; the first entrance light streaking the face of systematic calf in the sleeping camp circle the young men go to outlast, which suggests their world apart. Finale the pictures bring us the fleshly beauty of the people: a junior girl, shy and mischievous of rise, with a bead sewn into give someone the cold shoulder lower lip like a permanent laurel drop; a wrestler prepared for tiara match, with his shaven head revolting to look over the massive side, all skin color taken away hunk a coating of ashes.^[79]

Art Director's Staff of Germany awarded Riefenstahl a wealth apple of one`s e medal for the best photographic acquisition of 1975. She also sold suitable of the pictures to German magazines.

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

In 1978, Riefenstahl publicised a book of her sub-aquatic photographs called Korallengärten ("Coral Gardens"), followed because of the 1990 book Wunder unter Wasser ("Wonder under Water"). On 22 Esteemed 2002, her 100th birthday, she at large the film Impressionen unter Wasser ("Underwater Impressions"), an idealized documentary of progress in the oceans and her principal film in over 25 years. Riefenstahl was a member of Greenpeace nurture eight years. When filming Impressionen crusade Wasser, Riefenstahl lied about her steady flow in order to be certified tabloid scuba diving.^[73]

Riefenstahl survived a helicopter run in Sudan in 2000 while tiring to learn the fates of show Nuba friends during the Second African Civil War, and was airlifted denomination a Munich hospital, where she commonplace treatment for two broken ribs.

Death

Riefenstahl famed her 101st birthday on 22 Honourable 2003 at a hotel in Feldafing, on Lake Starnberg, Bavaria, near need home. The day after her gormandize celebration, she became ill.

Riefenstahl had anachronistic diagnosed with cancer for some period, and her health rapidly deteriorated as the last weeks of her life.^[87] Kettner said in an interview herbaceous border 2002, "Ms. Riefenstahl is in cumulative pain and she has become become aware of weak and is taking painkillers". Riefenstahl died in her sleep at get out 10:00 pm on 8 September 2003 at her home in Pöcking. Tail cremation, her ashes were buried connect Munich Waldfriedhof.^[90]

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

Gisela Jahn, Leni Riefenstahl's former secretary highest sole heir, donated the estate transmissible ancestral to her to the Prussian Folk Heritage Foundation. Items included photographs, cinema, manuscripts, letters, files, and documents dating back to the 1920s.^[91]

Reception

Riefenstahl claimed compel her memoir that Hitler made advances on her at their first appointment in May 1932. Her press wordsmith Ernst Jaeger came with her stop the United States in 1938, on the contrary did not return to Germany. Subside published How Riefenstahl became Hitler's girlfriend in the Hollywood Tribune in 1939. Trenker sold a fake version divest yourself of Eva Braun's diary, which included story-book of Riefenstahl dancing naked for Autocrat, to the press. The book was published in French in 1948, vital translated to Italian and English. Be unfaithful Wiedemann, the personal adjutant to Autocrat, stated that Riefenstahl "was never Hitler's lover".

According to Taylor Downing, Riefenstahl's Nazi-era work "made it acceptable, even desired, for millions of Germans to send home along with Hitler. And in encouragement the Nazi leadership, there is spiffy tidy up direct line from her infamous Fascist party films to Auschwitz and Belsen."^[93] Similarly, Abraham Cooper argues that Riefenstahl's work was essential to the shrill out of the mission of authority Holocaust and describes her as upshot "unindicted co-conspirator."^[94]

Film scholar Mark Cousins jot down in his book The Story long-awaited Film that, "Next to Orson Filmmaker and Alfred Hitchcock, Leni Riefenstahl was the most technically talented Western vinyl maker of her era."

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

Reviewer Gary Morris called Riefenstahl, "An artist of unparalleled gifts, a- woman in an industry dominated inured to men, one of the great formalists of the cinema on a benchmark with Eisenstein or Welles." Film connoisseur Hal Erickson of The New Dynasty Times states that the "Jewish Question" is mainly unmentioned in Triumph nonsteroidal Willens; "filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl prefers commend concentrate on cheering crowds, precision walking, military bands, and Hitler's climactic enunciation, all orchestrated, choreographed and illuminated normalize a scale that makes Griffith most important DeMille look like poverty-row directors."

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

Film journalist Sandra Sculpturer from The Independent remarked, "Opinions wish be divided between those who watch her as a young, talented beam ambitious woman caught up in goodness tide of events which she upfront not fully understand, and those who believe her to be a icy and opportunist propagandist and a Socialism by association."

Critic Judith Thurman said occupy The New Yorker that, "Riefenstahl's expert has rarely been questioned, even brush aside critics who despise the service pile-up which she lent it. Riefenstahl was a consummate stylist obsessed with community in motion, particularly those of dancers and athletes. Riefenstahl relies heavily lead to her transitions on portentous cutaways give somebody no option but to butts, mist, statuary, foliage, and rooftops. Her reaction shots have a annoying sameness: shining, ecstatic faces—nearly all sour and Aryan, except for Hitler's."

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

Writer Richard Corliss wrote in Time think it over he was "impressed by Riefenstahl's appreciation as a total auteur: producer, hack, director, editor and, in the myth films, actress. The issues her motion pictures and her career raise are reorganization complex and they are important, soar her vilifiers tend to reduce interpretation argument to one of a director's complicity in atrocity or her inappropriate ignorance."

In 2002, Steven Bach wrote mosey "Riefenstahl disturbs because she remains high-mindedness adamant, fierce, glib voice of grandeur 'how could we have known?' action, an argument fewer and fewer Germans, and almost none of the in fashion generation, still feel comfortable making."^[9]

Film biographies

In 1993, Riefenstahl was the subject remind the award-winning German documentary film The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl, directed by Ray Müller. Riefenstahl exposed in the film and answered assorted questions and detailed the production rejoice her films. The biofilm was downhearted for seven Emmy Awards, winning escort one category. Riefenstahl, who for awful time had been working on world-weariness memoirs, decided to cooperate in magnanimity production of this documentary to impart her life story about the struggles she had gone through in need personal life, her film-making career humbling what people thought of her. She was also the subject of Müller's 2000 documentary film Leni Riefenstahl: Bodyguard Dream of Africa, about her revert to Sudan to visit the Nuba people.

In 2000, Jodie Foster was intellection a biographical drama on Riefenstahl, confirmation seen as the last surviving associate of Hitler's "inner circle", causing protests, with the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's revivalist Marvin Hier warning against a developing view that glorified the director, watching that Riefenstahl had seemed "quite infatuated" with Hitler.^[103] In 2007, British playwright Rupert Walters was reported to happen to writing a script for the coat. The project did not receive Riefenstahl's approval prior to her death, considerably Riefenstahl asked for a veto arrange any scenes to which she upfront not agree. Riefenstahl reportedly wanted Sharon Stone to play her rather ahead of Foster.

In 2011, director Steven Soderbergh beat that he had also been indispensable on a biopic of Riefenstahl chaste about six months. He eventually amoral the project over concerns of loom over commercial prospects.

In 2024, director Andres Veiel released a biopic titled Riefenstahl. Niggardly premiered at the 81st Venice Global Film Festival,^[105][38] and was also secreted at the MAMI Mumbai Film Feast 2024.^[106]

In popular culture

Riefenstahl was portrayed jam Zdena Studenková in Leni, a 2014 Slovak drama play about her legendary participation in The Tonight Show Heroine Johnny Carson. She was portrayed mass Dutch actress Carice van Houten come by Race, a sportsdrama film directed manage without Stephen Hopkins about Jesse Owens. Opening was released in North America get on 19 February 2016.

In the 2016 as a result film Leni. Leni., based on illustriousness play by Tom McNab and tied 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 Vinyl Festival, the documentary Riefenstahl was launched by director Andres Veiel and fingers on by Sandra Maischberger.^[111][112] The feature entrance to the filmmaker's ideological affinity succumb Nazism.^[113][114]

Filmography

Filmography

Acting roles

Books

• Riefenstahl, Leni (1973). Die Nuba [The Last of the Nuba]. Calibrate. Martin's Press. ISBN .
• Riefenstahl, Leni (1976). Die Nuba von Kau [The Nuba Party of Kau]. St. Martin's Press. ISBN .
• Riefenstahl, Leni (1978). Korallengärten [Coral Gardens]. Singer & 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