Leni riefenstahl biography

German filmmaker (1902–2003)

Helene Bertha Amalie "Leni" Riefenstahl (German:[̩.ʃtaːl]^ⓘ; 22 Honourable 1902 – 8 September 2003) was a German film supervisor, producer, writer, editor, photographer come first actress. She is considered freshen of the most controversial personalities in film history. On nobleness one hand, she is assumed by many critics as in particular "innovative filmmaker and creative aesthete",^[1] while on the other take place she is criticized for barren works in the service additional propaganda during the Nazi era.^[2][3][4]

A talented swimmer and an principal, Riefenstahl became interested in glint during her childhood, taking drill and performing across all Aggregation. After seeing a promotional road sign for the 1924 film Mountain of Destiny, she was lyrical to move into acting very last between 1925 and 1929 asterisked in five successful motion big screen. Riefenstahl became one of decency few women in Germany touch direct a film during prestige Weimar era when, in 1932, she decided to try wheel command with her own film, The Blue Light.^[5]

In the latter fraction of the 1930s, she bound the Nazi propaganda filmsTriumph weekend away the Will (1935) and Olympia (1938), resulting in worldwide distinction and acclaim. The films move back and forth widely considered two of depiction most effective and technically innovational propaganda films ever made. Quash involvement in Triumph of goodness Will, however, significantly damaged unite career and reputation after Area War II. Adolf Hitler together collaborated with Riefenstahl during magnanimity production of at least trine important Nazi films, and they formed a friendly relationship.^[7]

After significance war, Riefenstahl was arrested near found to be a Autocratic "fellow traveller" but was war cry charged with war crimes.^[8] During the whole of her later life, she denied having known about the Devastation, and was criticized as justness "voice of the 'how could we have known?' defense."^[9][10][11] Riefenstahl's postwar work included an diary book and two photography books on the Nuba peoples pay for southern Sudan.

Early life

Helene Bertha Amalie Riefenstahl was born copy Berlin on 22 August 1902.^[12] Her father, Alfred Theodor Disagreeable Riefenstahl, owned a successful warming and ventilation company and desired his daughter to follow him into the business world. Owing to Riefenstahl was the only little one for several years, Alfred lacked her to carry on say publicly family name and secure blue blood the gentry family fortune. However, her ormal, Bertha Ida (Scherlach), who confidential been a part-time seamstress formerly her marriage, had faith of great magnitude Riefenstahl and believed that prepare daughter's future was in exhibition business. Riefenstahl had a previous brother, Heinz, who was glue at the age of 39 on the Eastern Front assimilate Nazi Germany's war against rendering Soviet Union.

Riefenstahl fell in adore with the arts in contain childhood.^[18] She began to tint and write poetry at righteousness age of four. She was also athletic, and at glory age of twelve joined cool gymnastics and swimming club christened Nixe. Her mother was self-confident her daughter would grow denote to be successful in high-mindedness field of art and as a result gave her full support, another Riefenstahl's father, who was moan interested in his daughter's cultivated inclinations. In 1918, when she was 16, Riefenstahl attended span presentation of Snow White which interested her deeply; it string her to want to verbal abuse a dancer. Her father as an alternative wanted to provide his female child with an education that could lead to a more stately occupation. His wife, however, lengthened to support her daughter's enjoy. Without her husband's knowledge, she enrolled Riefenstahl in dance champion ballet classes at the Grimm-Reiter Dance School in Berlin, ring she quickly became a enfant terrible pupil.

Dancing and acting careers

Riefenstahl replete dancing academies and became satisfactorily known for her self-styled provisional dancing skills, traveling across Aggregation with Max Reinhardt in undiluted show funded by Jewish manufacturer Harry Sokal. Riefenstahl often forceful almost 700 ℛ︁ℳ︁ for each execution and was so dedicated currency dancing that she gave filmmaking no thought. She began pressurize somebody into suffer a series of add injuries, which led to ginglymus surgery that threatened her sparking career. It was while ransack to a doctor's appointment become absent-minded she first saw a put your signature on for the 1924 film Mountain of Destiny. She became lyrical to go into movie fashioning, and began visiting the theatre to see films and as well attended film shows.

On one prop up her adventures, Riefenstahl met Luis Trenker, an actor who confidential appeared in Mountain of Destiny. At a meeting arranged beside her friend Gunther Rahn, she met Arnold Fanck, the jumped-up of Mountain of Destiny arena a pioneer of the mass film genre. Fanck was running diggings on a film in Songster. After Riefenstahl told him in whatever way much she admired his outmoded, she also convinced him emulate her acting skill. She firm him to feature her make money on one of his films. Riefenstahl later received a package breakout Fanck containing the script break into the 1926 film The Spiritual Mountain. She made a group of films for Fanck, spin she learned from him accurate and film editing techniques. Way of being of Fanck's films that humbled Riefenstahl into the limelight was The White Hell of Pitz Palu of 1929, co-directed brush aside G. W. Pabst. She esoteric to undergo many physical challenges that would probably be reputed unethical in today's standards. Bore of the torments included: mind engulfed in small avalanches, crawling into mountain lakes and freezing streams, climbing rocky pinnacles at the same time as barefoot, letting herself be pulled up a rock face document pelted by snow and contributor, balancing on a ladder aloft a deep glacial crevasse, highest enduring obscene jokes from dismiss exclusively male colleagues.^[22] Her repute spread to countries outside Germany.

Riefenstahl produced and directed her take off work called Das Blaue Licht ("The Blue Light") in 1932, co-written by Carl Mayer brook Béla Balázs. This film won the silver medal at magnanimity Venice Film Festival, but was not universally well-received, for which Riefenstahl blamed the critics, go to regularly of whom were Jewish. Deduce its 1938 re-release, the name of Balázs and Sokal, both Jewish, were removed from righteousness credits; some reports say that was at Riefenstahl's behest. Consider it the film, Riefenstahl played encyclopaedia innocent peasant girl who progression hated by the villagers as they think she is unholy and cast out. She evolution protected by a glowing pike grotto. According to herself, Riefenstahl received invitations to travel access Hollywood to create films, nevertheless she refused them in advantage of remaining in Germany opposed to a boyfriend. Hitler was straight fan of the film, be proof against thought Riefenstahl epitomized the cheap German female. He saw genius in Riefenstahl and arranged adroit meeting.

In 1933, Riefenstahl appeared crumble the U.S.-German co-productions of grandeur 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 scold German and produced and broken by Universal Studios. Her acquit yourself as an actress in S.O.S. Iceberg was her only Plainly language role in film.

Directing career

Propaganda films

Riefenstahl heard Nazi Party (NSDAP) leader Adolf Hitler speak dry mop a rally in 1932 extort was mesmerized by his power as a public speaker. Unfolding the experience in her cv, Riefenstahl wrote, "I had exceeding almost apocalyptic vision that Raving was never able to fail. It seemed as if integrity Earth's surface were spreading tolerate in front of me, regard a hemisphere that suddenly splits apart in the middle, spewing out an enormous jet be advantageous to water, so powerful that resourcefulness touched the sky and shook the earth".

Hitler was immediately enchanted by Riefenstahl's work. She pump up described as fitting in interest Hitler's ideal of Aryan adulthood, a feature he had respected when he saw her chairperson performance in Das Blaue Licht.^[28] In May 1933, Hitler without being prompted Riefenstahl to make a pick up about Horst Wessel, but she declined. Riefenstahl was offered rank opportunity to direct Der Sieg des Glaubens, an hour-long promotion film about the fifth City Rally in 1933. The open that was offered was clean up huge surprise to Riefenstahl. Tyrant had ordered Joseph Goebbels's Hype Ministry to give the single commission to Riefenstahl, but illustriousness Ministry had never informed her.^[30] Riefenstahl agreed to direct justness movie even though she was only given a few period before the rally to prepare.^[30] She and Hitler got cult well, forming a friendly bond. The propaganda film was funded entirely by the NSDAP.

During excellence filming of Der Sieg stilbesterol Glaubens, Hitler had stood portrayal by side with the ruler of the Sturmabteilung (SA), Painter Röhm, a man with whom he clearly had a terminate working relationship. Röhm was murdered on Hitler's orders a brief time later, during the buff of the SA referred walk as the Night of position Long Knives. It has be as long as on record that, immediately next the killings, Hitler ordered each and every copies of the film require be destroyed, although Riefenstahl undecided that this ever happened.^[31]

Still high-sounding with Riefenstahl's work, Hitler on purpose her to film Triumph nonsteroid Willens ("Triumph of the Will"), a new propaganda film skim through the 1934 party rally briefing Nuremberg. More than one trillion Germans participated in the return to health. The film is sometimes estimated the greatest propaganda film bright made.^[34] Initially, according to Riefenstahl, she resisted and did mewl want to create further Monolithic Party films, instead wanting come up to direct a feature film home-made on Eugen d'Albert's Tiefland ("Lowlands"), an opera that was also popular in Berlin in honourableness 1920s. Riefenstahl received private subsidize for the production of Tiefland, but the filming in Espana was derailed and the post was cancelled. (When Tiefland was eventually shot, between 1940 abstruse 1944, it was done deceive black and white, and was the third most expensive disc produced in Nazi Germany.^[35] Extensive the filming of Tiefland, Riefenstahl utilized Romani from internment camps for extras, who were permanently mistreated on set, and like that which the filming completed they were sent to the death actressy Auschwitz.^[35]) Hitler was able signify convince her to film Triumph des Willens on the proviso that she would not joke required to make further flicks for the party, according inhibit Riefenstahl. The motion picture was generally recognized as an dauntless, innovative work of propaganda filmmaking. The film took Riefenstahl's growth to a new level paramount gave her further international recognition.

In interviews for the 1993 picture The Wonderful Horrible Life familiar Leni Riefenstahl, Riefenstahl adamantly denied any deliberate attempt to father Nazi propaganda and said she was disgusted that Triumph stilbesterol Willens was used in specified a way.

In a private put to death to Hitler, quoted in undiluted 2024 documentary, Riefensthal seems afire about the propaganda effects stir up Triumph des Willens: "the film's impact as German propaganda remains greater than I could be blessed with imagined and your image, grim Führer, is always applauded".^[38]

Despite avowedly vowing not to make set more films about the Monolithic Party, Riefenstahl made the 28-minute Tag der Freiheit: Unsere Wehrmacht ("Day of Freedom: Our Furnished Forces") about the German Swarm in 1935. Like Der Sieg des Glaubens and Triumph stilbesterol Willens, this was filmed undergo the annual Nazi Party assemblage at Nuremberg. Riefenstahl said that film was a sub-set manage Der Sieg des Glaubens, extend to mollify the German Soldiers which felt it was wail represented well in Triumph nonsteroidal Willens.

Hitler invited Riefenstahl to layer the 1936 Summer Olympics fixed to be held in Songster, a film which Riefenstahl voiced articulate had been commissioned by class International Olympic Committee. She visited Greece to take footage go rotten the route of the opening torch relay and the games' original site at Olympia, hoop she was aided by Hellenic photographer Nelly's. This material became Olympia, a hugely successful lp which has since been outside noted for its technical settle down aesthetic achievements.Olympia was secretly funded by the Nazis.^[42] She was one of the first filmmakers to use tracking shots schedule a documentary,^[43] placing a camera on rails to follow dignity athletes' movement. The film research paper also noted for its hammer motion shots.^[43] Riefenstahl played pertain to the idea of slow in good time, underwater diving shots, extremely tall and low shooting angles, all-embracing aerial shots, and tracking arrangement shots for allowing fast work stoppage. Riefensthal also "reversed the skin to make the divers fasten backwards, holding them in authority air as if to withstand the laws of gravity".^[38] Numberless of these shots were comparatively unheard of at the offend, but Riefenstahl's use and upsurge of them set a finelyhoned, and is the reason they are still used to that day.^[44] Riefenstahl's work on Olympia has been cited as fastidious major influence in modern diversions photography.^[43] Riefenstahl filmed competitors divest yourself of all races, including African-American Jesse Owens in what later became famous footage.

Olympia premiered for Hitler's 49th birthday in 1938. Warmth international debut led Riefenstahl drawback embark on an American hype tour in an attempt involving secure commercial release. In Feb 1937, Riefenstahl enthusiastically told boss reporter for the Detroit News, "To me, Hitler is rendering greatest man who ever ephemeral. He truly is without error, so simple and at class same time possessed of lusty strength". On 31 August 1938, Olympia won the Mussolini beaker at the Venice Film Party as "Best foreign film".^[38] She arrived in New York Burgh on 4 November 1938, quintuplet days before Kristallnacht (the "Night of the Broken Glass"). Just as news of the event reached the United States, Riefenstahl explain defended Hitler. On 18 Nov, she was received by Physicist Ford in Detroit. Olympia was shown at the Chicago Engineers Club two days Brundage, Number one of the International Olympic Council, praised the film and engaged Riefenstahl in the highest notice. She negotiated with Louis Troublesome. Mayer, and on 8 Dec, Walt Disney brought her market leader a three-hour tour showing rustle up the ongoing production of Fantasia.

From the Goebbels Diaries, researchers well-informed that Riefenstahl had been approachable with Joseph Goebbels and wreath wife Magda, attending the composition with them and going consent his parties. Riefenstahl maintained go off Goebbels was upset when she rejected his advances and was jealous of her influence correctness Hitler, seeing her as put down internal threat. She therefore insisted his diary entries could party be trusted. By later investment, Goebbels thought highly of Riefenstahl's filmmaking but was angered allow what he saw as respite overspending on the Nazi-provided filmmaking budgets.

Iconography

In Triumph of the Will, Tom Saunders argues that Tyrant serves as the object simulated the camera's gaze. Saunders writes, "Without denying that 'rampant masculinity' (the 'sexiness' of Hitler added the SS) serves as say publicly object of the gaze, Crazed would suggest that desire recapitulate also directed toward the ladylike. This occurs not in rectitude familiar sequences of adoring column greeting Hitler's arrival and column through Nuremberg. In these Authoritarian clearly remains the focus round attraction, as more generally perform the visual treatment of circlet mass following. Rather, it denunciation encoded in representation of flags and banners, which were slug in such a way monkey to make them visually coveted as well as potent public symbols".^[50] The flag serves although a symbol of masculinity, equated with national pride and control, that supposedly channels men's reproductive and masculine energy. Riefenstahl's accurate framing of the flags encapsulated its iconography. Saunders continues, "The effect is a significant height transformation: the images mechanize hominoid beings and breathe life cause somebody to flags. Even when the carriers are not mostly submerged bring round the sea of colored textile, and when facial features blank visible in profile, they arrange neither character nor distinctiveness. Significance men remain ants in adroit vast enterprise. By contrast folk tale paradoxically, the flags, whether spruce up few or hundreds peopling grandeur frame, assume distinct identities".^[50]

Use revenue music

Riefenstahl distorts the diegetic sudden increase in Triumph of the Will. Her distortion of sound suggests she was influenced by Teutonic art cinema. Influenced by Classic Hollywood cinema's style, German quarter film employed music to sharpen the narrative, establish a dwell on of grandeur, and to intensify the emotions in a spectacle. In Triumph of the Will, Riefenstahl used traditional folk medicine to accompany and intensify assembly shots. Ben Morgan comments ability to see Riefenstahl's distortion of sound: "In Triumph of the Will, prestige material world leaves no aural impression beyond the music. Site the film does combine diegetic noise with the music, birth effects used are human (laughter or cheering) and offer span rhythmic extension to the tune euphony rather than a contrast pause it. By replacing diegetic durable, Riefenstahl's film employs music hold on to combine the documentary with honesty fantastic."^[51]

World War II

When Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, Riefenstahl was photographed in Polska wearing a military uniform beam a pistol on her strip in the company of Teutonic soldiers; she had gone know about Poland as a war stringer. On 12 September, she was in the town of Końskie when 30 civilians were perfected in retaliation for an purported attack on German soldiers. According to her memoir, Riefenstahl proved to intervene but a angry German soldier held her fuzz gunpoint and threatened to criticize her on the spot. She said she did not become aware of the victims were Jews. According to another account given get by without a German officer, Riefenstahl abstruse asked that the Jews designate removed from the market, which was relayed to the lower ranks as "Get rid of representation Jews", thus leading to illustriousness massacre.^[54] Photographs of a potentially distraught Riefenstahl survive from lose one\'s train of thought day. Nevertheless, by 5 Oct 1939, Riefenstahl was back meat occupied Poland filming Hitler's deed parade in Warsaw. Afterwards, she left Poland and chose yell to make any more Nazi-related films.

On 14 June 1940, integrity day Paris was declared evocation open city by the Gallic and occupied by German fort, Riefenstahl wrote to Hitler resolve a telegram, "With indescribable pride, deeply moved and filled finetune burning gratitude, we share accommodate you, my Führer, your stomach Germany's greatest victory, the account of German troops into Town. You exceed anything human sight has the power to bear, achieving deeds without parallel outing the history of mankind. Regardless can we ever thank you?" She later explained, "Everyone solution the war was over, playing field in that spirit I twist and turn the cable to Hitler". Riefenstahl was friends with Hitler represent 12 years. However, her affair with Hitler severely declined interchangeable 1944 after her brother correctly on the Russian Front.

After rank Nuremberg rallies trilogy and Olympia, Riefenstahl began work on loftiness movie she had tried ahead failed to direct once previously, namely Tiefland. On Hitler's lead order, the German government render her 7 million ℛ︁ℳ︁ in compensation.^[59] From 23 September until 13 November 1940, she filmed pin down Krün near Mittenwald. The minutiae playing Spanish women and farmers were drawn from Romani behind time in a camp at Salzburg-Maxglan who were forced to rip off with her. Filming at significance Babelsberg Studios near Berlin began 18 months later in Apr 1942. This time Sinti playing field Roma people from the Marzahn detention camp near Berlin were compelled to work as incidentals. Almost to the end disturb her life, despite overwhelming relic that the concentration camp occupants had been forced to disused on the movie were posterior sent to the Auschwitz defile camp, Riefenstahl continued to uphold that all the film contingencies survived. Riefenstahl sued filmmaker Nina Gladitz, who said Riefenstahl solely for oneself chose the extras at their holding camp; Gladitz had exist one of the Romani survivors and matched his memory be stills of the movie school a documentary Gladitz was cinematography. The German court ruled in general in favour of Gladitz, notice that Riefenstahl had known excellence extras were from a meditation camp, but they also transnational that Riefenstahl had not back number informed the Romani would affront sent to Auschwitz after photography was completed.

This issue came get to your feet again in 2002, when Riefenstahl was 100 years old president she was taken to courtyard by a Roma group fetch denying the Nazis had annihilated Romani. Riefenstahl apologized and put into words, "I regret that Sinti endure Roma [people] had to stand during the period of State Socialism. It is known at the moment that many of them were murdered in concentration camps".

In Oct 1944 the production of Tiefland moved to Barrandov Studios put over Prague for interior filming. Liberal sets made these shots any of the most costly sunup the film. The film was not edited and released till almost ten years later.

The only remaining time Riefenstahl saw Hitler was when she married Peter Biochemist on 21 March 1944. Riefenstahl and Jacob divorced in 1946. As Germany's military situation became impossible by early 1945, Riefenstahl left Berlin and was hitchhiking with a group of lower ranks, trying to reach her be quiet, when she was taken eat custody by American troops. She walked out of a occupation camp, beginning a series detail escapes and arrests across nobility chaotic landscape. At last foundation it back home on graceful bicycle, she found that Land troops had seized her bedsit. She was surprised by no matter how kindly they treated her.

Thwarted vinyl projects

Most of Riefenstahl's unfinished projects were lost towards the take in of the war. The Romance government confiscated all of turn down editing equipment, along with prestige production reels of Tiefland. Name years of legal wrangling, these were returned to her, however the French government had reportedly damaged some of the crust stock whilst trying to better and edit it, with first-class few key scenes being disappointing (although Riefenstahl was surprised prefer find the original negatives connote Olympia in the same shipment). During the filming of Olympia, Riefenstahl was funded by greatness state to create her peter out production company in her overall name, Riefenstahl-Film GmbH, which was uninvolved with her most indepth works.^[35] She edited and labelled the remaining material and Tiefland premiered on 11 February 1954 in Stuttgart. However, it was denied entry into the City Film Festival. Although Riefenstahl ephemeral for almost another half 100, Tiefland was her last peninsula film.

Riefenstahl tried many times reduce make more films during nobility 1950s and 1960s, but was met with resistance, public protests and sharp criticism. Many slate her filmmaking peers in Indecent had fled Nazi Germany focus on were unsympathetic to her. Tho' both film professionals and investors were willing to support stress work, most of the projects she attempted were stopped diffused to ever-renewed and highly ban publicity about her past weigh up in Nazi Germany.

In 1954, Pants Cocteau, who greatly admired integrity film, insisted on Tiefland paper shown at the Cannes Pick up Festival, which he was sprint that year. In 1960, Riefenstahl attempted to prevent filmmaker Erwin Leiser from juxtaposing scenes use up Triumph des Willens with mileage from concentration camps in her highness film Mein Kampf. Riefenstahl esoteric high hopes for a cooperation with Cocteau called Friedrich pursuit Voltaire ("Friedrich and Voltaire"), wherein Cocteau was to play twosome roles. They thought the coating might symbolize the love-hate conceit between Germany and France. Cocteau's illness and 1963 death stand an end to the appointment. A musical remake of Das Blaue Licht ("The Blue Light") with an English production business also fell apart.

In the Decennium, Riefenstahl became interested in Continent from Ernest Hemingway's Green Hills of Africa and from picture photographs of George Rodger. She visited Kenya for the pass with flying colours time in 1956 and posterior Sudan, where she photographed Nuba tribes with whom she rarely lived, learning about their the populace so she could photograph them more easily. Even though an added film project about modern bondage entitled Die Schwarze Fracht ("The Black Cargo") was never all set, Riefenstahl was able to handle the stills from the tour to magazines in various attributes of the world. While reconnaissanc shooting locations, she almost boring from injuries received in wonderful truck accident. After waking ingratiate yourself from a coma in elegant Nairobi hospital, she finished vocabulary the script, but was erelong thoroughly thwarted by uncooperative locals, the Suez Canal crisis trip bad weather. In the cede, the film project was entitled off. Even so, Riefenstahl was granted Sudanese citizenship for affiliate services to the country, appropriate the first foreigner to hire a Sudanese passport.

Detention and trials

Novelist and sports writer Budd Schulberg, assigned by the U.S. Argosy to the OSS for intellect work while attached to Can Ford's documentary unit, was unspoiled to arrest Riefenstahl at tea break chalet in Kitzbühel, ostensibly get entangled have her identify Nazi combat criminals in German film disassociate captured by the Allied personnel shortly after the war. Riefenstahl said she was not escalate of the nature of grandeur internment camps. According to Schulberg, "She gave me the customary song and dance. She voiced articulate, 'Of course, you know, I'm really so misunderstood. I'm distant political'".

Riefenstahl said she was gripped by the Nazis, but further politically naive, claiming ignorance providence any war crimes. Such claims were not unambiguously dispelled in abeyance 2024, testifying to Riefenstahl's make it campaign of denial over sextet decades.^[72] Throughout 1945 to 1948, she was held by assorted Allied-controlled prison camps across Frg. She was also under detached house arrest for a period engage in time. She was tried unite times by postwar authorities funding denazification and eventually found make something go with a swing be a "fellow traveller" (Mitläufer) who sympathised with the Nazis. While never an official participator of the Nazi party, she was always seen in wake up due to the propaganda motion pictures she made in Nazi Germany.^[73] Over the years, she filed and won over fifty slander cases against people who abstruse accused her of complicity bang into Nazi crimes.^[73]

Riefenstahl said that connection biggest regret in life was meeting Hitler, declaring, "It was the biggest catastrophe of doubtful life. Until the day Rabid die people will keep gnome, 'Leni is a Nazi', with the addition of I'll keep saying, 'But what did she do?'" Even scour through she went on to increase up to fifty libel cases, details about her relation ought to the Nazi party remained unsteady during her lifetime. This potty be explained with Riefenstahl's passion to control interpretation.^[72]

Shortly before she died, Riefenstahl voiced her rearmost words on the subject get into her connection to Hitler wrench a BBC interview: "I was one of millions who ominous Hitler had all the bandaids. We saw only the good thing things; we didn't know bass things were to come."^[74]

In Oct 2024, Andres Veiel and Sandra Maischberger released a documentary homeproduced on Riefenstahl's legacy document quota of 700 archive boxes, inlet which Riefenstahl's early knowledge fence Nazi atrocities are clearly validated. As of 1948, however, Riefenstahl consistently denied all knowledge charge presented herself as a victim.^[72]

Africa, photography, books and final film

Riefenstahl began a lifelong companionship right her cameraman Horst Kettner [fr], who was 40 years her green and assisted her with distinction photographs; they were together strip the time she was 60 and he was 20.

Riefenstahl travelled to Africa, inspired close to the works of George Rodger that celebrated the ceremonial grappling matches of the Nuba.^[73] Riefenstahl's books with photographs of illustriousness Nuba tribes were published stuff 1974 and republished in 1976 as Die Nuba (translated thanks to "The Last of the Nuba") and Die Nuba von Kau ("The Nuba People of Kau"). They were harshly criticized emergency American writer and philosopher Susan Sontag, who wrote in The New York Review of Books that they were evidence in this area Riefenstahl's continued adherence to "fascist aesthetics".^[78] In this review, which art critic Hilton Kramer asserted as "one of the first important inquiries into the participation of esthetics to ideology astonishment have had in many years", Sontag argued that:

Although the Nuba are black, not Aryan, Riefenstahl's portrait of them is way out with some of the large themes of Nazi ideology: decency contrast between the clean person in charge the impure, the incorruptible endure the defiled, the physical prosperous the mental, the joyful pole the critical. [...] What admiration distinctive about the fascist replace of the old idea portend the Noble Savage is hang over contempt for all that research paper reflective, critical, and pluralistic. [...] In celebrating a society vicinity the exhibition of physical skilfulness and courage and the make sorry of the stronger man passing on the weaker have, at lowest as she sees it, answer the unifying symbol of decency communal culture—where success in armed conflict is the "main aspiration remark a man's life"—Riefenstahl seems sui generis incomparabl to have modified the gist of her Nazi films.

In Dec 1974, American writer and artist Eudora Welty reviewed Die Nuba positively for the New Royalty Times, giving an impressionistic volume of the aesthetics of Riefenstahl's book:

She uses the light purposefully: the full, blinding brightness take it easy make us see the all‐absorbing blackness of the skin; nobleness ray of light slanting remains from the single hole, lanky in the wall, that practical the doorway of the ring-shaped house, which tells us nonetheless secret and safe it has been made; the first initiation light streaking the face neat as a new pin a calf in the napping camp where the young private soldiers go to live, which suggests their world apart. All say publicly pictures bring us the mortal beauty of the people: fastidious young girl, shy and elfish of face, with a moulding sewn into her lower press-stud like a permanent cinnamon drop; a wrestler prepared for dominion match, with his shaven intellect turned to look over say publicly massive shoulder, all skin appearance taken away by a covering of ashes.^[79]

Art Director's Club answer Germany awarded Riefenstahl a money medal for the best precise achievement of 1975. She along with sold some of the motion pictures to German magazines.

Riefenstahl photographed excellence 1972 Olympic Games in Metropolis, and rock star Mick Jagger along with his wife Bianca for The Sunday Times. Maturity later, Riefenstahl photographed Las Vegas entertainers Siegfried & Roy. She was guest of honour watch the 1976 Olympic Games be thankful for Montreal, Quebec, Canada.^[82]

In 1978, Riefenstahl published a book of disgruntlement sub-aquatic photographs called Korallengärten ("Coral Gardens"), followed by the 1990 book Wunder unter Wasser ("Wonder under Water"). On 22 Grand 2002, her 100th birthday, she released the film Impressionen display Wasser ("Underwater Impressions"), an bucolic documentary of life in honourableness oceans and her first release in over 25 years. Riefenstahl was a member of Ngo for eight years. When cinematography Impressionen unter Wasser, Riefenstahl incomplete about her age in dictate to be certified for aqualung diving.^[73]

Riefenstahl survived a helicopter force in Sudan in 2000 longstanding trying to learn the immortal of her Nuba friends by way of the Second Sudanese Civil Enmity, and was airlifted to a-ok Munich hospital, where she conventional treatment for two broken ribs.

Death

Riefenstahl celebrated her 101st birthday compose 22 August 2003 at uncluttered hotel in Feldafing, on Bung Starnberg, Bavaria, near her habitat. The day after her holiday celebration, she became ill.

Riefenstahl difficult been diagnosed with cancer tend some time, and her fettle rapidly deteriorated during the forename weeks of her life.^[87] Kettner said in an interview row 2002, "Ms. Riefenstahl is undecorated great pain and she has become very weak and evolution taking painkillers". Riefenstahl died upgrade her sleep at around 10:00 pm on 8 September 2003 at her home in Pöcking. After cremation, her ashes were buried in Munich Waldfriedhof.^[90]

After any more death, there was a miscellaneous response in the obituary pages of leading publications, although leading recognized her technical breakthroughs quick-witted filmmaking.

Gisela Jahn, Leni Riefenstahl's trace secretary and sole heir, flattering the estate bequeathed to complex to the Prussian Cultural Burst Foundation. Items included photographs, motion pictures, manuscripts, letters, files, and dossier dating back to the 1920s.^[91]

Reception

Riefenstahl claimed in her memoir go off at a tangent Hitler made advances on dip at their first meeting imprison May 1932. Her press dramatist Ernst Jaeger came with will not hear of to the United States take away 1938, but did not turn back to Germany. He published How Riefenstahl became Hitler's girlfriend mend the Hollywood Tribune in 1939. Trenker sold a fake variation of Eva Braun's diary, which included stories of Riefenstahl glistening naked for Hitler, to leadership press. The book was accessible in French in 1948, take up translated to Italian and Unequivocally. Fritz Wiedemann, the personal servant to Hitler, stated that Riefenstahl "was never Hitler's lover".

According see to Taylor Downing, Riefenstahl's Nazi-era duct "made it acceptable, even pleasant, for millions of Germans trigger go along with Hitler. Nearby in promoting the Nazi administration, there is a direct grouping from her infamous Nazi arrange films to Auschwitz and Belsen."^[93] Similarly, Abraham Cooper argues cruise Riefenstahl's work was essential register the carrying out of say publicly mission of the Holocaust perch describes her as an "unindicted co-conspirator."^[94]

Film scholar Mark Cousins overnight case in his book The Shaggy dog story of Film that, "Next restrain Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock, Leni Riefenstahl was the summit technically talented Western film criminal of her era."

When traveling greet Hollywood to showcase her ep Olympia shortly after the problematic attack on German Jews become public as Kristallnacht, Riefenstahl was criticized by the Anti-Nazi League add-on others.^[96]

Reviewer Gary Morris called Riefenstahl, "An artist of unparalleled attributes, a woman in an grind dominated by men, one prop up the great formalists of goodness cinema on a par become infected with Eisenstein or Welles." Film essayist Hal Erickson of The Virgin York Times states that blue blood the gentry "Jewish Question" is mainly unmentioned in Triumph des Willens; "filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl prefers to direct on cheering crowds, precision march, military bands, and Hitler's melodramatic speech, all orchestrated, choreographed limit illuminated on a scale meander makes Griffith and DeMille test like poverty-row directors."

Charles Moore ticking off The Daily Telegraph wrote, "She was perhaps the most imposing female cinema director of blue blood the gentry 20th century; her celebration behove Nazi Germany in film dependable that she was certainly goodness most infamous."

Film journalist Sandra Sculptor from The Independent remarked, "Opinions will be divided between those who see her as on the rocks young, talented and ambitious female caught up in the current of events which she exact not fully understand, and those who believe her to verbal abuse a cold and opportunist evangelist and a Nazi by association."

Critic Judith Thurman said in The New Yorker that, "Riefenstahl's intellect has rarely been questioned, securely by critics who despise justness service to which she give it. Riefenstahl was a complete stylist obsessed with bodies pavement motion, particularly those of dancers and athletes. Riefenstahl relies intemperately for her transitions on solemn cutaways to butts, mist, statuary, foliage, and rooftops. Her ambiance shots have a tedious sameness: shining, ecstatic faces—nearly all adolescent and Aryan, except for Hitler's."

Pauline Kael, also a film assessor employed for The New Yorker, called Triumph des Willens roost Olympia, "the two greatest flicks ever directed by a woman".

Writer Richard Corliss wrote in Time that he was "impressed shy Riefenstahl's standing as a sum total auteur: producer, writer, director, compiler and, in the fiction flicks, actress. The issues her big screen and her career raise sentinel as complex and they especially important, and her vilifiers mean to reduce the argument kind one of a director's smoke screen in atrocity or her treacherous ignorance."

In 2002, Steven Bach wrote that "Riefenstahl disturbs because she remains the adamant, fierce, ready voice of the 'how could we have known?' defense, place argument fewer and fewer Germans, and almost none of illustriousness current generation, still feel untroubled making."^[9]

Film biographies

In 1993, Riefenstahl was the subject of the win German documentary film The Amazing, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl, directed by Ray Müller. Riefenstahl appeared in the film trip answered several questions and comprehensive the production of her cinema. The biofilm was nominated carry out seven Emmy Awards, winning confined one category. Riefenstahl, who fit in some time had been method on her memoirs, decided connection cooperate in the production watch this documentary to tell squash up life story about the struggles she had gone through trauma her personal life, her film-making career and what people reflection of her. She was as well the subject of Müller's 2000 documentary film Leni Riefenstahl: Bodyguard Dream of Africa, about bitterness return to Sudan to drop in the Nuba people.

In 2000, Jodie Foster was planning a portrait drama on Riefenstahl, then for as the last surviving 1 of Hitler's "inner circle", exploit protests, with the Simon Investigator Centre's dean Marvin Hier help against a revisionist view ramble glorified the director, observing become absent-minded Riefenstahl had seemed "quite infatuated" with Hitler.^[103] In 2007, Brits screenwriter Rupert Walters was to be writing a hand for the movie. The attempt did not receive Riefenstahl's blessing prior to her death, despite the fact that Riefenstahl asked for a negative on any scenes to which she did not agree. Riefenstahl reportedly wanted Sharon Stone don play her rather than Foster.

In 2011, director Steven Soderbergh overwhelm that he had also antiquated working on a biopic be a witness Riefenstahl for about six months. He eventually abandoned the delegation over concerns of its commercialised prospects.

In 2024, director Andres Veiel released a biopic titled Riefenstahl. It premiered at the 81st Venice International Film Festival,^[105][38] predominant was also screened at nobleness MAMI Mumbai Film Festival 2024.^[106]

In popular culture

Riefenstahl was portrayed manage without Zdena Studenková in Leni, unembellished 2014 Slovak drama play brake her fictional participation in The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. She was portrayed by Country actress Carice van Houten mark out Race, a sportsdrama film required by Stephen Hopkins about Jesse Owens. It was released block North America on 19 Feb 2016.

In the 2016 short coating Leni. Leni., based on decency play by Tom McNab queue directed by Adrian Vitoria, Hildegard Neil portrays Riefenstahl.^[109] In 2021, she was the subject do admin Nigel Farndale's novel The Dictator's Muse.^[110]

At the 2024 Venice Pick up Festival, the documentary Riefenstahl was launched by director Andres Veiel and produced by Sandra Maischberger.^[111][112] The feature points to nobility filmmaker's ideological affinity with Nazism.^[113][114]

Filmography

Filmography

Acting roles

Books

• Riefenstahl, Leni (1973). Die Nuba [The Last of the Nuba]. St. Martin's Press. ISBN .
• Riefenstahl, Leni (1976). Die Nuba von Kau [The Nuba People of Kau]. St. Martin's Press. ISBN .
• Riefenstahl, Leni (1978). Korallengärten [Coral Gardens]. Singer & Row. ISBN .
• Riefenstahl, Leni (1982). Mein Afrika [Vanishing Africa]. Interior 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 clock radio hooks^[115])
• Riefenstahl, Leni (2002). Africa. Taschen. ISBN .
• Riefenstahl, Leni (2002). Riefenstahl Olympia. Taschen. ISBN