German filmmaker (1902–2003)
Helene Bertha Amalie "Leni" Riefenstahl (German:[ˈleː.niːˈʁiː.fn̩.ʃtaːl]ⓘ; 22 Revered 1902 – 8 September 2003) was a German film principal, producer, writer, editor, photographer soar actress. She is considered edge your way of the most controversial personalities in film history.
On nobleness one hand, she is considered by many critics as break "innovative filmmaker and creative aesthete",[1] while on the other mitt she is criticized for yield works in the service be incumbent on propaganda during the Nazi era.[2][3][4]
A talented swimmer and an virtuoso, Riefenstahl became interested in twinkling during her childhood, taking edify and performing across all Aggregation.
After seeing a promotional broadside for the 1924 film Mountain of Destiny, she was dazzling to move into acting extra between 1925 and 1929 asterisked in five successful motion movies. Riefenstahl became one of greatness few women in Germany statement of intent direct a film during say publicly Weimar era when, in 1932, she decided to try direction with her own film, The Blue Light.[5]
In the latter portion of the 1930s, she tied the Nazi propaganda filmsTriumph doomed the Will (1935) and Olympia (1938), resulting in worldwide heed and acclaim.
The films clear out widely considered two of class most effective and technically innovational propaganda films ever made. Stifle involvement in Triumph of say publicly Will, however, significantly damaged turn a deaf ear to career and reputation after Environment War II. Adolf Hitler collectively collaborated with Riefenstahl during honourableness production of at least link important Nazi films, and they formed a friendly relationship.[7]
After rectitude war, Riefenstahl was arrested mount found to be a Oppressive "fellow traveller" but was grizzle demand charged with war crimes.[8] Roundabouts her later life, she denied having known about the Slaughter, and was criticized as influence "voice of the 'how could we have known?' defense."[9][10][11] Riefenstahl's postwar work included an memoirs book and two photography books on the Nuba peoples suffer defeat southern Sudan.
Helene Bertha Amalie Riefenstahl was born timely Berlin on 22 August 1902.[12] Her father, Alfred Theodor Saul Riefenstahl, owned a successful vapour and ventilation company and lacked his daughter to follow him into the business world. In that Riefenstahl was the only descendant for several years, Alfred necessary her to carry on excellence family name and secure influence family fortune.
However, her be silent, Bertha Ida (Scherlach), who difficult to understand been a part-time seamstress already her marriage, had faith modern Riefenstahl and believed that accumulate daughter's future was in extravaganza business. Riefenstahl had a junior brother, Heinz, who was attach at the age of 39 on the Eastern Front behave Nazi Germany's war against birth Soviet Union.
Riefenstahl fell in enjoy with the arts in give someone the boot childhood.[18] She began to colour and write poetry at rank age of four.
She was also athletic, and at leadership age of twelve joined keen gymnastics and swimming club denominated Nixe. Her mother was assured her daughter would grow glad to be successful in greatness field of art and for that reason gave her full support, altered Riefenstahl's father, who was categorize interested in his daughter's discriminating inclinations.
In 1918, when she was 16, Riefenstahl attended unmixed presentation of Snow White which interested her deeply; it unwished for her to want to possibility a dancer. Her father alternatively wanted to provide his female child with an education that could lead to a more august occupation. His wife, however, extended to support her daughter's thoughtfulness.
Without her husband's knowledge, she enrolled Riefenstahl in dance final ballet classes at the Grimm-Reiter Dance School in Berlin, whirl location she quickly became a celestial pupil.
Riefenstahl guileful dancing academies and became petit mal known for her self-styled presumed dancing skills, traveling across Accumulation with Max Reinhardt in unblended show funded by Jewish processor Harry Sokal.
Riefenstahl often completed almost 700 ℛ︁ℳ︁ for each accomplishment and was so dedicated friend dancing that she gave filmmaking no thought. She began fail suffer a series of go to the bottom injuries, which led to articulation surgery that threatened her dazzle career. It was while raincloud to a doctor's appointment lose concentration she first saw a advertisement for the 1924 film Mountain of Destiny.
She became emotional to go into movie production, and began visiting the flicks to see films and further attended film shows.
On one succeed her adventures, Riefenstahl met Luis Trenker, an actor who confidential appeared in Mountain of Destiny. At a meeting arranged gross her friend Gunther Rahn, she met Arnold Fanck, the chairman of Mountain of Destiny allow a pioneer of the stack film genre.
Fanck was lay down on a film in Songwriter. After Riefenstahl told him even so much she admired his exertion, she also convinced him weekend away her acting skill. She trustworthy him to feature her outing one of his films. Riefenstahl later received a package bring forth Fanck containing the script outline the 1926 film The Spiritual Mountain.
She made a broadcast of films for Fanck, circle she learned from him fussy and film editing techniques. Lag of Fanck's films that ruin Riefenstahl into the limelight was The White Hell of Pitz Palu of 1929, co-directed bid G. W. Pabst. She esoteric to undergo many physical challenges that would probably be alleged unethical in today's standards.
Violently of the torments included: grow engulfed in small avalanches, live into mountain lakes and frozen streams, climbing rocky pinnacles extent barefoot, letting herself be pulled up a rock face use pelted by snow and balance, balancing on a ladder stuck-up a deep glacial crevasse, captain enduring obscene jokes from repulse exclusively male colleagues.[22] Her make self-conscious spread to countries outside Germany.
Riefenstahl produced and directed her violate work called Das Blaue Licht ("The Blue Light") in 1932, co-written by Carl Mayer station Béla Balázs.
This film won the silver medal at prestige Venice Film Festival, but was not universally well-received, for which Riefenstahl blamed the critics, spend time at of whom were Jewish. Stare its 1938 re-release, the manipulate of Balázs and Sokal, both Jewish, were removed from integrity credits; some reports say that was at Riefenstahl's behest.
Whitehead the film, Riefenstahl played change innocent peasant girl who attempt hated by the villagers in that they think she is brutal and cast out. She assignment protected by a glowing pike grotto. According to herself, Riefenstahl received invitations to travel unobtrusively Hollywood to create films, nevertheless she refused them in assist of remaining in Germany inactive a boyfriend.
Hitler was unembellished fan of the film, viewpoint thought Riefenstahl epitomized the cheap German female. He saw genius in Riefenstahl and arranged boss meeting.
In 1933, Riefenstahl appeared outer shell the U.S.-German co-productions of say publicly 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 subject German and produced and into by Universal Studios. Her character as an actress in S.O.S. Iceberg was her only Spin language role in film.
Riefenstahl heard Nazi Party (NSDAP) leader Adolf Hitler speak schoolwork a rally in 1932 instruction was mesmerized by his flair as a public speaker.
Portrayal the experience in her biography, Riefenstahl wrote, "I had chiefly almost apocalyptic vision that Beside oneself was never able to disregard. It seemed as if character Earth's surface were spreading deliver in front of me, enjoy a hemisphere that suddenly splits apart in the middle, spewing out an enormous jet exert a pull on water, so powerful that grasp touched the sky and shook the earth".
Hitler was immediately hooked by Riefenstahl's work.
She attempt described as fitting in speed up Hitler's ideal of Aryan maturity, a feature he had esteemed when he saw her key performance in Das Blaue Licht.[28] In May 1933, Hitler responsibility Riefenstahl to make a pick up about Horst Wessel, but she declined. Riefenstahl was offered authority opportunity to direct Der Sieg des Glaubens, an hour-long advertising film about the fifth Nurnberg Rally in 1933.
The occasion that was offered was orderly huge surprise to Riefenstahl. Authoritarian had ordered Joseph Goebbels's Advertising Ministry to give the coating commission to Riefenstahl, but picture Ministry had never informed her.[30] Riefenstahl agreed to direct picture movie even though she was only given a few cycle before the rally to prepare.[30] She and Hitler got to be anticipated well, forming a friendly satisfaction.
The propaganda film was funded entirely by the NSDAP.
During rendering filming of Der Sieg nonsteroid Glaubens, Hitler had stood live by side with the ruler of the Sturmabteilung (SA), Painter Röhm, a man with whom he clearly had a close working relationship. Röhm was murdered on Hitler's orders a brief time later, during the scour out of the SA referred be in total as the Night of rendering Long Knives.
It has amount on record that, immediately succeeding the killings, Hitler ordered lie copies of the film withstand be destroyed, although Riefenstahl open that this ever happened.[31]
Still laid hold of with Riefenstahl's work, Hitler of one\'s own free will her to film Triumph nonsteroidal Willens ("Triumph of the Will"), a new propaganda film think over the 1934 party rally hold up Nuremberg.
More than one jillion Germans participated in the presentation. The film is sometimes accounted the greatest propaganda film shrewd made.[34] Initially, according to Riefenstahl, she resisted and did crowd together want to create further Socialism Party films, instead wanting allude to direct a feature film family unit on Eugen d'Albert's Tiefland ("Lowlands"), an opera that was very popular in Berlin in leadership 1920s.
Riefenstahl received private subsidy for the production of Tiefland, but the filming in Espana was derailed and the proposal was cancelled. (When Tiefland was eventually shot, between 1940 esoteric 1944, it was done gather black and white, and was the third most expensive ep produced in Nazi Germany.[35] Nearby the filming of Tiefland, Riefenstahl utilized Romani from internment camps for extras, who were sharply mistreated on set, and considering that the filming completed they were sent to the death dramatic Auschwitz.[35]) Hitler was able stop at convince her to film Triumph des Willens on the encourage that she would not facsimile required to make further pictures for the party, according get on to Riefenstahl.
The motion picture was generally recognized as an noble, innovative work of propaganda filmmaking. The film took Riefenstahl's vocation to a new level good turn gave her further international recognition.
In interviews for the 1993 pic The Wonderful Horrible Life show Leni Riefenstahl, Riefenstahl adamantly denied any deliberate attempt to bulge Nazi propaganda and said she was disgusted that Triumph nonsteroidal Willens was used in much a way.
In a private put to death to Hitler, quoted in grand 2024 documentary, Riefensthal seems zealous about the propaganda effects grapple Triumph des Willens: "the film's impact as German propaganda admiration greater than I could put on imagined and your image, loose Führer, is always applauded".[38]
Despite presumably vowing not to make commonplace more films about the Fascist Party, Riefenstahl made the 28-minute Tag der Freiheit: Unsere Wehrmacht ("Day of Freedom: Our Setting Forces") about the German Soldiers in 1935.
Like Der Sieg des Glaubens and Triumph nonsteroid Willens, this was filmed convenient the annual Nazi Party meet at Nuremberg. Riefenstahl said that film was a sub-set faux Der Sieg des Glaubens, with to mollify the German Swarm which felt it was very different from represented well in Triumph stilbesterol Willens.
Hitler invited Riefenstahl to pick up the 1936 Summer Olympics determined to be held in Songwriter, a film which Riefenstahl blunt had been commissioned by primacy International Olympic Committee.
She visited Greece to take footage disregard the route of the address torch relay and the games' original site at Olympia, pivot she was aided by Hellenic photographer Nelly's. This material became Olympia, a hugely successful album which has since been universally noted for its technical nearby aesthetic achievements.Olympia was secretly funded by the Nazis.[42] She was one of the first filmmakers to use tracking shots essential a documentary,[43] placing a camera on rails to follow goodness athletes' movement.
The film levelheaded also noted for its sluggardly motion shots.[43] Riefenstahl played be in connection with the idea of slow force, underwater diving shots, extremely tall and low shooting angles, comprehensive aerial shots, and tracking organization shots for allowing fast come to mind. Riefensthal also "reversed the crust to make the divers cycle backwards, holding them in glory air as if to brave the laws of gravity".[38] Numerous of these shots were somewhat unheard of at the day, but Riefenstahl's use and ascent of them set a self-centred, and is the reason they are still used to that day.[44] Riefenstahl's work on Olympia has been cited as graceful major influence in modern athleticss photography.[43] Riefenstahl filmed competitors simulated all races, including African-American Jesse Owens in what later became famous footage.
Olympia premiered for Hitler's 49th birthday in 1938.
Neat international debut led Riefenstahl preserve embark on an American hype tour in an attempt show consideration for secure commercial release. In Feb 1937, Riefenstahl enthusiastically told spruce reporter for the Detroit News, "To me, Hitler is righteousness greatest man who ever fleeting. He truly is without oversight, so simple and at integrity same time possessed of macho strength".
On 31 August 1938, Olympia won the Mussolini flagon at the Venice Film Feast as "Best foreign film".[38] She arrived in New York Sweep on 4 November 1938, fin days before Kristallnacht (the "Night of the Broken Glass"). Like that which news of the event reached the United States, Riefenstahl candidly defended Hitler.
On 18 Nov, she was received by h Ford in Detroit. Olympia was shown at the Chicago Engineers Club two days later.Avery Brundage, President of the International Athletics Committee, praised the film highest held Riefenstahl in the paramount regard. She negotiated with Prizefighter B. Mayer, and on 8 December, Walt Disney brought recipe on a three-hour tour display her the ongoing production accord Fantasia.
From the Goebbels Diaries, researchers learned that Riefenstahl had antediluvian friendly with Joseph Goebbels view his wife Magda, attending glory opera with them and switch on to his parties.
Riefenstahl serviced that Goebbels was upset during the time that she rejected his advances coupled with was jealous of her way on Hitler, seeing her kind an internal threat. She accordingly insisted his diary entries could not be trusted. By adjacent accounts, Goebbels thought highly treat Riefenstahl's filmmaking but was enraged with what he saw primate her overspending on the Nazi-provided filmmaking budgets.
In Triumph of birth Will, Tom Saunders argues rove Hitler serves as the baggage of the camera's gaze.
Saunders writes, "Without denying that 'rampant masculinity' (the 'sexiness' of Dictator and the SS) serves importation the object of the see, I would suggest that want is also directed toward probity feminine. This occurs not happening the familiar sequences of humble women greeting Hitler's arrival president cavalcade through Nuremberg.
In these Hitler clearly remains the irregular of attraction, as more ordinarily in the visual treatment defer to his mass following. Rather, stingy is encoded in representation enjoy yourself flags and banners, which were shot in such a fashion as to make them visually desirable as well as mighty political symbols".[50] The flag serves as a symbol of vigour, equated with national pride skull dominance, that supposedly channels restroom sexual and masculine energy.
Riefenstahl's cinematic framing of the flags encapsulated its iconography. Saunders continues, "The effect is a silly double transformation: the images modify human beings and breathe have a go into flags. Even when justness carriers are not mostly sunken under the sea of negroid cloth, and when facial splendour are visible in profile, they attain neither character nor personality.
The men remain ants pathway a vast enterprise. By set and paradoxically, the flags, willy-nilly a few or hundreds peopling the frame, assume distinct identities".[50]
Riefenstahl distorts the diegetic sound in Triumph of probity Will. Her distortion of agreeably suggests she was influenced uncongenial German art cinema.
Influenced soak Classical Hollywood cinema's style, Teutonic art film employed music work enhance the narrative, establish well-organized sense of grandeur, and kind heighten the emotions in topping scene. In Triumph of authority Will, Riefenstahl used traditional conventional music to accompany and aggravate her shots. Ben Morgan comments on Riefenstahl's distortion of sound: "In Triumph of the Will, the material world leaves inept aural impression beyond the sonata.
Where the film does incorporate diegetic noise with the theme, the effects used are individual (laughter or cheering) and volunteer a rhythmic extension to honourableness music rather than a connect to it. By replacing diegetic sound, Riefenstahl's film employs air to combine the documentary run into the fantastic."[51]
When Frg invaded Poland on 1 Sep 1939, Riefenstahl was photographed unsavory Poland wearing a military securely and a pistol on in return belt in the company obvious German soldiers; she had asleep to Poland as a fighting correspondent.
On 12 September, she was in the town disregard Końskie when 30 civilians were executed in retaliation for erior alleged attack on German lower ranks. According to her memoir, Riefenstahl tried to intervene but unblended furious German soldier held an added at gunpoint and threatened manage shoot her on the misty. She said she did sound realize the victims were Jews.
According to another account predisposed by a German officer, Riefenstahl had asked that the Jews be removed from the trade, which was relayed to depiction soldiers as "Get rid break into the Jews", thus leading dealings the massacre.[54] Photographs of splendid potentially distraught Riefenstahl survive free yourself of that day.
Nevertheless, by 5 October 1939, Riefenstahl was arrival in occupied Poland filming Hitler's victory parade in Warsaw. Afterward, she left Poland and chose not to make any much Nazi-related films.
On 14 June 1940, the day Paris was alleged an open city by blue blood the gentry French and occupied by Germanic troops, Riefenstahl wrote to Bully in a telegram, "With unimaginable joy, deeply moved and adequate with burning gratitude, we hand with you, my Führer, your and Germany's greatest victory, dignity entry of German troops secure Paris.
You exceed anything being imagination has the power end conceive, achieving deeds without correspondent in the history of humanity. How can we ever express you?" She later explained, "Everyone thought the war was shield, and in that spirit Comical sent the cable to Hitler". Riefenstahl was friends with Absolutist for 12 years. However, supreme relationship with Hitler severely declined in 1944 after her sibling died on the Russian Front.
After the Nuremberg rallies trilogy delighted Olympia, Riefenstahl began work stimulation the movie she had exhausted and failed to direct previously before, namely Tiefland.
On Hitler's direct order, the German command paid her 7 million ℛ︁ℳ︁ detour compensation.[59] From 23 September in abeyance 13 November 1940, she filmed in Krün near Mittenwald. Honesty extras playing Spanish women submit farmers were drawn from Romani detained in a camp horizontal Salzburg-Maxglan who were forced get entangled work with her.
Filming doubtful the Babelsberg Studios near Songwriter began 18 months later misrepresent April 1942. This time Sinti and Roma people from nobility Marzahn detention camp near Songwriter were compelled to work variety extras. Almost to the sequence of her life, despite unutterable evidence that the concentration actressy occupants had been forced catch work on the movie were later sent to the Stockade death camp, Riefenstahl continued ensue maintain that all the ep extras survived.
Riefenstahl sued producer Nina Gladitz, who said Riefenstahl personally chose the extras rot their holding camp; Gladitz locked away found one of the Romani survivors and matched his honour with stills of the picture for a documentary Gladitz was filming. The German court ruled largely in favour of Gladitz, declaring that Riefenstahl had blurry the extras were from fine concentration camp, but they further agreed that Riefenstahl had yowl been informed the Romani would be sent to Auschwitz rear 1 filming was completed.
This issue came up again in 2002, in the way that Riefenstahl was 100 years past one's prime and she was taken forbear court by a Roma working group for denying the Nazis difficult exterminated Romani.
Riefenstahl apologized spell said, "I regret that Sinti and Roma [people] had permission suffer during the period signify National Socialism. It is fit to drop today that many of them were murdered in concentration camps".
In October 1944 the production see Tiefland moved to Barrandov Studios in Prague for interior photography.
Lavish sets made these shots some of the most pricy of the film. The coating was not edited and loose until almost ten years later.
The last time Riefenstahl saw Oppressor was when she married Tool Jacob on 21 March 1944. Riefenstahl and Jacob divorced insipid 1946. As Germany's military outcome became impossible by early 1945, Riefenstahl left Berlin and was hitchhiking with a group thoroughgoing men, trying to reach multipart mother, when she was working engaged into custody by American command.
She walked out of smashing holding camp, beginning a program of escapes and arrests zone the chaotic landscape. At most recent making it back home impersonation a bicycle, she found lose one\'s train of thought American troops had seized an extra house. She was surprised overtake how kindly they treated her.
Most of Riefenstahl's unpurified projects were lost towards honourableness end of the war.
Depiction French government confiscated all wages her editing equipment, along deal with the production reels of Tiefland. After years of legal squabble, these were returned to need, but the French government esoteric reportedly damaged some of illustriousness film stock whilst trying almost develop and edit it, connote a few key scenes kick off missing (although Riefenstahl was unprepared to find the original negatives for Olympia in the aforesaid shipment).
During the filming have a high opinion of Olympia, Riefenstahl was funded alongside the state to create squash own production company in unconditional own name, Riefenstahl-Film GmbH, which was uninvolved with her peak influential works.[35] She edited duct dubbed the remaining material illustrious Tiefland premiered on 11 Feb 1954 in Stuttgart.
However, run into was denied entry into say publicly Cannes Film Festival. Although Riefenstahl lived for almost another fifty per cent century, Tiefland was her remaining feature film.
Riefenstahl tried many ancient to make more films not later than the 1950s and 1960s, however was met with resistance, key protests and sharp criticism.
Hang around of her filmmaking peers unswervingly Hollywood had fled Nazi Frg and were unsympathetic to minder. Although both film professionals build up investors were willing to help her work, most of character projects she attempted were congested owing to ever-renewed and enthusiastically negative publicity about her help out work in Nazi Germany.
In 1954, Jean Cocteau, who greatly cherished the film, insisted on Tiefland being shown at the Port Film Festival, which he was running that year.
In 1960, Riefenstahl attempted to prevent producer Erwin Leiser from juxtaposing scenes from Triumph des Willens jiggle footage from concentration camps skull his film Mein Kampf. Riefenstahl had high hopes for out collaboration with Cocteau called Friedrich und Voltaire ("Friedrich and Voltaire"), wherein Cocteau was to amuse oneself two roles.
They thought rank film might symbolize the love-hate relationship between Germany and Author. Cocteau's illness and 1963 swallow up put an end to distinction project. A musical remake delineate Das Blaue Licht ("The La-di-dah Light") with an English selling company also fell apart.
In influence 1960s, Riefenstahl became interested tear Africa from Ernest Hemingway's Green Hills of Africa and carry too far the photographs of George Rodger.
She visited Kenya for blue blood the gentry first time in 1956 suffer later Sudan, where she photographed Nuba tribes with whom she sporadically lived, learning about their culture so she could ikon them more easily. Even even though her film project about fresh slavery entitled Die Schwarze Fracht ("The Black Cargo") was not in the least completed, Riefenstahl was able side sell the stills from nobility expedition to magazines in several parts of the world.
Eventually scouting shooting locations, she apparently died from injuries received thump a truck accident. After wakeful up from a coma grind a Nairobi hospital, she terminated writing the script, but was soon thoroughly thwarted by perverse locals, the Suez Canal disaster and bad weather. In description end, the film project was called off.
Even so, Riefenstahl was granted Sudanese citizenship assistance her services to the nation, becoming the first foreigner combat receive a Sudanese passport.
Novelist and sports writer Budd Schulberg, assigned by the U.S. Navy to the OSS answer intelligence work while attached round on John Ford's documentary unit, was ordered to arrest Riefenstahl watch her chalet in Kitzbühel, ostensively to have her identify Dictatorial war criminals in German lp footage captured by the Bound troops shortly after the hostilities.
Riefenstahl said she was plead for aware of the nature pleasant the internment camps. According ordain Schulberg, "She gave me influence usual song and dance. She said, 'Of course, you bring up to date, I'm really so misunderstood. I'm not political'".
Riefenstahl said she was fascinated by the Nazis, nevertheless also politically naive, claiming inexperience about any war crimes.
Specified claims were not unambiguously dispelled until 2024, testifying to Riefenstahl's successful campaign of denial turning over six decades.[72] Throughout 1945 support 1948, she was held unwelcoming various Allied-controlled prison camps crossed Germany. She was also governed by house arrest for a turn of time.
She was debilitated four times by postwar regime for denazification and eventually grow to be a "fellow traveller" (Mitläufer) who sympathised with honesty Nazis. While never an authentic member of the Nazi troop, she was always seen hold your attention association due to the ormation films she made in Absolute Germany.[73] Over the years, she filed and won over greenback libel cases against people who had accused her of smoke screen with Nazi crimes.[73]
Riefenstahl said digress her biggest regret in sure was meeting Hitler, declaring, "It was the biggest catastrophe decompose my life.
Until the offering I die people will check saying, 'Leni is a Nazi', and I'll keep saying, 'But what did she do?'" Smooth though she went on build up win up to fifty offend cases, details about her connection to the Nazi party remained unclear during her lifetime. That can be explained with Riefenstahl's vehemence to control interpretation.[72]
Shortly formerly she died, Riefenstahl voiced turn a deaf ear to final words on the sphere of her connection to Despot in a BBC interview: "I was one of millions who thought Hitler had all character answers.
We saw only depiction good things; we didn't fracture bad things were to come."[74]
In October 2024, Andres Veiel discipline Sandra Maischberger released a infotainment based on Riefenstahl's legacy certificate collection of 700 archive boxes, in which Riefenstahl's early understanding of Nazi atrocities are manifestly documented.
As of 1948, on the contrary, Riefenstahl consistently denied all track and presented herself as dexterous victim.[72]
Riefenstahl began a lifelong occupancy with her cameraman Horst Kettner [fr], who was 40 years attendant junior and assisted her cream the photographs; they were box from the time she was 60 and he was 20.
Riefenstahl travelled to Africa, poetic by the works of Martyr Rodger that celebrated the mystery wrestling matches of the Nuba.[73] Riefenstahl's books with photographs use up the Nuba tribes were accessible in 1974 and republished dilemma 1976 as Die Nuba (translated as "The Last of honesty Nuba") and Die Nuba von Kau ("The Nuba People call up Kau").
They were harshly criticized by American writer and pundit Susan Sontag, who wrote cry The New York Review be in the region of Books that they were trace of Riefenstahl's continued adherence understand "fascist aesthetics".[78] In this study, which art critic Hilton Kramer described as "one of rank most important inquiries into glory relation of esthetics to teachings we have had in assorted years", Sontag argued that:
Although nobility Nuba are black, not Primitive, Riefenstahl's portrait of them in your right mind consistent with some of dignity larger themes of Nazi ideology: the contrast between the unsullied and the impure, the high-principled and the defiled, the corporeal and the mental, the exalted and the critical.
[...] What is distinctive about the ideology version of the old impression of the Noble Savage silt its contempt for all guarantee is reflective, critical, and pluralistic. [...] In celebrating a kinship where the exhibition of earthly skill and courage and decency victory of the stronger male over the weaker have, rib least as she sees pull it off, become the unifying symbol confront the communal culture—where success get in touch with fighting is the "main dream of a man's life"—Riefenstahl seems only to have modified class ideas of her Nazi films.
In December 1974, American writer tell off photographer Eudora Welty reviewed Die Nuba positively for the New York Times, giving an impressionist account of the aesthetics reproach Riefenstahl's book:
She uses the pleasure purposefully: the full, blinding luminosity to make us see say publicly all‐absorbing blackness of the skin; the ray of light aslant down from the single full, high in the wall, renounce is the doorway of excellence circular house, which tells of no use how secret and safe removal has been made; the principal dawn light streaking the bring round of a calf in grandeur sleeping camp where the grassy men go to live, which suggests their world apart.
Screen the pictures bring us glory physical beauty of the people: a young girl, shy become more intense mischievous of face, with spruce bead sewn into her negligent lip like a permanent biscuit drop; a wrestler prepared represent his match, with his beardless head turned to look keep in check the massive shoulder, all nibble color taken away by unornamented coating of ashes.[79]
Art Director's Baton of Germany awarded Riefenstahl adroit gold medal for the important photographic achievement of 1975.
She also sold some of rectitude pictures to German magazines.
Riefenstahl photographed the 1972 Olympic Games bother Munich, and rock star Mick Jagger along with his partner Bianca for The Sunday Times. Years later, Riefenstahl photographed Las Vegas entertainers Siegfried & Roy. She was guest of glance at the 1976 Olympic Merrymaking in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.[82]
In 1978, Riefenstahl published a book execute her sub-aquatic photographs called Korallengärten ("Coral Gardens"), followed by righteousness 1990 book Wunder unter Wasser ("Wonder under Water").
On 22 August 2002, her 100th celebration, she released the film Impressionen unter Wasser ("Underwater Impressions"), propose idealized documentary of life revel in the oceans and her be in first place film in over 25 life. Riefenstahl was a member portend Greenpeace for eight years. What because filming Impressionen unter Wasser, Riefenstahl lied about her age gauzy order to be certified financial assistance scuba diving.[73]
Riefenstahl survived a chopper crash in Sudan in 2000 while trying to learn birth fates of her Nuba alters ego during the Second Sudanese Non-military War, and was airlifted hinder a Munich hospital, where she received treatment for two ruptured ribs.
Riefenstahl celebrated her 101st dine on 22 August 2003 maw a hotel in Feldafing, penchant Lake Starnberg, Bavaria, near send someone away home.
The day after respite birthday celebration, she became ill.
Riefenstahl had been diagnosed with somebody for some time, and on his health rapidly deteriorated during integrity last weeks of her life.[87] Kettner said in an discussion in 2002, "Ms. Riefenstahl deference in great pain and she has become very weak illustrious is taking painkillers".
Riefenstahl mindnumbing in her sleep at environing 10:00 pm on 8 Sep 2003 at her home intensity Pöcking. After cremation, her flop were buried in Munich Waldfriedhof.[90]
After her death, there was great varied response in the death notice pages of leading publications, despite the fact that most recognized her technical breakthroughs in filmmaking.
Gisela Jahn, Leni Riefenstahl's former secretary and sole legatee, donated the estate bequeathed run into her to the Prussian Native Heritage Foundation.
Items included photographs, films, manuscripts, letters, files, gain documents dating back to loftiness 1920s.[91]
Riefenstahl claimed in her disquisition that Hitler made advances falling off her at their first gathering in May 1932. Her implore secretary Ernst Jaeger came hash up her to the United States in 1938, but did watchword a long way return to Germany.
He in print How Riefenstahl became Hitler's girlfriend in the Hollywood Tribune scheduled 1939. Trenker sold a trumped-up version of Eva Braun's calendar, which included stories of Riefenstahl dancing naked for Hitler, distribute the press. The book was published in French in 1948, and translated to Italian become peaceful English.
Fritz Wiedemann, the identifiable adjutant to Hitler, stated turn this way Riefenstahl "was never Hitler's lover".
According to Taylor Downing, Riefenstahl's Nazi-era work "made it acceptable, smooth desirable, for millions of Germans to go along with Autocrat. And in promoting the Autocratic leadership, there is a straight line from her infamous Monolithic party films to Auschwitz bracket Belsen."[93] Similarly, Abraham Cooper argues that Riefenstahl's work was vital to the carrying out unscrew the mission of the Killing and describes her as fraudster "unindicted co-conspirator."[94]
Film scholar Mark Cousins notes in his book The Story of Film that, "Next to Orson Welles and Aelfred Hitchcock, Leni Riefenstahl was position most technically talented Western tegument casing maker of her era."
When roving to Hollywood to showcase assemblage film Olympia shortly after magnanimity coordinated attack on German Jews known as Kristallnacht, Riefenstahl was criticized by the Anti-Nazi Contemporary and others.[96]
Reviewer Gary Morris cryed Riefenstahl, "An artist of incomparable gifts, a woman in alteration industry dominated by men, single of the great formalists forget about the cinema on a hard with Eisenstein or Welles." Skin critic Hal Erickson of The New York Times states defer the "Jewish Question" is exceptionally unmentioned in Triumph des Willens; "filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl prefers lambast concentrate on cheering crowds, truth marching, military bands, and Hitler's climactic speech, all orchestrated, choreographed and illuminated on a top-notch that makes Griffith and Filmmaker look like poverty-row directors."
Charles Comic of The Daily Telegraph wrote, "She was perhaps the bossy talented female cinema director put a stop to the 20th century; her travel to of Nazi Germany in integument ensured that she was surely the most infamous."
Film journalist Sandra Smith from The Independent remarked, "Opinions will be divided mid those who see her laugh a young, talented and choosy woman caught up in character tide of events which she did not fully understand, contemporary those who believe her wish be a cold and adventuress propagandist and a Nazi preschooler association."
Critic Judith Thurman said revel in The New Yorker that, "Riefenstahl's genius has rarely been disputed, even by critics who be contemptuous of the service to which she lent it.
Riefenstahl was on the rocks consummate stylist obsessed with tight-fisted in motion, particularly those disturb dancers and athletes. Riefenstahl relies heavily for her transitions stash portentous cutaways to butts, too much, statuary, foliage, and rooftops. Coffee break reaction shots have a dreich sameness: shining, ecstatic faces—nearly scream young and Aryan, except lay out Hitler's."
Pauline Kael, also a coating reviewer employed for The Additional Yorker, called Triumph des Willens and Olympia, "the two unchanging films ever directed by wonderful woman".
Writer Richard Corliss wrote stem Time that he was "impressed by Riefenstahl's standing as spruce total auteur: producer, writer, president, editor and, in the tale films, actress.
The issues repel films and her career elevate are as complex and they are important, and her vilifiers tend to reduce the quarrel to one of a director's complicity in atrocity or make up for criminal ignorance."
In 2002, Steven Composer wrote that "Riefenstahl disturbs by reason of she remains the adamant, crazy, glib voice of the 'how could we have known?' look after, an argument fewer and few Germans, and almost none carry out the current generation, still cling to comfortable making."[9]
In 1993, Riefenstahl was the subject of high-mindedness award-winning German documentary film The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl, directed by Ray Müller.
Riefenstahl appeared in the hide and answered several questions opinion detailed the production of jilt films. The biofilm was voted for seven Emmy Awards, charming in one category. Riefenstahl, who for some time had back number working on her memoirs, definite to cooperate in the origination of this documentary to mention her life story about honourableness struggles she had gone check in her personal life, frequent film-making career and what generate thought of her.
She was also the subject of Müller's 2000 documentary film Leni Riefenstahl: Her Dream of Africa, hurry up her return to Sudan find time for visit the Nuba people.
In 2000, Jodie Foster was planning tidy biographical drama on Riefenstahl, escalate seen as the last present member of Hitler's "inner circle", causing protests, with the Saint Wiesenthal Centre's dean Marvin Hier warning against a revisionist pose that glorified the director, ceremonial that Riefenstahl had seemed "quite infatuated" with Hitler.[103] In 2007, British screenwriter Rupert Walters was reported to be writing top-hole script for the movie.
Magnanimity project did not receive Riefenstahl's approval prior to her complete, as Riefenstahl asked for orderly veto on any scenes have an adverse effect on which she did not coincide. Riefenstahl reportedly wanted Sharon Friend to play her rather puzzle Foster.
In 2011, director Steven Soderbergh revealed that he had as well been working on a biopic of Riefenstahl for about cardinal months.
He eventually abandoned rank project over concerns of take the edge off commercial prospects.
In 2024, director Andres Veiel released a biopic lordly Riefenstahl. It premiered at justness 81st Venice International Film Festival,[105][38] and was also screened gain the MAMI Mumbai Film Holiday 2024.[106]
Riefenstahl was depicted by Zdena Studenková in Leni, a 2014 Slovak drama entertainment about her fictional participation cattle The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.
She was portrayed fail to notice Dutch actress Carice van Houten in Race, a sportsdrama release directed by Stephen Hopkins produce Jesse Owens. It was at large in North America on 19 February 2016.
In the 2016 concise film Leni. Leni., based bank on the play by Tom McNab and directed by Adrian Vitoria, Hildegard Neil portrays Riefenstahl.[109] Bring off 2021, she was the excursion of Nigel Farndale's novel The Dictator's Muse.[110]
At the 2024 City Film Festival, the documentary Riefenstahl was launched by director Andres Veiel and produced by Sandra Maischberger.[111][112] The feature points bring out the filmmaker's ideological affinity ring true Nazism.[113][114]
Die Nuba [The Last of probity Nuba]. St. Martin's Press. ISBN .
Harper & Row. ISBN .
Wunder unter Wasser [Wonders out of the sun Water]. Herbig. ISBN .
Taschen. ISBN .