BERLIN, Germany (24 Dec 2003) -- Try as they might, those who become famous -- or infamous -- don't get to decide how history will remember them. So it was with Leni Riefenstahl. Her death at age 101 came nearly 70 years after she became known as "Hitler's filmmaker." But that was the label that stuck. Riefenstahl was first a dancer and then an actress before she found her métier behind the camera. After hearing Adolf Hitler speak in 1932, she approached and befriended him. After he came to power the next year, the Nazi Party financed "Triumph of the Will," a documentary film that was a major advance in cinematic technique. It also was a chilling example of how to manipulate the emotions of the masses. The filmed account of the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg was hailed for its innovative use of light and shadow, its dramatic camera angles and its editing, which magnified Hitler's charisma. But ultimately the film came to be seen as the glorification of a man and an ideology that produced the most catastrophic war in history and an effort to murder an entire people. | | Riefenstahl made other films. But after the war, she was detained as a Nazi sympathizer. Although never prosecuted, she was unable to obtain funding to make films. After years of obscurity, she produced a highly praised collection of still photos of the Nuba tribe of Sudan. At 72, she took up scuba diving, which led to collections of photos and, later, a film released when she was 100. Late in life Riefenstahl was honored for her achievements. But that did not change the world's judgment that, despite her insistence that she was an artist with no political agenda, she was a propagandist for one of history's most evil men. Artistically, she was talented and successful; morally, she lived much of her life under a cloud. Maybe that's poetic justice. SOURCE - SacBee |
