Word: leni
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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PEOPLE OF KAU by Leni Riefenstahl. 224 pages. Harper & Row. $25. "It was a time of almost intolerable hardship and exertion ... But for my deep-seated urge to pursue the strange and the beautiful, heedless of time, danger and discomfort, these pictures would never have been taken." So trumpets Leni Riefenstahl, whose previous pursuits of the strange included making effective propaganda films for Hitler's Third Reich (Triumph of the Will). Now 74 and a photographer of the black African people of the Sudan, Riefenstahl still prefers to surround herself and her subjects with clouds of Sturm und Drang...
...turn around and pat The Welles on the back, though, the theater has begun a matinee series of documentaries that shows great promise. Leni Reifenstahl's riveting, gripping and therefore horrifying Nazi propaganda film arrives this weekend. In the next cinema, Carl Jung gives a filmed interview and Dr. J.B. Rhine, expert on ESP, discusses clairvoyancy. Don't leave the regular matinee crowd to hold up the bottom on this new, needed format...
...narrator of Group Portrait admitted that he was a persona from the beginning, stated plainly that he was "the Au." and not some imperious ego-less reporter. The Au. said candidly that he was too fond of Leni; while the poor, nameless narrator in The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum repressed all affection for his heroine, denied his own "psyche" until he broke with exasperation at the way his story had eluded his control on page 98 ("Too much is happening in this story"). One would rather trust the unashamed lust of the Au. for his main character which finally...
...does not stop with interviews and superficial calculations concerning Leni's whereabouts and occupation. He must quantify much more metaphysical occurences, and for this purpose develops a code near the start of his narrative. Tears, Weeping, Laughing, Beatitude, Pain and Suffering are all human intangibles that he knows he must reckon into his Factual account if he would emerge with a judgement. And so T., W., L., B., P., and S. are all defined briefly but methodically, and suubsequently designated by their initials, as useful coordinates for plotting the lacrymae rerum of any one of the clump of characters...
...reporter begins this book with the same dogged investigation that was so fruitful for the sentimental devotee of Leni. The facts are what he is after, he tells us, but he is confused. It all begins clearly enough; each chapter is so short as to contain just a few positive assertions of facts in the case, and it is established that Katharina Blum, at the beginning of these five days, slept with a man who was wanted for murder. Duly it is stated, too, that under police interrogation, Katherina shows herself to have been ignorant of her lover's legal...