Word: riefenstahl
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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CINEMA: Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph...
...Hitler did not play such an important role in my life," she says today. "I made one film for him, which had three parts, and out of that the press wove a legend." Wove a horror story. A half-century after shooting her last feature, Riefenstahl is still the world's most controversial director; her name summons the conflicts of defiant artistry and compromised morality. Thus the U.S. publication of Leni Riefenstahl: A Memoir (St. Martin's Press; $35) and the U.S. premiere of Ray Muller's documentary The Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl (at the New York Film...
...hear Riefenstahl talk, what counted was not the men in her past but the man in her. "I have a man's way of thinking but a woman's way of feeling," she says. "To my advantage, I have a great organizing talent. I can do a cost estimate, tell camera people what to do, organize film material. But this wish to be creative excludes many things. My view is very narrow," she explains, raising her hands in front of her face like the sides of the camera frame. Her vision was acute within that frame but myopic outside...
...Muller's documentary is a galloping, galvanizing three hours in the company of a supremely dogged adventurer. "Her enthusiasm is so intense," Muller says. "It is a quality I wish more filmmakers of this generation shared." For his camera, Riefenstahl tirelessly revisited the sites of her triumphs and debacles, defended her life, argued with the first man in 60 years to try to direct her. "When the subject was art, diving, things she likes," he recalls, "she was charming, interesting, a wonderful person. But she is still a '30s diva, after all, and not accustomed to being crossed...
Unsurprisingly, Riefenstahl refuses to see this Wonderful Horrible Life. "I cried, and they filmed it," she says. "He was brutal." But perhaps this woman whose best hours were spent looking at film could look at this one. It adapts her supple camera style and keen editing eye to an amazing subject. It could be the last great Leni Riefenstahl film...