EFL
Leni Riefenstahl, whose hypnotic depiction of Hitler’s Nuremberg rally, "Triumph of the Will," was renowned and despised as the best propaganda film ever made, has died. She was 101. Riefenstahl died Monday night at her home in the Bavarian lakeside town of Poecking, mayor Rainer Schnitzler said. Riefenstahl’s companion Horst Kettner said she died in her sleep. "Her heart simply stopped," Kettner told the online version of the German celebrity magazine Bunte.
A tireless innovator of film and photographic techniques, Riefenstahl’s career centered on a quest for adventure and portraying physical beauty. Even as she turned 100 last year, she strapped on scuba gear to photograph sharks in turquoise waters. She had begun to complain recently that injuries sustained in accidents over the years, including a helicopter crash in Sudan in 2000, had taken their toll and caused her constant pain.
Despite critical acclaim for her later photographs of the African Nuba people and of undersea flora and fauna, she spent more than half her life trying to live down the films she made for Hitler and for having admired the tyrant who devastated Europe and all but eliminated its Jews. Even as late as 2002, Riefenstahl was investigated for Holocaust denial after she said she did not know that Gypsies taken from concentration camps to be used as extras in one of her wartime films later died in the camps. Authorities eventually dropped the case, saying her comments did not rise to a prosecutable level. Speaking to The Associated Press just before her 100th birthday on Aug. 22, 2002, Riefenstahl dramatically said she has "apologized for ever being born" but that she should not be criticized for her masterful films. "I don’t know what I should apologize for," she said. "I cannot apologize, for example, for having made the film ’Triumph of the Will’ — it won the top prize. All my films won prizes."
Since you won prizes, it’s all right? |