The Wonderful Horrible Life Of Leni Riefenstahl

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A revealing documentary profiling the life and work of Leni Riefenstahl, one of Germany's most famous, and notorious filmmakers who directed the Nazi propaganda films 'Triumph Of The Will' and 'Olympia'. As a feisty 91 year-old she revisits the landmarks of her life, from daredevil actress in German 'Bergfilms' to her involvement with National Socialism and her later work on the Nuba in Sudan. A riveting portrait of a fascinating and controversial subject.

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Review by R Dixon Smith on 7th February 2003

She was an assertive, outspoken, determined woman in a male-dominated industry. She has been called an artistic genius, the foremost innovator of the non-fiction film, and a vicious propagandist. To some, her very name is synonymous with film poetry. To others, she was a gifted artist who prostituted her talents to glorify the Third Reich. Together with Sergei Eisenstein, Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa, and Ingmar Bergman, Leni Riefenstahl is one of the cinema’s finest pictorial stylists. She began her career as a renowned dancer, but starring roles in a series of “mountain” films made her one of Germany’s most popular actresses. Her directorial debut in The Blue Light (1932), a stunning “mountain” film in which she also starred, was seen by Adolf Hitler, who asked her to produce a feature-length documentary on the 1934 Nazi Party Rally. Triumph of the Will (1935), awarded a gold medal at the 1937 Paris International Exposition as best documentary film, identified her forever with Hitler. Olympia (1938), a two-part documentary on the 1936 Berlin Olympics, celebrated the beauty of the human body in motion and is generally regarded as the best sports film ever made. Riefenstahl’s career could have survived Olympia; it did not survive Triumph of the Will. But she is still with us. Impressionen unter Wasser, an exquisite underwater documentary, was released on her 100th birthday in August 2002. Segments of it are seen in Ray Müller’s three-hour documentary, The Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl (1993), which traces the career of the most controversial director in motion-picture history. The newly filmed interviews with Riefenstahl, during which she revisits the locales in which her films were made, provide a mesmerising look at one of cinema’s most innovative artists.

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