Customer Reviews

Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl (Vintage)

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This is one of two current biographies out on Leni Riefenstahl (1902-2003), who remains somewhat radioactive give her close association with Hitler and other top Nazi leaders during the 1930's and 1940's. The author is a former motion picture executive turned professor, who previously has written an excellent biography of Leni's contemporary and rival, Marlene Dietrich. Leni is generally seen as being not a particularly pleasant person, who manifested an extreme degree of ego and far less concern about truth in the historical record. This book, while it does not seek to mitigate those allegations, and does in fact add some damaging new information, really the author is much more interested in charting the contours of Leni's life, the times she lived in, and those with whom she interacted than passing moral judgments.

One of the strengths of the author is his ability to concisely set the stage at various points in Leni's life. His brief discussion of effervescent Berlin during the 1920's particularly is rich in insight and helps enormously in explaining the environment out of which Leni emerged. Similarly skillful is his discussion of the top Nazi party leadership (particularly Goebbels as propaganda guru) and political developments in Germany in the 1930's--just enough so that the reader is prepared to understand Leni's activities during this period. Bach is at his best, though, in focusing upon Leni as the film maker, whether it is her 1930's films such as "Triumph of the Will" and her Olympic films, or her later films (including the controversial "Tiefland")and African documentaries. He also casts an experienced eye on her many photographic book projects, especially those relating to Africa and coral reefs. The book covers the entirety of Leni's life where the reader learns she was active and working on new projects right up to her death at 101.

So, this is a judicious biography of an extremely controversial figure. Bach lays out the facts which have emerged from an extremely thorough job of research, including a slew of taped interviews done in the 1970's with Leni and two dozen of her friends, collaborators and critics by a UCLA Ph.D. candidate . There are extensive notes and a helpful bibliography. The book is handsomely produced for Knopf by Berryville Graphics in Virginia. At 300 or so pages of text, I never once felt that Bach let his narrative drag. Whatever you can say about Leni, and plenty of folks have said a lot, she led a fascinating life which Bach has well captured in this fine biography.

This biography of Leni Riefenstahl by Steven Bach is compelling reading. It tells the tale of someone with great talent--but also someone who could never come honestly to grips with her role in Nazi Germany. Someone who, in the end, was a mediocre actress and dancer and a very talented filmmaker and photographer. But even with her successes, many felt that with Riefenstahl, she put as much focus on herself as on her works. And, with some of her works, critics noted that they were technically wonderful, but not with much soul or heart.

Her early years featured a strong, almost overbearing father; she early learned how to try to "get around him." Her mother Bertha (whom some suspected of being Jewish) was supportive of her, whereas her father wanted nothing to do with Leni's visions for her future as a dancer. Injury derailed her from dance, and she began acting, with her most prominent genre being the so-called Alpine films. While she saw herself as a terrific actress, outside of some exceptions, she appears to have been rather ordinary. But, as throughout her life, her self-image was far more positive; she never had the ability to be self-critical. One virtue that emerged early in her films was physical courage (page 43), "the only personal quality she possessed that colleagues and even enemies could later praise without reservation."

Through a series of events, she ended up in a position to direct a film featuring Adolf Hitler at the 1933 Nazi party congress, "Victory of Faith." It was not as well done as her later, much better known films, but it provided her experience in developing techniques, coming to understand camera work, and so on. Here, she was clearly working on concert with Joseph Goebbels and the Nazi political machine, although she steadfastly resisted the implication that she was a willing and even enthusiastic partner in her films with the party. Hitler decided that he wanted her to do a follow for the 1934 party congress. The result was one of her classics (and a troubling classic, given its explicit vehicle for Nazi propaganda), "Triumph of the Will." Anyone interested in the art of Riefenstahl must watch this movie; there is an awesome (and awful) grandeur to it. Following this, another of her major works, the film that focused on the 1936 Olympics. Technically, another strong work. Some of the same troubling questions, though, remain, including her ties to the Nazis.

Her work as, at least functionally, a propagandist of the Third Reich essentially ended her film making career, although she made a handful of efforts. Thwarted, she moved to documentaries (in Africa) and photography. At a point later in life, she became one of the oldest scuba divers around and took what are apparently fine photographs underneath the sea. In her 80s and 90s, there was renewed interest in her earlier classic works, including showings at some film festivals. Even at that, though, when interviewed she would deny involvement with the Nazis, with the use of Gypsies as extras (some of whom would perish in the concentration camps), and so on. One of her later statements makes this clear, when she said (page 274) "I have never done anything I didn't want to do, and nothing I've ever been ashamed of."

This is a strong biography of a fascinating character, whose denial of her role in World War II leaves the reader troubled. She was remarkably ambitious and used whatever tools that she had at her disposal to get ahead; she was strong-willed and made enemies. This is a work that illuminates this complex person.

Steve Bach has done a remarkable job of painting a complex, life-like and believable portrait of Leni Riefenstahl, the (in)famous Nazi-era film director. He does so both by pointing out her many shortcomings, (not the least of which is a rapacious sucking-up to Hitler and his cronies), and also by admiring her ground-breaking cinematic genius. This is an unusual feat for a critic who is politically liberal --a rare case of someone able to separate his reflexive distaste for the many moral and ideological compromises she made to fuel her rise from being a plumber's daughter, to becoming one of the most creative film directors of the 20th Century.

Riefenstahl lived two separate lives: her life as a second-rate actress which segued into becoming a sensational film director and naturalist photographer; and her life of spending the last 60 years of her career defending her casting-couch activities of the first 20. Active to the very end, she died in 2003, age 101--a camera still in her hand.

How then to judge Ms Riefenstahl; how then to judge the book? As we never seem to learn, great talent does not necessarily come from great people. Why are we so regularly surprised to learn that geniuses are often terribly flawed in other aspects of their character. (This has made a "neutral" portrayal of Hitler impossible to depict. No one has been able to separate the evil of the man from his political genius--a genius that turned a prostate nation into a world power almost overnight.) Amazon.com was so repelled by Riefenstahl that for months they resolutely refuse to post more than two luke-warm reviews, in spite of attempts by many readers to add to the list.

As one of Hitler's favorite pets, Riefenstahl eagerly sought to bathe in the reflected glory of the Fuhrer's power, while she combined that enabling light with her own illumination to create extraordinary cinematic works of art and propaganda. Of course her close association with Hitler made her a natural target of derision for that other propaganda machine--the entire Hollywood community. Once those sights were set, nothing she ever did could be admitted as worthy of artistic praise. (Most of the criticism of her ground-breaking film of the 1936 Berlin Olympics excoriates her for not knowing about Hitler's anti-Jewish activities of a much later date.)

Steven Bach has admirably overcome that distinction, and his depiction of Riefenstahl is masterful. He does her full justice--her guile and dissimilitude, her back-stabbing ambition, her reckless spunk and genius. What one is to make of this uneasy amalgam is something each of us will have to decide for himself.

Of all the existing books on Leni Riefenstahl--and there are a lot of them out there, including Riefenstahl's own self-exculpatory memoirs--Bach's treatment is in my opinion the most lucid, judicious, and detailed. Unlike many film enthusiasts who try to excuse away Riefenstahl's work for Hitler and the Nazi party, Bach bears down hard on this period in Riefenstahl's oeuvre, situating it in the context of world history, film history, and Riefenstahl's personal development. Riefenstahl is one of those insoluble artistic paradoxes: her best, most creative films were done in the service of one of the most evil ideologies ever invented. Bach is at his best dealing with this material. He spices things up with a few too many details of Riefenstahl's romantic adventures, which are ultimately unedifying and completely irrelevant to any assessment of her importance as a historical figure. Nonetheless, Bach has produced a stunning book which deserves to become the standard account of the subject.

After reading Jurgen Trimborn's admirable but somewhat inaccessible biography of Riefenstahl, I sought out this book in hopes that it would be friendlier to a Riefenstahl novice such as me. It certainly is an easier read and a much better starting place.

Steven Bach, of Final Cut fame, writes from the standpoint of a motion picture enthusiast. He also has a POV where Riefenstahl's Nazi associations are concerned and he doesn't hide it. For Bach Riefenstahl is the living version of Klaus Mann's Mephisto, a careerist willing to do anything and associate with anyone to advance her "art." He also makes the case (clearly building on Trimborn's work, among others) that Riefenstahl not only had no problem with anything Hitler did or said, she likely agreed with most if not all of it.

Bach's style is that of a gossipy Hollywood bio, which is fine by me, but he's no fan magazine hack. He knows the power of the snide observation and, best of all, how damning Leni's own words were. At times Riefenstahl comes across as downright delusional about her artistic abilities and men's lust for her. To hear her tell it no man so much as entered the same zipcode as Leni Riefenstahl without falling madly in love with her.

Some may have disagreements about Bach's assessment of Riefenstahl's artistic contributions. I've only seen clips of her work so my own opinion is somewhat limited. Bach does make a good case the Riefenstahl either stole the ideas of others or took credit for their work. Bach doesn't buy the argument that the art is more important than the character or actions of the artist. He also doesn't buy that Riefenstahl was much of an artist.

This is no love letter to Leni. It is an entertaining read. Gossipy, slightly bitchy (as one reviewer here has aptly noted), and full of telling details and quotes, this is a easy entry into the myths and controversy that make up Leni Riefenstahl.

Author Steven Bach takes on interesting journey into the life of Leni Riefenstahl. Blinded by ambition, Leni took steps that would haunt her throughout her very long life. Much emphasis is placed on her sexual liaisons and her power over men to support and guide her in her career. She uses and disgards her conquests as she becomes Adolph Hitler's favorite filmmaker. The Nazis gave her their backing and support to make films that would inspire the German people. History will remember her as the person who created two of the most acclaimed documentaries of all time, OLYMPIA and TRIUMPH OF THE WILL. Alas, these increible works of cinematic art were under the tutelage of Hitler and the Nazis. Acclaim and fame led to infamy and derision after the war. She denied making propaganda films. It was all for art but the dark cloud of suspicion followed her throughout her life. Opportunities for Hitler's filmmaker would continue to evaporate as she tried to reinvent herself over the coming decades. Her story is one with no clear answer and Bach makes no attempt to take sides. An ambitious cold-hearted woman willing to do anything to advance her career or a talented, inspired artist desperate to create movies? We'll never know. She never tired of defending herself and stayed active into her late 90's. No road could she take that would not lead her back to her Nazi connections. Read the book and decide for yourself how history should treat this remarkable woman.

Bach's book compliments the one written by Jurgen Trimborn covering much of the same ground but the tone his different. Unlike Trimborn's book which has a hostile tone from the outset, Bach uses his skills as a writer to unmask a woman who was talented, charming but every bit the social climbing monster that her "hero" Hitler was.

Leni started as a dancer but soon bowed off the stage when she injured her leg. She took up filmmaking after a brief career before the cameras. She demonstrated talent, passion and an inability to recognize a sociopathic quality in herself. After she met Hitler, her career took off as she chronicled the rise of the Third Reich and Nazi leader as savivor with the stunning but morally bankrupt "Trimuph of the Will". That film along with "Olympia" made her reputation as a documentary film director who could put her skills to the use of propganda.

Although talented and ambitious she was a social climber willing to use whatever it took to rise to the top. She used her position to glorify Hitler and used slave labor to complete her projects. After the fall of Germany during World War II, Riefenstahl spent the majority of the rest of her life trying to sanitize her involvement with the Nazi regime portraying herself as just another tool that Hitler had manipulated. The facts, however, from both Bach's book and Trimborn's book speak for themselves--she was a woman with an outsized ego that would do anything to rise to the top including embracing and becoming a true believer in the Nazi agenda. The author writes in a very fair balanced tone letting the reader make up his/her mind based on Riefenstahl's actions and comments.

Watching evil take control of a nation and put innocents to death while doing nothing is equal to condoning it but creating films to glorify it is a crime against humanity. Although Riefenstahl later denied she knew anything about the death camps, the Nazi agenda or any of the other horrors that Hitler ushered onto the European stage, it's very clear that she knew about many of the things she later denied and tried to whitewash her deeds as if it would somehow clear her of being a tool of evil and murder.

Although she later claimed that she regreted her association with the Third Reich one has to wonder if that regret was because of the the lack of opportunity to make more films and her ego more than any true regret about her adoption of ideological ideas from Hitler and his minions. Leni Riefenstahl: A Life

Leni Riefenstahl is not an easy subject for a biographer. Yes, there is a mountain of material, and everyone has an opinion on her. But those are just some of the problems a biographer faces while trying to write about such a strange, ambitious, ruthless, and perhaps soulless person.

Bach does an excellent job with this biography, and he also does a nice job of writing about Germany in the World War II era. His research is strong, and though it's apparent how he feels about her, he is fair and presents a wide range of opinions concerning her art and her personality.

It will make you want to see her films, read her autobiography, and explore more about her. Fascinating book that really impressed me.

Not since Albert Goldman's ELVIS has a dense, full length biography of a sexy, glamorous larger than life legend been written with such sadistic relish, such delicious malicious bitchery and pure venomous guile.

There's no question that Leni Riefenstahl, the stunningly beautiful German woman who made hypnotic propaganda films for the Nazis, was guilty of moral cowardice and hypocrisy, if not during the war, then certainly afterwards. She persisted to the end of her life in wanting to have it both ways -- saying in effect "I didn't know," and at the same time "I was too scared to stop Hitler -- too scared that I would be next." She claimed to have legions of Jewish friends before the war, but she never tried to help them when things got bad, even though she had lots of Nazi influence and power. And she always seemed weirdly out of touch with the human results of Hitler's evil deeds.

The problem is, Steve Bach doesn't know when to quit. He sneers at Leni Riefenstahl not just for the big things -- not strangling Hitler with her bare hands, the way he seems to imagine he would have done -- but for the little things too. The book is full of catty little remarks like, "Leni was always conscious of her hypnotic effect on men" or "Leni didn't mind having handsome, powerful men buy her presents" or "Leni's fearless mountain climbing only made her feminine allure more overpowering to the distinguished male cinema artists who indulged her every creative whim."

It's hard to tell whether Bach hates Leni for being heartless and callous or for being beautiful, talented -- and very knowingly seductive.

There is a much more serious issue here than the hissy ALL ABOUT EVE style bitchery of a jaded Hollywood insider. Bach insists on judging a German film maker by a far more rigorous standard than he would ever apply to the film industry in Hollywood today -- or seventy years ago, for that matter. When Leni goes to Hollywood he brags that the left-leaning Hollywood of 1938 treated the lovely German visitor with scorn -- but how did they treat Margaret Mitchell when she came to town the very next year? Bach has nothing to say about why those same "leftists" failed to prevent the making of a racist epic like GONE WITH THE WIND.

If Leni Riefenstahl shares any part of the guilt for Auschwitz -- and I agree that she does -- then David O. Selznick is equally responsible for the murder of Emmitt Till, the bombings in Birmingham, and all the other hate crimes perpetrated in the Jim Crow south. Bach is in a big hurry to compare Leni to the Stalinist film maker Eisenstein -- arguing in a feeble and half-hearted way that Eisenstein "probably" rebelled at what he was doing. But why not compare Leni Riefenstahl to D.W. Griffiths, or Margaret Mitchell, or David Selznick? All of them dealt in racial hate. They looked the other way while helpless people were tortured and murdered, too. But mentioning America's poisonous history of racial hate would reflect badly on Bach's own milieu. Bach's beloved Hollywood elite never questioned the racial status quo in the Jim Crow south -- at least, not until long after blacks had begun risking their lives to bring the horror of their situation to national attention.

What's really going on here is not genuine, humanistic outrage, but elitist hypocrisy. Bach hates Leni Riefenstahl because he knows that, for all their tiresome liberal cant, just about everyone in Hollywood (and the book world, and the world of leftist Manhattan politics) has the same rat-like survival instincts that Leni had. None of the liberals who demonstrate their courage by hating her guts now ever had to look Hitler in the eye. But they know who would have blinked first. And they know themselves too well to ever show mercy to someone just like them.

Riefenstahl, Hitler's film propaganda maker, is once again the focus of a study. The best book among the several ones is still Jürgen Trimbourn's study, which reveals her relationship with Julius Streicher, the major anti-semite in the strange crowd of people who spread unbelievable ideas about what nazism is all about. Bach's contribution belongs to the details section, and he more than anyone else covers Riefenstahl's tour in Poland at the outbreak of WWII. All in all this study is of importance for historians since he alleges that Riefenstahl wanted to make a definite film on the Führer, which she had promised him and Goebbels to do already in May 1932. It should be supplemented with Ray Müllers excellent documentary, Die Macht der Bilder (inadequately translated as The wonderful, horrible life of Leni Riefenstahl).