Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl (Vintage)
by Steven Bach
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Book Summary Information
Author: Steven BachEdition: Paperback
Published: 2008-02-12
ISBN: 0307387755
Number of pages: 432
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl (Vintage)
Book Review: Portrait of ambition
Summary: 4 Stars
Leni provides us with a snapshot of the artist as ambitious monster--while Riefenstahl herself didn't directly kill any Jews she participated in the parade of deception creating a life where self denial kept her from accepting her role in glorifying one of the monsters of the 20th Century Adolph Hitler. 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 talentd, 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 Gypsies who had been put into a Nazi concentratin camp as slave labor to work on one of her films. 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.
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