(PDF) (DOC) (JPG)April 25, 2007

While assessing Leni Riefenstahl’s legendary career as a filmmaker and favorite of Hitler, Bennington College and Columbia film school professor Steven Bach opens a window into the idiosyncratic world of Nazi Germany in which the strange, evil, familiar and banal combined to produce such harrowing consequences. More than talent, skill and determination Leni Riefenstahl’s success, as a filmmaker, Bach makes abundantly clear, was determined by the patronage she cultivated and enjoyed at the top.

He also makes it clear that her longest-lasting influence will be as the author of the book on propagandist imagery, even if unknowingly, her haunting and masterful films glorifying Hitler and the Third Reich, Triumph of the Will and Olympia, are the paradigms for putting the modern political campaign on screen.

Bach’s meticulous and engaging book confirms her presence at the notorious 1939 massacre of Jews in Konsakie during the Nazi invasion of Poland and her use of interned Roma (gypsy) extras later deported to Auschwitz in her film Tiefland. Riefenstahl’s claims of ignorance and political naiveté should be put to rest forever.

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