Rating: 
Summary: very, very, very, very good....
Review: What a neat, neat book. Over 600 pages and I read it easily in a few days, then lent it to two people who also read it within a few days. Obviously, almost impossible to put down... And the book starts getting REALLY exciting when she is in her 60's, travelling through Africa. While this woman certainly has a large ego, and HAS to be embellishing a few stories (for example, almost every man she meets seem to immediately fall madly in love with her and attempt suicide upon being rejected by her), she is not anywhere close to being the monster she is constantly portrayed as. Her argument that she was simply an artist creating documentaries with no political interest at all seems pretty reasonable after reading this book. The woman is entirely self-absorbed: not necessarily a huge insult to an artist. And if the celebration of beauty (even physical beauty) is an exclusively nazi ideal, call me a nazi too.
Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating
Review: What an amazing woman - her life is truly a triumph of the will. Whether one believes her stand on Nazism wholly or only partially,one still has little option ultimately but to admire her.
Rating: 
Summary: Did She Sell Her Soul to Satan?
Review: When she died recently at age 101, German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl was both revered and reviled. Olympia, her film of the 1936 Olympic Games, arguably remains the greatest sports documentary of all time. But those were the "Nazi Olympics," and many consider her merely Hitler's propagandist, not only for that film, but for Riefenstahl's earlier Triumph of the Will, documenting the Nazi Party's 1934 Nuremberg rally.During her lifetime, rumors circulated that Riefenstahl was Hitler's mistress, that she danced nude in front of party dignitaries, that she used concentration camp inmates in her films. In truth, Riefenstahl was probably more amoral than immoral, more apolitical than political, as much victim as victor, prisoner both of her unique talent and unfettered ambition. I first viewed Olympia a decade after World War II on the campus of the University of Chicago. It was shown for its artistic merit, irrespective of any political message. Olympia did show Hitler hailing German victories, but it showcased also the successes of a decidedly non-Aryan Jesse Owens. A long segment focuses on Japan's Sohn Kee-chung winning the marathon. We know now that Sohn was Korean, forced to wear the Rising Sun on his singlet. My fading memories of Olympia include slow-motion images of the pole vault. But that segment was filmed after the competition. In her memoir, published in 1987, Riefenstahl tells why. Because the contest dragged into the night, her pole vault footage proved unusable. With the aid of decathlon champion Glenn Morris from the US, Riefenstahl convinced the athletes to vault again the next day for her cameras. "It turned into an almost genuine contest," Riefenstahl recalls, "and they reached the same heights as on the previous day." Riefenstahl admits numerous affairs (including one with Morris) and one bad marriage, but with a director's instinct leaves details to her readers' imaginations. She describes in fascinating detail meetings with Hitler--but no intimacies. She obviously was infatuated with Mein Fuehrer, but not with propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, whose advances she resisted. Riefenstahl, beautiful as well as athletic, began her career as a dancer, but shifted to acting in films featuring snow and cold. Lack of funds forced Riefenstahl to direct herself in The Blue Light, triggering Hitler's attention. Riefenstahl claims she did not want to film Triumph of the Will, but was coerced into it. She argues that Olympia was made for the International Olympic Committee, not for the Nazi Party, which she never joined. She spent most of World War II detached from politics, filming the allegorical Tiefland. Riefenstahl cites court documents to argue that gypsies in that film did not come from concentration camps. Arrested by occupying American troops, she was shocked when shown photos of Auschwitz. She had many Jewish friends. Was Riefenstahl another "Good German" in denial regarding atrocities around her? Placed in Germany in the mid-1930s, how might we have acted? Marathoner John A. Kelley ran in the 1936 Olympics and claimed he thumbed his nose at Hitler. But Jesse Owens later told Kelley: "Hitler waved to me, and I waved back." Not everyone in 1936 could predict events that would follow--or understand how misguided acts might affect others. Nevertheless, as a German friend of mine, Rudiger Schierz, says of Riefenstahl, "She sold her soul to Satan." At her death at age 101, Riefenstahl remained revered and reviled. Photographer Robert Jones writes: "Monsters who are yet geniuses are still monsters, and it is society's obligation not to whitewash their sins." She did pay for her sins, spending three years under arrest. The French government confiscated her films, returning them only years later. Film projects she started died because of threatened boycotts. Thousands of irreplaceable feet of the Nuba tribe in Africa were mysteriously ruined by a film laboratory. In later years, Riefenstahl achieved success as a still photographer, publishing four books, but the potential she exhibited in her first three decades went unfulfilled in her last seven decades. Unlike the vaulters who returned the day after competition to pose for her cameras, she never equaled her previous heights. Because of her complicity with a brutal regimen, Leni Riefenstahl leaves us with a bad taste in our mouths. But she also leaves us with perhaps the greatest film ever produced on our sport. She remains a puzzle even in death. (This review originally appeared as a Bell Lap column in the online edition of Runner's World. Copyright 2003 by Hal Higdon; all rights reserved.)
Rating:
Summary: Amazing Autobiography from an Amazing Artist!
Review: While some of the recollections should be taken with a grain of salt, this autobiography is a compelling and impressive read from the woman who is arguably the greatest living photographic artist. And what a witness to history! Love her or hate her, her talents are irrefutable...as great as the controversy that continues to swirl around her! Don't miss out on this read!
Rating:
Summary: Amazing Autobiography from an Amazing Artist!
Review: While some of the recollections should be taken with a grain of salt, this autobiography is a compelling and impressive read from the woman who is arguably the greatest living photographic artist. And what a witness to history! Love her or hate her, her talents are irrefutable...as great as the controversy that continues to swirl around her! Don't miss out on this read!
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