August 22, 1902: Leni Riefenstahl is born.
The infamous director once said of her most famous film, Triumph of the Will (1935): “it casts such a shadow over my life that death will be a blessed release.” The film was a chronicle of the 1934 Nuremberg Rally, and it earned her international acclaim; Riefenstahl’s technical innovation and evocative imagery secured her status early on as one of the most important female filmmakers (or filmmakers, period) of all time. Her other famous documentary, Olympia (1938), drew similar praise. Her talent as a director (and dancer, actress, and photographer) was and is rarely disputed, but her role as “Hitler’s propagandist” coupled with that very same talent transformed Riefenstahl into a controversial figure whose films raise similar questions as D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation: both directors utilized groundbreaking techniques and created highly influential works, but the nature and content of those works are distasteful, polarizing, and twisted. Though she claimed (after the war) that Triumph was a purely historical film, it is most often reviewed and criticized as a piece of propaganda - a powerful piece, and an important documentary - but propaganda nonetheless. Roger Ebert succinctly stated that the film is generally regarded as “great but evil”, a description which many might apply to the film’s creator.
So Riefenstahl, who lived to age 101, never fully shed her connection to National Socialism and to the frightening ways her chosen art form could mesmerize and enrapture viewers. Because most of her postwar filmmaking efforts failed due to her association with the Nazis, she took up photography and scuba diving, and excelled at both well into her 90s.