X-Message-Number: 18258
From: 
Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2001 06:27:57 EST
Subject: Leni Rifenstahl

Dave Pascal Mentions Leni Rifenstahl. Leni will be 100 on 22 August, 2002 and 
is back scuba diving again for her underwater documentary after her serious 
helicopter accident in February, 2000. If you haven't read Rifenstahl, her 
autobiography, you should. 

Taschen has recently issued an oversized coffee table book summarizing her 
nearly century of work entitled Leni Rifenstahl: Five Lives. It's fantastic. 
If you haven't seen The Blue Light, The Olympiad, or the Triumph of the Will 
you have missed spectacular cinema and many of the innovations which now 
define modern filmaking (even including Welles, Lucas and Speilberg) and yes, 
thanks to Speer, modern propaganda.

There will no doubt be much weeping and gnashing of teeth that Rifenstahl was 
a Nazi. So was Von Braun. Rifenstahl was smarter, and for those of you who 
are heterosexual males, infinitely more attractive. Such complete evil, 
beauty, and talent: how often they are intertwined? How rarely has a pact 
with the devil paid off so well with so long and so ordered a career? -- I 
think she has every scrap of film of and paper ever written about or produced 
by her -- this is no mean feat considering her status immediately after 
W.W.II and her ensuring decades of working exile. 

My thanks to that old Iron Cross, Nazi helmet wearing Curtis Henderson for 
introducing me to Rifenstahl. I'm sure I haven't a nanogram of her ego, 
cunning and sheer will, and I'm not sure I'd want it at the price she paid. 

But, whatta life!

Mike Darwin

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