# Director get development dead in Hell? Leni Riefenstahl Dead at 101. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 9, 2003, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/director-get-development-dead-in-hell-leni-riefenstahl-dead-at-101/200493 "2003-09-09T12:10:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![widdershins](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f0a364/32.png) [@widdershins](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/widdershins)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2003, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/director-get-development-dead-in-hell-leni-riefenstahl-dead-at-101/200493/1 "2003-09-09T12:10:30Z")
Just saw it on CNN Headline News and [NYTimes.com](http://NYTimes.com). No one can claim she didn’t have a full and exciting life, but the taint of working for the Nazis is just too hard to ignore. May you live in interesting times indeed. A great talent who used her abilities in the service of horrible people. ---
**Author:** ![widdershins](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f0a364/32.png) [@widdershins](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/widdershins)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2003, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/director-get-development-dead-in-hell-leni-riefenstahl-dead-at-101/200493/2 "2003-09-09T12:25:23Z")
I was in such a rush not to get scooped, I FUBAR’ed the thread title. It should read: **Director gets development deal in Hell? Leni Riefenstahl dead at 101**. If a mod would kindly fix it I will be eternally grateful and offer sacrifices on my personal altar of **Ignatz the Brick Throwing Mouse** in your name and toast you with a cup of Tiger Tea on your birthday every year (_hint hint, Ike_). ---
**Author:** ![Eve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2003, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/director-get-development-dead-in-hell-leni-riefenstahl-dead-at-101/200493/3 "2003-09-09T12:50:42Z")
Hmmm. Diana Mosley at 93; Leni at 101. Guess the good _do_ die young. BERLIN (AP) - Leni Riefenstahl, whose hypnotic depiction of Hitler’s Nuremberg rally, “Triumph of the Will,” was renowned and despised as the best propaganda film ever made, has died, a German magazine reported Tuesday, quoting a long-time friend. She was 101. Riefenstahl, whose health had been weakened by injuries sustained in accidents, died in her sleep at home Monday night, her companion, Horst Kettner told the on-line service for the German personality magazine Bunte. A tireless innovator of film and photographic techniques, Riefenstahl’s career centered on a quest for adventure and for portraying physical beauty. Despite critical acclaim for her later photographs of the African Nuba people and of undersea flora and fauna, she spent more than half her life trying to live down the films she made for Hitler and for having admired the tyrant who devastated Europe and all but eliminated its Jews. Even as late as 2002, Riefenstahl was investigated for Holocaust denial after she said she did not know that Gypsies taken from concentration camps to be used as extras in one of her wartime films later died in the camps. Authorities eventually dropped the case, saying her comments did not rise to a prosecutable level. “I don’t know what I should apologize for,” she said. “I cannot apologize, for example, for having made the film “Triumph of the Will” - it won the top prize. All my films won prizes.” ---
**Author:** ![Celyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9dc877/32.png) [@Celyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Celyn)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2003, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/director-get-development-dead-in-hell-leni-riefenstahl-dead-at-101/200493/4 "2003-09-09T13:33:21Z")
Hey Ho the wicked witch is dead. ---
**Author:** ![Governor\_Quinn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/d26b3c/32.png) [@Governor\_Quinn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Governor_Quinn)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2003, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/director-get-development-dead-in-hell-leni-riefenstahl-dead-at-101/200493/5 "2003-09-09T13:37:20Z")
Out of personal curiousity, how many of the “Cliveden Set” are still with us? ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2003, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/director-get-development-dead-in-hell-leni-riefenstahl-dead-at-101/200493/6 "2003-09-09T14:02:49Z")
I can’t see her as evil, unless judged by unintended consequences. I see her as naive and solipsistic. She should have owned up, but she never did. ---
**Author:** ![Ike\_Witt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ike_witt/32/283_2.png) [@Ike\_Witt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ike_Witt)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2003, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/director-get-development-dead-in-hell-leni-riefenstahl-dead-at-101/200493/7 "2003-09-09T14:35:47Z")
> [@](#): > > “I cannot apologize, for example, for having made the film “Triumph of the Will” - it won the top prize. All my films won prizes.” Hey Leni, what prize did you win? Best Propaganda picture? Best use of Hitler in a “documentary”? Best film by an unsuspecting Nazi dupe? Hope you took some marshmallows with you. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2003, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/director-get-development-dead-in-hell-leni-riefenstahl-dead-at-101/200493/8 "2003-09-09T15:05:28Z")
Oh well, she’s dead. She was properly ostracized in life for her sins. I don’t like the idea that she’s suffer in hell for all eternity for what she did, so I say let her rest in peace. There are geniune, direct-responsibility war criminals running around right now we should be stringing up. ---
**Author:** ![Kal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9de053/32.png) [@Kal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kal)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2003, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/director-get-development-dead-in-hell-leni-riefenstahl-dead-at-101/200493/9 "2003-09-09T16:19:49Z")
I followed the Holocaust denial case last year and the AP story that **Eve** quoted is quite inaccurate in reference to that: > [@](#): > > Even as late as 2002, Riefenstahl was investigated for Holocaust denial after **she said she did not know that Gypsies taken from concentration camps to be used as extras in one of her wartime films later died in the camps.** Authorities eventually dropped the case, saying her comments did not rise to a prosecutable level. Bolding mine. What she did say can be found [here:](http://www.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/Movies/08/22/riefenstahl.age.100/) > [@](#): > > The Cologne-based organization Rom says Riefenstahl used 120 Gypsies from concentration camps in Salzburg and Berlin, then failed to prevent them from being returned to the Nazi camp system, where many died. > > The group said it was suing Riefenstahl for Holocaust denial, a crime in Germany, for dismissing the allegations as nonsense in an interview printed in the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper in April. > > “We saw all the Gypsies that played in ‘Lowlands’ again after the war,” Riefenstahl was quoted as saying. “Nothing happened to them.” > > Iris Pinkepank, spokeswoman for Rom, told The Associated Press her organization could prove many died by comparing Riefenstahl’s own lists of people appearing in the film to records from the Nazi deathcamp at Auschwitz. > > \ > > The filmmaker later issued a statement saying her remarks on their survival had been a misunderstanding and that she regretted the Nazi persecution of Gypsies. So, yeah, she was a Holocaust denying bitch. And now she’s dead. ---
**Author:** ![toque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/9e8a1a/32.png) [@toque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/toque)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2003, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/director-get-development-dead-in-hell-leni-riefenstahl-dead-at-101/200493/10 "2003-09-09T18:52:21Z")
It always bugged me that Taschen published her books. I’m glad I can order from them unconflictedly again. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2003, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/director-get-development-dead-in-hell-leni-riefenstahl-dead-at-101/200493/11 "2003-09-09T20:31:53Z")
Years ago, I saw a short cut from a Nazi propaganda film. This showed a nice German (Nazi) family, attacked by hordes of ape-like Poles. I remember that the Poles are flinging rocks at the german girl, and as she dies, one of those ape-like poles rips off her necklace, which is a nazi swastika. Anybody recognize this film? Was it made by Leni? Just thought I’d ask! ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2003, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/director-get-development-dead-in-hell-leni-riefenstahl-dead-at-101/200493/12 "2003-09-09T21:32:58Z")
I don’t believ so. She was more into the artsy propganda. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2003, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/director-get-development-dead-in-hell-leni-riefenstahl-dead-at-101/200493/13 "2003-09-09T21:50:59Z")
Leni was enthralled by Hitler, but indifferent to Nazi ideology. Her documentary on the 1936 Olympic games favorably shows black and asian athletes winning events, in seeming contradiction to Nazi racial theories. She was twice acquitted by Allied denazification tribunals. As for the gypsy prisoners she was lent for use in one of her movies, it was hardly up to her not to return them to authorities, unless she wanted to join them in a concentration camp. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2003, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/director-get-development-dead-in-hell-leni-riefenstahl-dead-at-101/200493/14 "2003-09-09T21:53:05Z")
The sad thing is, she was a brilliant filmmaker. She’s certainly one of the five most important female filmmakers in history; her techniques and style are _hugely_ influential. But yes, she did this in service to an indisputably evil regime. What gets me is the “either/or” mentality people have with respect to her. When I say she was a brilliant and innovative filmmaker, people will scream at me, “_No she wasn’t, she was a wicked Nazi bitch!_” Well, perhaps. But why can’t she _also_ be a brilliant and innovative filmmaker? Why is it either/or? Seriously, for as much as I hear the “evil Nazi bitch” line, for as much as people claim to dismiss her as a filmmaker, I am usually unsurprised to learn that people haven’t actually seen anything she’s done, not even the two most important works, _Triumph of the Will_ or _Olympia._ Instead, they’d rather stick their fingers in their ears and cover their eyes, as if they might get polluted or something if they actually tried to look at the work objectively. (It’s the same sort of ignorance as **Anniee** ’s reaction to Nabokov’s _Lolita_ in [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=208726).) Seriously. _Go look at the films._ She was _brilliant._ There’s a reason _Triumph of the Will_ is as scary as it is: because it’s so goddamn _effective._ You cannot look at her films objectively and deny her manipulative skill. But that’s not all. At a certain point, while you’re watching, I expect you to sit up in shock and say: “Holy shit. This is basically the triumphant medal scene at the end of _Star Wars._” You won’t look at Lucas’s works — _or anyone else’s_ — the same way again. In short, the vocabulary she invented has been adopted and/or replicated by people of all political persuasions for various purposes ever since, because she was _damn good at it_, and the stuff she came up with was damn powerful. George Bush’s speech on the aircraft carrier is a direct descendent of the visual pageantry perfected by Riefenstahl. That’s not to tarnish Bush by association, because _all_ successful politicians use the same vocabulary. If Gore were President, he’d be using the same tricks to present himself: because they are _powerful_ and they _work._ Condemn her political role all you want, but don’t for a moment get confused and try to dismiss her importance as a filmmaker at the same time. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2003, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/director-get-development-dead-in-hell-leni-riefenstahl-dead-at-101/200493/15 "2003-09-09T21:59:53Z")
What Cervaise said. After all, there’d be no _Starship Troopers_ without _Triumph of the Will_. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2003, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/director-get-development-dead-in-hell-leni-riefenstahl-dead-at-101/200493/16 "2003-09-09T22:23:26Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by lissener \* > \*\*After all, there’d be no _Starship Troopers_ without _Triumph of the Will_. \*\* Yet another reason she’s going to hell! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2003, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/director-get-development-dead-in-hell-leni-riefenstahl-dead-at-101/200493/17 "2003-09-09T22:36:35Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by lissener \* > \*\*What Cervaise said. > > After all, there’d be no _Starship Troopers_ without _Triumph of the Will_. \*\* Well, given my feelings about Starship Troopers, I’m not sure that’s such a bad thing. I remember watching _The Lion King_ and when the scenes which were essentially rotoscoped from TotW, I immediately began scanning the theater to see what people’s reaction was. Nobody, but me, appeared to “get it.” And I’ve never even _seen_ the complete TotW, only sections of it, but I recognized her work quite well. That being said, I agree with what **Cervaise** said. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2003, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/director-get-development-dead-in-hell-leni-riefenstahl-dead-at-101/200493/18 "2003-09-09T22:55:48Z")
Sounds like another cemetery tour is in order, Eve. And don’t forget to pack your dancing shoes. ---
**Author:** ![Kal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9de053/32.png) [@Kal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kal)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2003, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/director-get-development-dead-in-hell-leni-riefenstahl-dead-at-101/200493/19 "2003-09-09T23:13:40Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Walloon \* > As for the gypsy prisoners she was lent for use in one of her movies, it was hardly up to her not to return them to authorities, unless she wanted to join them in a concentration camp. There’s a bit more to it then that. An overview of the claims made against her is [here:](http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,776542,00.html) > [@](#): > > In Cologne on Friday, however, the pro-Gypsy group, Rome.V, backed by the respected German film-maker Nina Gladitz and writers and academics, alleged that Riefenstahl not only knew most of the extras faced death after filming ended in 1941, but that in some cases she even facilitated the process. > > ‘We have hard evidence from the archives of concentration camps, plus witness statements, to support the claims that Riefenstahl knew about the camps and the fate that awaited her extras,’ says Gladitz, 56, who has publicly argued the issue with Riefenstahl for years. > > \ > > Rosa Winter, 79, a Sinti who, like most of the extras, was plucked from a Gypsy holding camp at Max Glan in Austria and forced to take part in the film, said Riefenstahl was responsible for sending her to Ravensbrück concentration camp as a punishment for fleeing the film set, at Mittenwald, in the Bavarian Alps. > > Winter ran away after hearing her mother was being sent to that camp, and found her at a police station. > > ‘A very angry Riefenstahl arrived with a high-ranking SS officer and demanded an apology from me. I refused, and she said: “Right, you can go to the concentration camp.” My mother went down on her knees to beg Riefenstahl for mercy, but she wouldn’t listen,’ she told The Observer. > > \ > > Gladitz has documented several other cases in which, she says, Riefenstahl was culpable. One involves a girl called Anna Krems, who acted as a stand-in for Riefenstahl after the actress suffered a slight accident. > > When Riefenstahl asked her what wish she might grant the child as a reward, Anna asked that her two sisters and a brother in concentration camps should be transferred to a less dangerous holding camp. Riefen-stahl replied: ‘Only one.’ It’s also worth noting that the [BBC](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2341299.stm) reported that the Holocaust denying case (for her statement - or as I prefer to call it, her lie - “We saw all the Gypsies that played in ‘Lowlands’ again after the war … Nothing happened to them.”) was dropped, in part, because she was old: > [@](#): > > In turn the Frankfurt prosecutors’ office said that there was little interest in pursuing a case against the filmmaker, who turned 100 in August this year, due to her advanced age. [/hijack] ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2003, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/director-get-development-dead-in-hell-leni-riefenstahl-dead-at-101/200493/20 "2003-09-10T00:45:32Z")
I have to agree with **Cervaise**. Politics aside, she was a good filmmaker. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/director-get-development-dead-in-hell-leni-riefenstahl-dead-at-101/200493.md?page=2)