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Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 791.430233092
EAN: 9780375404009
ISBN: 0375404007
Label: Knopf
Manufacturer: Knopf
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 400
Publication Date: March 13, 2007
Publisher: Knopf
Release Date: March 13, 2007
Studio: Knopf
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Editorial Review:The definitive biography of Leni Riefenstahl, the woman best known as “Hitler’s filmmaker,” one of the most fascinating and controversial personalities of the twentieth century. It is the story of huge talent and huger ambition, one that probes the sometimes blurred borders dividing art and beauty from truth and humanity. Two of Riefenstahl’s films, Olympia and Triumph of the Will, are universally regarded as the greatest and most innovative documentaries ever made, but they are also insidious glorifications of Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. Now, in this masterful new biography, Steven Bach reveals the truths and lies behind this gifted woman’s lifelong self-vindication as an apolitical artist who claimed she knew nothing of the Holocaust and denied her complicity with the criminal regime she both used and sanctified. The facts and her actions, many unknown until now, bear chilling witness: her passionate enthusiasm for Hitler from her first reading of Mein Kampf; her involvements with Nazi leaders Joseph Goebbels, Martin Bormann, Albert Speer, and Julius Streicher, who advanced her career, and with Hitler, who personally helped finance it; her role as silent eyewitness to wartime atrocities against Jews; and her use of slave labor in the form of concentration camp Gypsies destined for Auschwitz. We see her after the war trying to sell footage to Hollywood under an alias, manipulating a sham “discovery” of the Nuba tribes of Sudan into a career comeback, fighting to disinherit her closest living relatives, and—to the end—unable to express remorse for the millions murdered by the Nazi regime made mythic by her work.Relying on new sources—including interviews with her colleagues and intimate friends, as well as on previously unknown recordings of Riefenstahl herself—Bach gives us an exceptional work of historical investigation that untangles the past and is also an objective but unsparing appraisal of a woman of spectacular gifts corrupted by ruthless personal ambition.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Entertaining but somewhat narrow in viewpoint
Steven Bach's book is an entertaining read, perhaps more so for those with little previous knowledge of Riefenstahl, the events leading up to the second world war and the fate of other Germans who supported the Nazis, benefitted from their collaboration with the Third Reich and then had highly successful careers in their chosen fields after the war. While the book appears to be well supported by a long list of references, it is unfortunate that Bach has a tendency to use comments from interviews ... Read More
Rating: - Fascinating portrait of twisted genius
Of all the existing books on Leni Riefenstahl--and there are a lot of them out there, including Riefenstahl's own self-exculpatory memoirs--Bach's treatment is in my opinion the most lucid, judicious, and detailed. Unlike many film enthusiasts who try to excuse away Riefenstahl's work for Hitler and the Nazi party, Bach bears down hard on this period in Riefenstahl's oeuvre, situating it in the context of world history, film history, and Riefenstahl's personal development. Riefenstahl is one of those ... Read More
Rating: - Riefenstahl biography: a multi-faceted conundrum
Riefenstahl biography reveals a multi-faceted conundrum. The sexually-charged and Nazi-friendly female filmmaker in a man's time (1930s-40s) , place (Nazi Germany), and business (movie making, especially as a director and producer) made two of the greatest movies ever made-- or denigrated. "Triumph of the Will" recorded and glorified the 1935 Nazi party rally in Nuremburg and Olympiad (actually a pair of movies focusing on the nationalistic results and the athletic beauty of the competition) documented ... Read More
Rating:  - Shame
There have been many attemps to stain Riefenstahl's image along the years, and this one is not the most successful at all. It serves little purpose to the academic bunch. It ashames those that search for objectivity. It ashames those that perceive that Bach has waited for Leni's death (102 years old) to publish this piece of propaganda.
Bach fails on piercing the German mindset that prevailed in the pre-Shoah years. From Triumph of the Will (1935) to the final solution (1942) there are 7 years ... Read More
Rating: - Good Intro to Leni
After reading Jurgen Trimborn's admirable but somewhat inaccessible biography of Riefenstahl, I sought out this book in hopes that it would be friendlier to a Riefenstahl novice such as me. It certainly is an easier read and a much better starting place.
Steven Bach, of Final Cut fame, writes from the standpoint of a motion picture enthusiast. He also has a POV where Riefenstahl's Nazi associations are concerned and he doesn't hide it. For Bach Riefenstahl is the living version of Klaus Mann's ... Read More
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