The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl

The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl

The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl
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DVD Cover Information

Actor: Adolf Hitler, Josef Goebbels, Marlene Dietrich, Rudolf Hess, Walter Frentz
Primary Contributor: Leni Riefenstahl
DVD: 2 Layers, Region Code 0
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; German (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled)
Format: Black & White, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: Academy Ratio, 1.33:1
Running Time: 188 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-09-02
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Kino Video

Movie Reviews of The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl

Movie Review: Documentary, biography and even a how to
Summary: 5 Stars

This film pretty much follows the book "Leni Riefenstahl-Five Lives: A Biography in Pictures" 336 pages Taschen (November 2000). I keep my copy sideways on the library shelf so as people enter they see Leni looking at them.

We follow Leni form her earliest mark on the world through many lives. I am in the process of collecting all her published films. This program makes a perfect supplement and also as a lens to help understands what we are viewing.

The film is quit long and you start to wonder if they were being quite selective of her works to wrap the documentary up properly.
Covered are:
The Sacred Mountain (1926)
The Big Leap (1927)
The White Hell of Pitz Pal? (1929)
The Blue Light (1929) first film we think of when we think Leni
S.O.S. Iceberg (1933)
Sieg Des Gkaubens (1933)
Triumph of the Will (1935)

You say hay did the forget Olympia? Then you realize that you only watched part 1. There are lots more to come:
Olympia (1938) as good of coverage as the film it's self
Tiefland (1954)

Then we get in to her later life in Nuba and under water.

The first have does have the extra treat of touring UFA this alone is worth the price.
The down side is that other than the narrator it is mostly in German; if it were not for sub titles I would be in trouble as I only picked up about a third of the conversation after two years of German.

Watching the film the second time you realize that it is also a how to make art films.

Leni Riefenstahl-Five Lives: A Biography in Pictures

Summary of The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl

Director Ray Muller's three-hour portrait of controversial filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl grapples with the central controversy of her career: was she a "pure" filmmaker whose political naivet? allowed her stunning visions to be harnessed by Hitler, or was she the key mythmaker of the Nazi propaganda machine? The dancer turned actress turned director is well represented with generous clips from her work both in front of and behind the camera, from the ethereally beautiful The Blue Light through the romantic fantasy Teifland, with special focus on her two most famous works: the stunning propaganda piece The Triumph of the Will (a chillingly brilliant work of demagoguery which she helped design and stage as well as film) and the poetic, technically breathtaking documentary Olympia. After her exile from filmmaking, she became an acclaimed ethnographic photographer and more recently a scuba diver and underwater photographer. Though she was over 90 at the time of the interviews, Riefenstahl's energy and commanding presence dominate the film and overpower Muller. At one point she practically grabs the directorial reins from him. The film never really resolves her complicity as a Nazi propagandist; she maintains her innocence while Muller questions her assertions with contrary evidence, but he appears too awed to really push the issue. Whatever your feelings, it's hard not to come away from this film just a little awed by the talented and tenacious Ms. Riefenstahl yourself. --Sean Axmaker

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