The Fuhrer's Filmmaker -- `Life Of Leni Riefenstahl' A Triumphant Profile

Movie review

XXXX "The Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl," documentary written and directed by Ray Muller. Varsity. No rating. -----------------------------------------------------------------

Leni Riefenstahl will turn 92 next month. All but blacklisted for making films with and for the Nazis, she hasn't completed a movie in decades.

Yet her influence continues in the most popular of family entertainments. The majestic opening of Disney's "The Lion King" owes a great deal to her 1935 Nuremberg rally classic, "Triumph of the Will." Anyone who makes a sports film is instantly indebted to "Olympia," her exhilarating four-hour masterpiece about the 1936 Olympics.

Critics still wonder if just by borrowing elements of her style filmmakers are playing with fire. In his review of "The Lion King," the Seattle Weekly's Frank Corrado worried about "romanticized animal kingdom Nazism" and "goose-stepping hyenas in rigid formation straight out of Riefenstahl." Similar objections were made 17 years ago to the grand finale of "Star Wars," which visually "quotes" from "Triumph of the Will."

The questions will continue as long as Riefenstahl's perplexing, technically brilliant movies are shown and imitated. Few of them were answered by the publication of her evasive autobiography last year, but this three-hour documentary helps to fill in a lot of blanks. Its German writer-director, Ray Muller, not only demonstrates what Riefenstahl achieved; he gets up close and personal, showing just what kind of person she was and is.

Early clips revealing

Using clips from her earliest movies, in which she appeared as a dancer and actress, he suggests what interested Hitler enough to summon her to film a Nazi party rally. Interviewing her today, Muller takes Riefenstahl back to the locations of her "mountain films," to the Olympic Stadium and to Nuremberg. In a fascinating underwater sequence, he shows her with her submissive, much younger companion, Horst, throwing on scuba gear, playing on the ocean floor and patting a deadly stingray.

To put it mildly, she never acts her age. What impresses most are her energy and tenacity, and her interest in artistic rather than political matters. It's as if she had developed permanent blinders to the Third Reich's criminality. She seems less offended by accusations of collaboration than by Muller's use of a Nazi rally film over which she had little artistic control. Reunited with her "Olympia" camera crew, she's lost in conversation about the equipment they used half a century ago.

Shows off her achievements

One of the best reasons for watching Muller's film is to be confronted with what Riefenstahl's films really achieved. If you've seen only battered 16mm prints of "Triumph" or "Olympia," prepare to be astonished at the 35mm richness of the originals. No wonder Pauline Kael once called them "the two greatest films ever directed by a woman." Muller is generous with these clips, as well as behind-the-scenes footage of the filming of "Olympia" and Riefenstahl's uncompleted African movie, "Black Cargo."

It's clear that he respects her accomplishments, while wondering about her judgment and denials; at times he refutes them with evidence. He tries to resist her manipulative on-camera behavior - he thinks of her as still "a diva of the 1930s," and she proves it by telling him where to point his camera - yet he withholds judgment about her life.

"I hate films which tell me what to think," Muller said at a press conference last year. "She will be an enigma to the end."

"The Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl" was the runaway winner for best documentary at the Seattle International Film Festival last month. But it's a shame to pigeonhole it with the "d" word. It's also head-and-shoulders above anything else in the festival - not to mention any fiction film that's opened here so far this year.