SOURCE: Meza, Ed. “Riefenstahl's Indelible, Infamous Legacy.” Variety 392, no. 5 (15 September 2003): 51.

[In the following obituary, Meza observes that, although Riefenstahl was unrepentant about her role in Nazi Germany, she was nonetheless granted a respectful tribute by various German officials on her one hundredth birthday.]

Teutonic helmer and photographer Leni Riefenstahl, whose cinematic paeans to the Third Reich forever tainted her postwar career, died Sept. 8 in her sleep. She was 101.

Despite her reputation as a Nazi sympathizer, the Berlin-born Riefenstahl always maintained it was beauty that she was trying to capture in her films, whether it was the awe-inspiring rallies in Nuremberg seen in Triumph of the Will, her mythic portrayal of 1936 Berlin athletes in Olympia or the underwater life that became the subject of her last work, docu Impressions under Water.

“I always see more of the good and the beautiful than the ugly and sick,” she said. “Through my optimism I naturally prefer and capture the beauty in life.”

Her films are characterized by strong editing as well as groundbreaking work in aerial and underwater photography and the filming of athletes.

Although she denied being a Nazi, she has been criticized for having never formally apologized for her involvement with the regime. In her memoirs, she denied persistent rumors of a romance with Hitler, but her close friendship with the Fuhrer undeniably benefited her work.

After the Nazi surrender, she was detained by authorities and eventually released without being charged.

The controversial helmer made a little-known feature during the war, Tiefland (Lowlands). Filmed in Spain, the “folk tale” denounces oppression and tyranny and was not finished until 1954, by which time it had only a token release due to her tarnished reputation.

After World War II, she never again worked as a film director, except for her final docu project.

A former dancer, Riefenstahl turned to acting and directing after a knee injury put an end to her terping career.

A tireless innovator of film and photographic techniques, the independent-minded helmer remained unrepentant about her Nazi-era work.

“I don't know what I should apologize for,” she said in an interview just before her 100th birthday last year. “I cannot apologize, for example, for having made the film Triumph of the Will—it won the top prize. All my films won prizes.”

Riefenstahl protested consistently over the years that she was only concerned with art and not politics, insisting the aesthetic achievement of her work could be separated from the politics inherent in her Nazi-era docus.

“I was only interested in how I could make a film that was not stupid like a crude propagandist newsreel, but more interesting. It reflects the truth as it was then, in 1934. It is a documentary, not propaganda.”

A devoted skier, mountain climber and scuba diver (a hobby she started at 71), Riefenstahl never diverted from her quest for adventure. In the postwar years, she embarked on a career as a photographer, extensively documenting the life of Sudan's Nuba people. In 2000, the then-97-year-old helmer suffered two broken ribs when the helicopter she was traveling in crashed in the Nuba Mountains. Riefenstahl had been revisiting the war-torn region of Sudan for the first time in two decades.

Still scuba diving to photograph sharks and other sea life at 100, the helmer nonetheless began to complain of constant pain from her injuries.

Riefenstahl remains a controversial but enthralling subject for Hollywood: A biopic has long been in development at Jodie Foster's Egg Pictures as a possible vehicle for Foster.

Last year, Riefenstahl was sued by former internment-camp prisoners used as slave labor on Lowlands after she said in an interview that they had all survived the war unharmed.

In fact, some of the extras died at Auschwitz. The lawsuit, filed by a German-based group representing Roma and Sinti (ethnic groups also known as gypsies) who worked on the film and charging her with denial of the Holocaust, was dismissed by prosecutors who said her comments were not criminally offensive.

Although her association with the Nazis may forever haunt her legacy, Riefenstahl maintained close contacts with many high-profile industryites in Germany, including bankrupt media baron Leo Kirch and Teutonic tiger tamers and illusionists Siegfried & Roy, all of whom attended her 100th birthday celebration last year.

Both government officials and representatives of Germany's culture and education circles paid tribute to Riefenstahl.

Bavarian culture minister Hans Zehetmair described Riefenstahl's work as groundbreaking.

Hilmar Hoffmann, former prexy of the Goethe Institute, praised Riefenstahl as an artist who has inspired film directors worldwide. “Now that she is dead, we can differentiate between the aesthetic genius Leni Riefenstahl and her political entanglements.”

Riefenstahl is survived by her longtime companion and cameraman, Horst Kettner.