Film maker Leni Riefenstahl dies

[emad]

Leni Riefenstahl, queen of Nazi spin, has died at the age of 101:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/3093154.stm

[FlashHarry]

1. I'll bet Karl Rove/Goebbels is shedding a tear right now.

After all, what is "DC: 9/11" but an updated version of "Triumph of the Will?."


P.S. "I'm doing my part!"

[emad]

3. Maybe Poppy will finance a Riefenstahl Chair in

Neocon Communication Strategies at the forthcoming University of Crawford...

[FlashHarry]

5. Well, the Pentagon has been screening the Algiers movie...

...maybe "Triumph of the Will" is next...

[JohnKleeb]

20. damnit harry thats what I said

You dont read minds for a living to you? on Leni R pretty old even older than Strom.

[Flubadubya]

2. Remarkable talent...

misspent.

[GinaMaria]

12. absolutly

Her abilities were so far beyond any film maker of her time. Seems like it took others quite a while to catch up to her. I'm sorry for her choices in subject matter and theme. These choices make her a less than palatable role model for women in the director's chair. :-(

[NewYorkerfromMass]

14. Great artists are not usually politically astute

Creativity trumps common sense almost as a rule.

[MarianJack]

4. 101!

I guess it's true that only the good die young!

[bleedingheart]

6. I saw a bio on her and she was completely unapologetic

about her role in the Nazi party and its rise to power.

Her films were very powerful and were the "ultimate" in propoganda.

How she evaded being hung or imprisioned shows what a spin doctor she really was.

[IndianaGreen]

7. Blame Leni for her Nazi ties, while cheering Carl Orff of "Carmina Burana"

How ironic the way people constantly harp at Leni Riefenstahl for her support for the Nazis and Hitler, a man she once described as having the "most beautiful blue eyes," while ignoring an even bigger unrepentant Nazi like composer Carl Orff of "Carmina Burana" fame. Orff was an avowed Nazi who, according to an interview with his widow, wanted to be known as the "greatest composer of the Third Reich."!

I suspect that we are being sexist when it comes to pointing fingers at former Nazis, many of whom were war criminals, e.g, Wernher Von Braun.

[Ellen Forradalom]

8. I think there's a simpler explanation

Riefenstahl's work, and Nazi patrons, are better known.

[bleedingheart]

10. I don't cheer for any of them.

[Ellen Forradalom]

9. Queen of Nazi spin?

She worked for Fox?

[qb]

11. Did she critique DC 9/11 before she died?

She probably would have said it's the shittiest piece of propaganda she's ever seen!

[JI7]

13. do you think she supported hitler's politics ?

she says she was only interesting in making film as an art and was not or did not support hitler's politics. do you think this was true ?

[Paranoid_Portlander]

15. I think she congratulated Hitler...

... on his victory over France in 1940, by sending him a telegram.

[Cooley Hurd]

16. I always thought that Leni was a gifted artist, regardless of...

...her political affiliations. And art is, well, art...

[kaitykaity]

17. Leni was not a Nazi.

Sorry, but if she were she would have gone
to prison or been executed after the war.

It is too bad she used her considerable gifts
to glorify the Nazis. But she did, and after
the war she was poison to everyone.

That's punishment enough. She was way ahead
of her time, and if she'd been in LA instead
of Berlin, she may have been even more of a
pioneer in film-making.

JMHO.

[roguevalley]

18. lots of nazis didn't go to prison, Arnold's father included.

that didn't mean they didn't support hitler. she was a supporter who glorified his work. She could have said no but she didn't. Lots of people declined without penalty but she didn't.

What undermines her completely was her lack of character in telling what she was and where she stood. Saying that she was just doing the art of it -which glorified the evil of it in ways no one else ever did- is crap. She was a committed nazi whose reputation will never be more than it is because she didn't say one way or the other what she was. she never repented, explained or told the truth.

Check out any book or documentary on her and its there on the page.
All the pretty pictures in the world won't change the fact that she greased the skids for the holocaust, the destruction of Europe and the murder of millions, including American soldiers.

RV, who finds her intensely interesting, the same way you watch a spider suck the guts out of a fly

[VolcanoJen]

19. kick

:dem: