In 1934 German director Leni Riefenstahl made one of the most riveting and infamous films of all time, a document of Adolf Hitler's Nuremberg Nazi party rally called Triumph of the Will. Regarded by cinema historians as "the best propaganda film of all time," and a film that continues to inspire violent debate, Triumph of the Will linked Riefenstahl forevermore in he public record with fascism and Hitler.

Was Riefenstahl, in making Triumph endorsing the Nazi scheme or merely an objective artist making a film? Ray Muller's fascinating documentary attempts to answer the question after provoking angry outbursts from the defensive Riefenstahl.

Pauline Kael called Riefenstahl "one of the dozen or so creative geniuses who have ever worked in the film medium," and this documentary buoys that argument as it spans Riefenstahl's remarkable career, from her beginnings as a internationally-known dancer to actress in Arnold Fanck's "mountain films" of the 1920s, to director of the controversial masterpieces Triumph and Olympia, a film of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. After a postwar stint in prison, in the Sixties Riefenstahl escaped to more exotic environs where she found work as a photographer, first recording the lives of the African Nobu tribes, and later working on an undersea epic, all documented in Muller's consistently engrossing film.

The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl (1994) is comprised of countless interviews with the still spry and cantankerous 90-year-old Riefenstahl as she recounts her long and varied life and defends herself against charges of collusion with the Nazis, countering "I no longer live in that past."

While offering a portrait of a unique, maverick artist, Muller's documentary raises a compelling question about whether an artwork can be judged separately from the political context in which it was made.

Director: Ray Muller
Producer: Dimitri de Clercq, Jacques de Clercq, Hans-Jurgen Panitz
Cinematography: Michel Baudour, Walter A. Franke, Ulrich Janchen, Horst Kettner, Jurgen Martin
Music: Ulrich Bassenge, Wolfgang Neumann
Editing: Vera Dubsikova, Beate Koster
BW & C-188m.

by Felicia Feaster