Difficile est satiram non scribere.
(It is difficult not to write satire.)
--Juvenal
Filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl dies at 101
POECKING, Germany, Sept. 9 (UPI) -- Controversial filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, who produced the Nazi propaganda film "Triumph of the Will," has died at the age of 101.
The BBC said Riefenstahl, who became a favorite of German dictator Adolf Hitler in the 1930s, was never a Nazi party member, and never charged at a war crimes tribunal.
The BBC said longtime companion Horst Kettner said she died in her sleep Monday at her home in the Bavarian town of Poecking.
Riefenstahl also made the film "Olympia," a documentary on the Berlin Olympics of 1936. Although critics said her work glorified a regime responsible for the deaths of millions, she was adamant she was not a supporter of the Nazis, and had done the films for art and not politics.
She once told BBC News Online her films reflected "the truth as it was then, in 1934."
Her Nazi documentaries were hailed as groundbreaking films, pioneering techniques such as the use of cranes, tracking rails, and many cameras working at the same time.
Her later films were not as successful. She attributed her lack of work and respect after the war to postwar de-nazification efforts that unfairly tainted her, but her critics mark her decline as beginning earlier. In her efforts to follow up the critical and commercial successes of the late 1930's, she stumbled badly.
Her next film, "Descent of the Eagle," which was to portray the invasion and subjugation of England, was cancelled before it went into production because of creative differences with the Royal Air Force. The technical innovations that had worked so well in "Olympia" caused trouble on the set of her epic "The Capture of Stalingrad," where fierce winter weather froze camera gears, made film brittle, and allowed Russian snipers to get close enough to pick off several focus pullers and one assistant director. The filming bogged down, and it not only went badly over budget, but the capture of over 300,000 Wehrmact prisoners by the Russian Army posed significant re-casting problems.
She seemed to recover with her next project, "Defiance of the Will." Returning to the imagery that had worked so well in "Triumph of the Will," the early scenes featured bright-faced, healthy German youths bonding and celebrating their comradeship as they helped to build the Atlantic Wall to stave off the mongrelized Anglo-Saxons. The sensuous forms of the scantily-clad youths contrasted sharply with the stark, angular backdrop of concrete bunkers, anti-tank ditches, and landing-craft obstacles.
Unfortunately, financing and contractual problems again prevented completion of her masterpiece. The locations picked for filming, previously picturesque and even bucolic patches of Normandy countryside, were unexpectedly inundated by half a million U.S., UK, and Canadian tourists, who clogged the roads, littered the countryside with artillery shells, drove up local prices, and insisted on re-writing the script by running armored spearheads through her film sets. Again, the project was never completed.
Her final work, "GI, can you spare a bar of chocolate?" never got beyond the rehearsal stage.
(Remember, Kids, the part in bold is actual 100% news-flavored media product. The rest is the fakey part.)
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