She didn't get it
Riefenstahl and friend
Michiko Kakutani's review this morning of two new books about the German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl reminded me of my own Globe review of her 1993 autobiography, "Leni Riefenstahl: A Memoir," published when she was 91. A few sentences from it:
"Riefenstahl's career never recovered from her association with Hitler, nor does her book. The last 300 pages are a sad, fatiguing perils-of-Pauline chronicle of her attempts to clear her name of various slanders and her unsuccessful attempts to restart her film work. ...
"The book's cohesive tension comes from Riefenstahl's obtuseness to Hitler's infernal ideas and plans, which she managed to dissociate from the usually polite fellow who treated her like a piece of fine china. Though she was no Nazi and had Jewish friends (apparently they all went into exile), she never fully accepted the view that Hitler was, in Churchill's words, 'a bloodthirsty guttersnipe.' In 1976 she wrote to Albert Speer, Hitler's armaments minister, after his 'Spandau Diaries' were published, 'You have emphasized the negative aspects of his personality more strongly than the positive. A Hitler such as you describe could not possibly achieve unusual things, good or bad. . . . I too can never forget or forgive the terrible things that were done in Hitler's name.'
"But everything was done in his name. He was too squeamish to do it himself."
