That’s where access to Riefenstahl’s collection of memories came in. Veiel could use them to cut through her denials like a scalpel. Riefenstahl’s own photos, typed notes, and audio tapes rebut the arguments she made from talk show couches after the war, a seamless and calm dissection that should put to rest the vague defenses—maybe she really wasn’t aware of the horrors of the Holocaust—many of us heard in high school or college classes before we were shown Triumph of the Will.
Those defenses were seemingly accepted by the Telluride Film Festival, which honored her in 1974. Riefenstahl’s contributions to the art of nonfiction filmmaking had not received the recognition they deserved, a spokesperson for Telluride said at the time, because “Leni has been maligned and called a Nazi swine.” In the years since, techniques Riefenstahl brought to the forefront—such as the use of long-focus lenses and sweeping, aerial photography—have been adopted by filmmakers like George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola (among many others), both of whom she influenced.
“She created masterpieces,” Maischberger admits. “She was a fantastic editor, and had a sense of how to put a picture together in a way that it would be a fantastic experience, very emotional. But she was so close to evil. It was a pact with the devil.”
Riefenstahl’s estate has a lot to teach us about the contemporary political climate. The parallels between her era and ours are striking: Even today, we see the world’s richest men prostrating themselves before an aspiring autocrat, creatives and news organizations seemingly seeking to normalize a self-proclaimed king, and various organized displays of military force. As Veiel considered Riefenstahl’s work for Hitler, he was thinking about all that too.
“There’s something between the lines which is telling us something not only about the present, but about the future,” he says. “The longing for this strongness and the contempt of weakness, the contempt of the foreigners.”
This is demonstrated most chillingly in Riefenstahl’s recordings of phone calls she received after media appearances in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s. Many of them express support for Riefenstahl—not as the unfairly maligned victim she presented herself as, but as a Nazi propagandist. Some of her fans specifically praised her work for the Nazis and the viewpoints reflected therein.
Veiel points to one call in particular as proof that in many corners, Riefenstahl wasn’t just forgiven—she was embraced. “The guy says, ‘Well, it will take one or two generations, and then Germany will find its way back to dignity, morality, order, virtue,’” says Veiel. Instead of arguing, Riefenstahl agrees with the caller, saying that the German people are predestined to return to the values and glory they had when she was making her films.
With Riefenstahl’s leanings more clear, Maischberger is hopeful that students of film who have excused Riefenstahl in the past will reconsider. “You should not be intrigued by someone’s talent if the soul is as rotten as this soul was,” she says. “And there is no way to separate politics and art here, because this art wouldn’t exist without the politics.”
