- Format: PAL
- Language German, Italian
- Subtitles: English
- Region: Region 2 (This DVD may not be viewable outside Europe. Read more about DVD formats.)
- Aspect Ratio: 4:3 - 1.33:1
- Number of discs: 1
- Classification: Exempt
- Studio: Eureka
- DVD Release Date: 12 April 2003
- Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
- ASIN: B00008AWUW
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 65,018 in Film & TV (See Top 100 in Film & TV)
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45 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Someone who saw what she wanted to see,
By millie1512 (London, UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl [DVD] (DVD)
The wonderful life was made 10 years ago when Riefenstahl was approaching 90. The previous reviewer says that it's a weakness of the film that the dialogue is in German with sub-titles. On the contrary, hearing Riefenstahl in her own words is one of its strengths. Her energy and the presence of mind of someone 30 years younger shines through. That's something that couldn't be conveyed through an English voice over.What also comes through is that Riefenstahl was someone who clearly saw what she wanted to see and believed what she wanted to believe. 1933 book burning? Filming in the Swiss Alps, and they didn't have TV you know! Her relationship with Goebbels? Of course he wasn't her friend, he hated her! Did she have any emotional capital invested in nazism when she made triumph of the will? No, she would have done just as good a job editing a speech about vegetables as she did with Hitler's speeches. And yet, the old lady defended herself well. Riefenstahl never did join the Nazi party and what's evident in "the wonderful life" is that while Triumph of the Will and Olympia certainly had fascistic themes, they steered clear of a lot of the overt nationalism and anti sentimism present in other German propaganda films of the time. As a a result though she clearly had a real case to answer about the use of sinti and roma in her wartime 'Tiefland' film, after watching "the wonderful life" I did wonder whether the verdict of her post war de nazification trial that she was a sympathiser rather than a big player might be fair. The one point where the documentary does fall down is that you hear from Leni Riefenstahl for the whole film with the exception of some very brief commentary from two of her cameramen at the 1936 Olympic Games. Either the film should have had interviews with Riefenstahl only. Or the producers should have opened the floodgates and invited comments from more of her contemporaries and detractors. Also a final word of warning - this is not a light evening's entertainment! Don't expect an hour or 90 minutes of the highlights of Triumph of the Will and Olympia. This is an extremely thorough look at her career from her early mountain films right through to the post war photography in the Sudan that lasts for over three hours.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The woman behind the myth.,
By PygmyTwylyte (Citizen of the world) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl [DVD] (DVD)
This three hour plus documentary sets out to examine the career and life of probably the most influential,arguably the best,female director and propagandist of the 20th century.Filmed when Rifenstahl was in her 90s,and still active-check the underwater film towards the end of the DVD-she comes across as an articulate and very intelligent critic of her own work.
It starts back in the Berlin of the 1920s,with her acting career in the so-called mountain films.Some great archive footage shows her development into a heroine of this genre,which leads into the start of her directing life. Her association with the Nazis seems,according to Riefenstahl,to have started by accident.She claims not to have wanted to direct any propaganda films,in fact she claims "Triumph of the Will" and an attempt at filming the 1933 Nuremberg rally are documentaries devoid of propaganda,saying that Hitler was so popular in Germany at this point that any critical film would not have been possible. Her attempts to disassociate herself from Nazism are challenged by a sequence of quotes from Goebbels' diaries,which state that she was a lot closer to the Party bosses than she later claimed.You're left with the choice of whether to believe the liar of the century or a woman who has every motive to distance herself from this monstrous regime.The descriptions of how the Nuremberg rally was filmed is fascinating. It then goes on to the Berlin Olympiad film,which took two years to edit into a releaseable film-400 km of film stock to edit!!Some of Riefenstahl's colleagues from 1936 are interviewed and the ways that the sports were filmed,still common in TV sports reporting now,is explained well. Her downfall,and the way that post-1945,her films were judged contaminated by Nazism,is well depicted.This curse-even when filming in Africa,her depiction of the human form led her film to be judged fascistic-followed her for the rest of her days.She never released a film after 1945.Still,she appears suprisingly chipper for all that in the interviews. Was she as close or as distant from Nazism as she and others say?The film leaves the viewer to draw his or her own conclusions.It does however force the viewer to see Riefenstahl as a director first,not a Party hack.It also shows the limits of choice in a dictatorship-any of us lucky enough not to have lived under tyranny should be very careful about pointing fingers at those who have,and at the choices they had to make.
45 of 55 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Marvellous biography but...,
By
This review is from: The Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl [DVD] (DVD)
A little disappointing. Make no mistake, this is a wonderful biography of a supreme artist, an autobiographical interview, one might say, and a MUST for any fan of art film. But there are niggles: i) The interview is conducted entirely in German, subtitled in English. If you happen to speak German there's no way to turn off the subtitles - a nuisance. ii) The sound balance between the bits of English narrative and the interview is uneven. I was forever adjusting the volume. The music (to the documentary, not the film extracts) is pretty appalling. iii) There is neither supplemental booklet nor extras AT ALL aside from a chapter index. Summarised bio information and a filmography would have been very useful. iv) One of the extracts is presented at the wrong projection speed. A far bigger niggle came in the shape of an announcement that the film "offers no preconceptions". Quite the contrary. When introducing Ms Riefenstahl's first meetings with Hitler, we are treated to a dose of the worst aspects of the Nazi regime. The implication (as I read it) was that she accepted the commission to film Triumph of the Will in full knowledge of Nazi atrocities. This was not the case. They met when Hitler was at the height of his popularity as Chancellor, having worked an economic miracle with a Germany left in abject poverty (1 in 3 unemployed) by the draconian demands of the Versailles Treaty. I'm left curious as to why the producers did not stress this, the correct setting into which Ms Liefenstahl entered. They had (and took) plenty of opportunity to deal with the dark side later. I make this point because without this knowledge I might easily have slipped into believing Ms Leifenstahl's critics perfectly justified, no matter how she pleads. My interpretation, then, was that her neglect is a gross injustice. She is forever to be victimised - she can do no right. When it isn't the Nazis, it's that her interest in natural, physical beauty makes her a fascist! (I cannot make the association, no matter how hard I try. The world's biggest fascists have been far from physically beautiful!) Besides, we accept musicians like Herbert von Karajan (Member of the Nazi Party) and Richard Strauss (took a few commissions from same) with open arms. Why do we persist in victimising Ms Liefenstahl? On the plus side, the film contains lots of extracts, ceaselessly inventive and awe-striking. Of particular value are those from her recent marine work - even at ninety she preserves a marvellously creative eye. Scuba diving at ninety? One can only feel for a wonderful, tireless woman with still some way to go. (She is now 100 by the way) If this film helps expose the ironic injustice it might allow us unabashedly to appreciate, perhaps love her art. A great shame the producers learned little from her!
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