Helene Bertha Amalie " Leni " Riefenstahl (; August 22, 1902 – September 8, 2003 ) was a German film director, actress and dancer widely noted for her aesthetics and innovations as a filmmaker.

Riefenstahl ’ s prominence in the Third Reich, along with her personal association with Adolf Hitler, destroyed her film career following Germany's defeat in World War II, after which she was arrested but released without any charges.

Although she directed only eight films, just two of which received significant coverage outside of Germany, Riefenstahl was widely known all her life.

Riefenstahl was born on August 22, 1902.

SOS Iceberg was Riefenstahl ’ s only English-language film role as an actress.

However, it was not universally well-received, for which Riefenstahl blamed the critics, many of them Jewish.

Upon its 1938 re-release, the names of co-writer Béla Balázs and producer Harry Sokal, both Jewish, were removed from the credits ; some reports claim this was at Riefenstahl ’ s behest.

Riefenstahl heard candidate Adolf Hitler speak at a rally in 1932 and was mesmerized by his talent as a public speaker.

Describing the experience in her memoir, Riefenstahl wrote: " I had an almost apocalyptic vision that I was never able to forget.

Riefenstahl received private funding for the production of Tiefland, but the filming in Spain was derailed.

In interviews for the 1993 film The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl, Riefenstahl adamantly denied any deliberate attempt to create pro-Nazi propaganda and said she was disgusted that Triumph of the Will was used in such a way.

Olympia was very successful in Germany after it premiered for Hitler ’ s 49th birthday in 1938, and its international debut led Riefenstahl to embark on an American publicity tour in an attempt to secure commercial release.

She arrived in New York City in November 1938, five days before Kristallnacht, or ' night of broken glass '; when news of the event reached the U. S., Riefenstahl maintained that Hitler was innocent.

Avery Brundage stated that it was " The greatest Olympic film ever made " and Riefenstahl left for Hollywood, where she was received by the German Consul Georg Gyssling, on 24 November.

However, Riefenstahl maintained that Goebbels was upset that she had rejected his advances and was jealous of her influence on Hitler, seeing her as an internal threat ; therefore, his diaries could not be trusted.

By later accounts, Goebbels thought highly of Riefenstahl ’ s filmmaking but was angered with what he saw as her overspending on the Nazi-provided filmmaking budgets.

During the Invasion of Poland, Riefenstahl was photographed in Poland wearing a military uniform and a pistol on her belt in the company of German soldiers ; she had gone to the site of the battle as a war correspondent.

Nevertheless, by October 5, 1939, Riefenstahl was back in occupied Poland filming Hitler ’ s victory parade in Warsaw.

On June 14, 1940, the day Paris was declared an open city by the French and occupied by German troops, Riefenstahl wrote to Hitler in a telegram, “ With indescribable joy, deeply moved and filled with burning gratitude, we share with you, my Führer, your and Germany's greatest victory, the entry of German troops into Paris.

Riefenstahl took dancing lessons and attended dance academies from an early age and began her career as a self-styled and well-known interpretive dancer, traveling around Europe and working with director Max Reinhardt in a show funded by Jewish producer Harry Sokal.

Riefenstahl went on to star in many of Fanck ’ s mountain films as an athletic and adventurous young woman with a suggestive appeal ; she became an accomplished mountaineer during the winters of filming on mountains and learned filmmaking techniques.

Breaking from Fanck's style of setting realistic stories in fairytale mountain settings, Riefenstahl — working with leftist screen writers Béla Balázs and Carl Mayer — filmed Das Blaue Licht as a romantic, wholly mystical tale which she thought of as more fitting to the terrain.

Riefenstahl received invitations to travel to Hollywood to create films, but she refused the offers in order to stay in Germany with a boyfriend.

Leni Riefenstahl with Heinrich Himmler at Nuremberg in 1934

Impressed with Riefenstahl ’ s work, Hitler asked her to film the upcoming 1934 Party rally in Nuremberg, the sixth such rally.

Riefenstahl with Joseph Goebbels ( 1937 )

After the Goebbels Diaries surfaced, researchers learned that Riefenstahl had been friendly with Joseph Goebbels and his wife, Magda, attending the opera with them and coming to the Goebbels ' parties.

According to Ernst Hanfstaengl, who was a close friend of Hitler throughout the later 1920s and early 1930s, Riefenstahl tried to begin a relationship with Hitler early on but was turned down by him.

Riefenstahl sued a filmmaker, Nina Gladitz, who said Riefenstahl personally chose the extras at their holding camp ; Gladitz had found one of the Gypsy survivors and matched his memory with stills of the movie for a documentary Gladitz was filming.

The German court found in favour of Gladitz, agreeing that Riefenstahl had known the extras were from a concentration camp, and they agreed with Riefenstahl on only one count ( finding that Riefenstahl had not informed the Gypsies that they would be sent to the Auschwitz camp after filming was completed ).

As Germany ’ s military collapsed in the spring of 1945 Riefenstahl left Berlin and was hitchhiking with a group of men, trying to reach her mother, when she was taken into custody by American troops.

When shown photographs of the camps, Riefenstahl reportedly reacted with horror and tears.

From 1945 through 1948 she was held in sundry American and French-run detention camps and prisons along with house arrest but although Riefenstahl was tried four times by various postwar authorities, she was never convicted through denazification trials either for her alleged role as a propagandist or for the use of concentration camp inmates in her films.

Hitler congratulates Riefenstahl in 1934

At first, according to Riefenstahl ’ s memoir, she resisted and did not want to create further Nazi films ; instead, she wanted to direct a feature film based on Hitler ’ s favourite opera, Eugen d ' Albert's Tiefland.

In 1936, Hitler invited Riefenstahl to film the Olympic Games in Berlin, a film which Riefenstahl claimed had been commissioned by the International Olympic Committee.

In 1937, Riefenstahl told a reporter for the Detroit News: " To me, Hitler is the greatest man who ever lived.

The last time Riefenstahl saw Hitler was when she married Peter Jacob on March 21, 1944, shortly after she had introduced Jacob to Hitler in Kitzbühel, Austria.

Riefenstahl later said that her biggest regret was meeting Hitler: “ It was the biggest catastrophe of my life.

During this time Leni Riefenstahl, a filmmaker working in Nazi Germany, created one of the best-known propaganda movies, Triumph of the Will, a film commissioned by Hitler to chronicle the 1934 Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg.

Filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, a favourite of Adolf Hitler, was commissioned by the German Olympic Committee to film the Games for $ 7 million.

Several generals in the Wehrmacht protested over the minimal army presence in the film: Hitler apparently proposed modifying the film to placate the generals, but Riefenstahl refused his suggestion.

On the other end of the focal length spectre, Leni Riefenstahl used extreme telephoto lenses to compress large crowds in Triumph of the Will while their allmighty Führer Adolf Hitler is seen through normal lenses and often from a low angle to appear tall in comparison.

Fanck went on to produce the ski-chase White Ecstasy ( 1930 ) with Riefenstahl and legendary Austrian skier Hannes Schneider, then in turn served as Riefenstahl's editor on her 1932 film The Blue Light, which brought her to the attention of Adolf Hitler.