SOURCE: Cook, William. “Shooting Hitler.” New Statesman 131, no. 4574 (11 February 2002): 40-1.

In the following essay, Cook discusses Riefenstahl's deep sea documentary Impressions under Water and comments on the filmmaker's “arresting” career.

This year, one of the world's most remarkable filmmakers marks her 100th birthday by releasing her first film in nearly 50 years. Impressions under Water is the result of a quarter-century of diving in the Indian Ocean, and it promises to be just as arresting as her directorial debut, The Blue Light, the mystical mountain movie she made 70 years ago. Yet Leni Riefenstahl will always be remembered for two films she made during the Third Reich—Olympia, about the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, and Triumph of the Will, about the 1934 Nazi party rally in Nuremberg. If these films had been as dire as most Nazi-sanctioned cinema, her contribution to Hitler's Reich might have been forgotten. However, unfortunately for Riefenstahl, she...