SOURCE: Meza, Ed. “Riefenstahl's Indelible, Infamous Legacy.” Variety 392, no. 5 (15 September 2003): 51.

In the following obituary, Meza observes that, although Riefenstahl was unrepentant about her role in Nazi Germany, she was nonetheless granted a respectful tribute by various German officials on her one hundredth birthday.

Teutonic helmer and photographer Leni Riefenstahl, whose cinematic paeans to the Third Reich forever tainted her postwar career, died Sept. 8 in her sleep. She was 101.

Despite her reputation as a Nazi sympathizer, the Berlin-born Riefenstahl always maintained it was beauty that she was trying to capture in her films, whether it was the awe-inspiring rallies in Nuremberg seen in Triumph of the Will, her mythic portrayal of 1936 Berlin athletes in Olympia or the underwater life that became the subject of her last work, docu Impressions under Water.

“I always see more of the good and the beautiful than the ugly and sick,” she said. “Through...