[Junta was, so The Blue Light] would like to tell us, a child of the secretive world of nature, a person who stands apart and beyond the world of reason and civilization that could corrupt the better world of nature. Riefenstahl sharply separates a romantic, intuitive, nature-bound existence (glorified with all possible camera lyricism) from a more urban, civilized way of life that, of itself, smacks of decadence. And the mystical cult of a nature-mountain world is contrasted with profane, "plain" reason, the former being rather more holy, prior and predestined….

[In Triumph of the Will] she succeeded in bringing to the screen the pomp of Naziism as a splendiferous and sacred spectacle. Above all, the film bestowed an aura of holy consecration on the personage of Der Führer. As the film opens, Hitler is likened to an Olympian god in a plane settling to earth through...