A Memoir: A Memoir

Filmmaker for Adolf Hitler and top film executive for the Third Reich, Riefenstahl (b. 1902) portrays herself, in this unconvincing, self-justifying autobiography, as a naive dancer/actress who was seduced by the Fuhrer's charisma and recognized his demonic nature too late. She states that she ``unreservedly rejected Hitler's racist ideas'' and found out about the genocide of the Jews only after the war. Further, she insists, she filmed her documentary on the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin only because of Hitler's unyielding orders, and she had no inkling that it would be used as Nazi Party propaganda. One marvels at how time seems to have dimmed Riefenstahl's conscience. She writes that Joseph Goebbels made crude, aggressive sexual advances on her and later waged a vendetta against her. Relating encounters with Mussolini, Albert Speer, Walt Disney, Marlene Dietrich, Any Warhol and Jean Cocteau, Riefenstahl in this overlong self-portrait describes her postwar imprisonment by French occupational forces, her ``rehabilitation'' and her filmmaking travels from Vienna to the Sudan. Photos. (Sept.)