February 14, 2004
DON'T CRY NO TEARS
The guests will be holding it down here for a while. (I will add some new poems to the (vault) in the next week or two.)
Alex Ross:
Let us pause to remember Leni Riefenstahl, who is probably destined to be left out of the Oscarcast's heartwearming applause-o-meter montage of freshly dead film notables. The source is the archive of the US Military Government in Germany, office of Film, Theater and Music Control, 1945.
“Among many stories being checked out is one that Leni Riefenstahl has been befriended by Colonel O’Neil of CIC, Kitzbuehl, who allowed her to continue cutting the film ‘Tiefland,’ on which she has been working for 4 1/2 years. He also apparently endorsed a proposal to show her Olympic film to troops. She was, of course, working as a personal producer for Hitler on this film. Mr. Sharin stopped work on ‘Tiefland,’ and impounded all of Riefenstahl’s film and equipment. She wept.”