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| | 'Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl' by Steven Bach - BOOK REVIEW - Los Angeles Times - calendarlive.com (Site not responding. Last check: ) |
 | | Steven Bach is too graceful a writer and too nuanced a psychologist to summarize this life so bluntly, but, for the reader of his brilliant biography of the Nazi filmmaker, that conclusion is inescapable. |
 | | It is difficult to overpraise Bach's efforts: Living the biographer's nightmare, trapped for a decade with a loathsome subject, Bach is determined to present her coolly, ironically, without loss of his own moral vector. |
 | | Bach ends his book with a quotation from Simone Weil: "The only people who can give the impression of having risen to a higher plane, who seem superior to ordinary human misery, are people who resort to the aids of illusion, exaltation, fanaticism, to conceal the harshness of destiny from their own eyes. |
| www.calendarlive.com /books/bookreview/cl-bk-schickel11mar11,0,7172379.htmlstory?coll=cl-mreview (1473 words) |
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