Jodie Foster to play Leni Riefenstahl

Photo: Getty Images

Jodie Foster will star in and produce a biopic about Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl, according to the UK's Observer (via the far more catholic Oh No They Didn't).

Leni's greatest legacy will always be her glorification of Hitler's ideas in Triumph of the Will, long considered the most perfect and persuasive piece of agit-prop ever made.

Slightly less known is that Riefenstahl, disturbingly, is essentially the grandmother of sporno. In order to chronicle the 1936 Olympics in Berlin -- designed to elevate the profile of Germany -- she invented many of the film techniques used to glorify the male athlete. This Outsports review hints at just how boy crazy the footage was:

How homoerotic? Just watch the opening sequence of Olympia. It begins with a naked athlete lighting the Olympic torch before he begins his run to the Olympic stadium. "Shoot more of him!" Riefenstahl shouted to the photographers as filming commenced in Delphi in 1936. "Shoot more of him! Shoot everywhere more of him, he is beautiful!"

Weirdly, in her obsessive attention to form, the racist rhetoric of her other work was less obvious -- she apparently shot Jesse Owens' championship races in a similar manner as that of white runners.

I'm giving Jodie the benefit of the doubt here that she's out to paint a complex portrait of what happens when a woman keeps telling herself that the totally obvious bigger picture -- he's a fascist! -- is less important than making great art.

Comments

[Jodie Foster fan]

Something worth of JF acting abilities. That's great.